Can you be more specific?
I haven't seen the anime you mentioned, so it's hard to comment without a particular relationship in mind.
After I got home and got out of my brain fog, I decided it's probably not a question I should be asking.
But since you were kind enough to reply anyway... as another example, there were a couple of relationships in X, the animated series, that confused me (Kamui x Fuma, Subaru x Seishirō).
It's really difficult to be more specific because I don't actually understand what I'm talking about. It's like... a friend forced me to watch some romance animes, and there seems to usually be that childhood/guardian type "friend" who is constantly protecting the girl and talking about how he's so devoted and he'll lay down his life at her whim or whatever.
So you think, well, it's sort of a lineage thing--his family has always been devoted to hers, so his honor demands he uphold whatever covenant they have there... but then, it turns out that he's loved her all his life, etc., etc. And then, you don't know if the devotion is coming from a place of honor and duty or from the romantic love he feels... or from both.
Then I'll come across a male relationship that plays out almost the same way. Both guys are significant and powerful, they're both very sacrificing for each other, they'll go to the ends of the earth and battle all sorts of demons to save each other. And it's all so very, very intense... Like, if it were a guy and a girl, I'd fully expect someone to declare his or her love (usually in a secret monologue the other never hears), but they don't, not directly. The English translation of some of the dialog, though, is ambiguous to me.
I don't know if I'm seeing an actual romantic relationship, even if it's one-sided, a very intense male friendship (devoted comrade-type thing), or some kind of king-and-vassal devotion thing... or if I'm just misreading because
everything is more intense in anime.
Even the heroes and the villains seem to have weirdly intense attachments of some sorts. Like... the shear emotional turmoil of the hero facing
that villain is so strong that it makes me wonder about their emotional history.
(Maybe I'm just such a romantic that "in love" is my default assumption.)
Sorry. That was long and probably even less specific than my first post (for those who caught it before I retracted it). I'm not making any sense, which is why I edited out the first question.
Maybe you could point me toward an amine with a very close male relationship you
have seen and I can come back and tell you what confused me about it.