I went through 3vol before dropping, I was really disappointed. It has no ounce of romance, just fantasy fighting. There is no shounen ai at all.
Yep. The only actual couples are heterosexual. Well, if you squint really-really hard, you might see smth between emperor and his aide. But it was mostly my wishful thinking, wich is a shame, emperor dude's hot as hell. If you're here for BL romantic stuff, don't waste your time. Ninety per cent of this manga is fighting. And since fantasy world not developed quite well, it's actually gets pretty boring, if you're not into this kind of thing. In G-Defend it balaced out by all the romantic stuff and humor at least.
Other than what the person above has already said about the Emperor and Fengyu, there was a shounen-ai scene (a side story of the same verse) where Long teaches Lifang the wrong way to show respect so Lifang kisses Touren in front of everyone. I believe it was an extra chapter. So yeah, there are hints but nothing stated outright, just like in the Asterisk manga too.
Thanks to someone else posting it before. It's at the end of Chapter 28. Also, Chapter 29 features Hulei proclaiming that Xiangling is his before shyly switching his words to the latter's powers being his. Again, just hints I suppose.
The term "shounen ai" refers to strong male relationships so the genre alone isn't indicative of romance. So this is still shounen ai.
I think everything is subtext
Even years later neither of them show interest in women and there was a subtle hint when the emperor said that he didn't care who Touren ended up with
I just finish this manga. And yeah, 90% is about fighting and 10% about deep bound between the pairing (touren x lifan, hulei x xiangling, ect) and i think the reason this manga have 'shonen ai' tag because deep bound i said before, not because romantic feeling like other shonen ai manga #sorry bad english (=・ω・=)
Excuse me, people do u only see shonen ai, shonen ai and shonen ai can't you see the freaking plot?, the friendship?, the freaking bonds???????!!!! seriously u have just got to freaking kidding god darn it!(╯°Д °)╯╧╧ (╬￣皿￣)
so I've read g-defend by the same mangaka and I liked it a lot. I started to read this one, and there's no sign of shounen ai in a whole first volume, so I have to ask. is this "shounen ai" shounen ai, or "we're tenderly look at each other, touch each other more than necessary and walk around each other half-naked, but that's it" shounen ai?