The Pretty Cure franchise's Les Yay could fill a whole other wiki.
- High points include Nagisa and Honoka sharing a bed while holding hands (which Honoka's grandma seems to approve) and The Movie of Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star almost in its entirety.
- The queen of Les Yay, however is a minor character named Yuka. Her first appearance vaguely implied that she might have a slight crush on Nagisa. Her third major appearance was kind of like that, except that instead of vaguely implying a slight crush, they stopped just short of outright saying she was in love, vaguely implied that Nagisa might return her feelings to some extent, and topped it all off by turning their emotions up to the maximum and sticking them in a bedroom together, after which they walked out together discussing who fell asleep when.
Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star
- Saki and Mai (principally in the movie), and later these two with Kaoru and Michiru, combined with Incest Subtext. Also, the first ED had lots of holding-hands shots between Saki and Mai.
Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo
- Karen and Milk/Kurumi are implied to have become very much a couple throughout the series, but it never seemed to go anywhere... until Power of Hope ~PreCure Full Bloom~, the distant sequel, where Kurumi, while recovering from getting drunk, turns extremely flirty, refusing to get up from Karen's lap where she's using it as a lap pillow, and outright tells her she's in love with her, creating the most explicitly lesbian sequence in Pretty Cure history.
- The manga features features scenes of Love and Setsuna wearing shirts that read "love for moment" and "moment in love". For those not in the know, the name Setsuna means "moment".
- Tsubomi develops a crush on the "handsome boy" Itsuki...who turns out to be a handsome girl. Tsubomi is heartbroken, lamenting that her first love ended so early. Then subsequent episodes give us Tsubomi almost slipping up and describing herself as attracted to Itsuki, the two acting very close as they fly towards the Heart Tree, Tsubomi fangirling over Itsuki with hearts in her eyes, a Sleep Cute scene, and a few instances that could be construed as Itsuki shyly flirting with Tsubomi.
- There's also minor character Naomi who became victim of the week. Anxious to be friends with Itsuki, but considering that her flower is strawberry, which means love and admiration, friends could easily be replaced with lovers.
- The first episode has the two main leads Hibiki Houjo and Kanade Minamino. Even without wearing any Shipping Goggles, you can see their argument as more of a lovers' spat than a dispute between childhood friends.
- Kanade's father says he bakes cakes for his wife. Kanade repeats this almost word for word about Hibiki. The subtext isn't particularly "sub", and the show's barely started.
- Hibiki and Kanade's Crash-Into Hello in the start of a episode could be interpreted as a Accidental Kiss by some fans. And then there's the Siren-Sakura episode, who tries to focus on friendship but ends looking like a love triangle between Hibiki, Kanade and Seiren/Sakura.
- Kanade tenderly touches Hibiki's fingers with hers during their transformation. It can be seen as rather intimate.
- At the end of the official novel, Kanade confessed.
- It also has some of the weirdest Les Yay in the series with the on-and-off friendship of Hummy and Seiren, who are both mascots. The crowning moment of their Les Yay is when Seiren's Heel–Face Turn and transformation into Cure Beat happen specifically because the other villains were trying to torture and brainwash Hummy.
- In the 3DS game, Let's Go! Marchen World!, the opening of which features Nao and Reika, Yayoi and Akane, and **Miyuki and Candy ballroom dancing together in pairs...
- Episode 25 is dedicated to the Nissan Combination pair, Nao and Akane.
- Episode 33 has Princess Reika with her fangirls Miyuki and Yayoi.
- Episode 39 has Cinderella-Miyuki dancing with... Prince Reika? And fairy godmother Yayoi getting gallantly saved by Prince Reika, and then they stare deeply into each other's eyes.
- In the movie: Miyuki and Nico, Akane and Miyuki. Actually, every girl loves Miyuki.
- Doki Doki has its own page.
- Hime and Megumi:
- Hime, who describes her feelings towards Megumi as "warm and fuzzy", holds hands with her all the time and even blushes around her. All the cures are touchy-feely, but those two take it to the next level.
- Episode 2 has Megumi and Hime holding hands and the introduction pose.
- Again in episode 5, Megumi holding Hime hands and thanking her for have become a Pretty Cure.
- In Episode 7, Megumi and Hime cut a cake together to celebrate their 100th day as friends, which looks suspiciously like the Saiark wedding cake. It's even Lampshaded by Seiji.Seiji: Is this a wedding?
- Episode 21 downright gives us Megumi saying that she loves Hime, with Hime giving an expected reaction. In the middle of a fight, no less. Later, the three Cures are seen holding hands.
- Episode 26: Megumi apparently dreams of Hime's belly.
- Episode 28: Hime and Megumi hate thinking about Yuuko leaving the team and hug her tightly.
- Episode 31: Megumi goes into some kind of Cuddle Bug overdive, glomping and snuggling first Hime and then Iona.
- In Episode 6, we see Yuuko holding Hime's hand and teaching her how to peel potatoes.
- In Episode 8 Elenyan hugs Hime after her splitting the cracker from her and friends, and later Hime hug Megumi from the paid entry from fortune teller.
- Episode 20: Yuuko takes Hime's hand with both of her own hands and says that she loves Hime. Hime blushes, the camera has a shot of Yuuko squeezing Hime's hand, and the music makes it sound like a romantic confession.
- Episode 39: That massage scene between Iona and Maria, who makes some, um, interesting noises during it...
- Again in 39. Hime hates thinking about Iona leaving to team, and closes in on the latter's face, but Iona confirms that she doesn't want to leave the team, and Hime rests on her shoulder.
- Episode 43: The Queen Mirage Version of Innocent Purification. That's all.
- Episode 45: Megumi hugs Iona for her Christmas present.
- Hime says she is sad that she doesn't have a boy to hang out with, so she decides to share her love with Yuuko and Iona.
- Episode 49: Iona becomes worried about Hime going back to the Blue Sky Kingdom, but Hime says that she will stay in Pikarigaoka, and then she says that she loves Iona.
This series seems to have lots of implications here...
- In episode 1, Yui gives Haruka a simple tour around the school. When they reach the Party Hall, Haruka imagines herself to be romantically dancing with a Princely Young Man only for her to realize "he" was actually Yui. Yui's awkwardly hilarious expression just seals the deal.
- Episode #5: Haruka gives Kirara a hug to celebrate her passing the audition. Haruka and Minami then call each other by their first names for the first time, resulting in a Luminescent Blush from both ends, and the episode ends with all three girls holding hands.
- Episode #9: Haruka comforts Minami when the latter is too scared to fight as a result of her fear of ghosts by holding her hand; the two then proceed to fight the Zetsuborg with their hands still connected. However, the crowning moment has to be at the end of the episode where Minami asks Haruka to dance with her… which they do. In front of the entire school. Even before that, Minami declines a young man's request, stating: "I've already decided who I want to have my first dance with", before she takes Haruka's hand. Their dance is also framed in such way that it wouldn't be out of place in a lesbian romance story. And then there's Haruka's declaration of being Minami's "knight".
- Episode 13: Twilight gets very close to Haruka when teaching her how to play the violin, embracing her from behind and guiding Haruka's hands with her own.
- Episode 23: Whenever Haruka takes Towa's hands throughout the episode. And then when she hugs her when she is losing ground to Lock.
- Episode 24: Kirara initiates Friendly Tickle Torture on Towa to make her smile. This is followed by Towa and Kirara smiling and gazing into each others eyes for a long moment, which only ends when Aroma interrupts them to warn them of the Zetsuborg attack. The two of them are also roommates as of this episode.
- Episode 32: The episode plays like something out of a traditional yuri genre with Minami's so-called fiancee trying to keep Haruka away from her and Minami defending her friend in retaliation. Her fiancee even envisions Haruka as a devil trying to take away his angelic Minami! In the end, the only thing he really did was to further strengthen the relationship Minami and Haruka had with one another.
- Episode 43: Haruka accidentally trips and falls on top of Yui. What happened afterwards wasn't shown, but the implications were enough to make the shippers go wild.
- No surprises here, considering it's Pretty Cure, but seeing as this series takes after the first two seasons and the first half of Suite, Mirai and Riko have their moments.
- The show focuses on the growing relationship between the two main Cures mentioned above, meaning there's probably going to be just as many moments as their predecessors, and it doesn't stop at holding hands when transforming or performing special attacks.
- Riko acts like something of a Tsundere towards Mirai, so make of that what you will.
- Almost enforced in Episode 4, where an emerald light shines whenever Mirai and Riko hold hands.
- Mirai and Riko are raising a baby fairy, Haa-chan together as of episode 5. Later episodes would lampshade this. Even when said baby fairy grows up, it still feels like Mirai and Riko are the parents of an excitable teenage girl. Riko even got a case of empty nest syndrome when said fairy start to outperform her in magic.
- The last scene of Episode 9, in which Riko catches up with Mirai on the train bound towards the No-Magic World. Said scene was even comparable to Justice Gundam trying to catch the launching shuttle while Freedom Gundam tries to catch it, piloted by one of the biggest Ho Yay pairing in anime history. Make that what you like.
- Episode 21 has an entire montage of Mirai and Riko holding hands.
- Episode 45 seems to dedicate it to Kouchou and Kushe. Complete with sappy montages dedicated to their friendship thorough the years. Kouchou's reaction after Kushe went rogue is like a couple who broke up (with wine on his table and all). In Episode 49 Kouchou and Kushe's ghost even hold hands!
- Now in the post-mortem, among the fandom this show is constantly depicted, half-jokingly, as the story of a yuri couple raising a child.
- Taken up to eleven with the mouth-to-mouth feeding (read:The Big Damn Kiss, what doesn't help is that the emphasis on said scene and all the images of the two's previous memories during this part making it feel more like The Big Damn Kiss rather than the former) in the manga.
- Additionally, Katsuki Kana and Nagase Mayumi have this implied by the fact they're Those Two Girls near-constantly after Mayumi is rejected by a boy, right down to being seen together during the last episode, and both appearing in one of the crossover movies.
KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode
- Ichika has a crush on Akira, not knowing that she is a girl until Ichika's father mentions it. She's shown to still like Akira a lot anyway.
- Not to mention the sheer relationship between Yukari and Akira, which essentially crosses past subtext into just plain text.
- Episode 10 is devoted to set up Yukari/Akira as a couple. It even has an old lady telling Yukari that her "boyfriend" is handsome.
- Episode 16 continues the Yukari/Akira teasing by having Yukari as the focus of the episode. When Yukari's grandmother invites her friends over to watch Yukari make tea, Yukari has Akira wear a hakata (an outfit reserved for boys) because Yukari thought it suited Akira's personality more. Then when Yukari is going through an angsty moment later on in the episode, it's Akira who approaches her and tries to get her to talk about it.
- Episode 18 has this image
when Akira is telling some of the bad rumors being spread around the place about what would happen should customers eat a KIRAKIRA pastry. Toei isn't even trying to be subtle about those two. - The absolute biggest one, so far, is from the first vocal album for the show. One of the songs is a duet by Akira and Yukari titled Macaronage of Love and Excitement which is about Akira trying to get Yukari to open up as well as them singing to each other the reason why each of them protects the other, with Akira's reason being that she loves Yukari ("kimi ga daisuki dakara uketomeru yo"/"I love you, therefore I'll accept everything" being Akira's exact words). A rough English translation of the lyrics can be found here.
- The vocal album has now been dethroned by Episode 25, which features perhaps the least subtle yuri subtext in Precure history with a foreign prince thinking that Akira is Yukari's boyfriend, leading to the two of them holding challenges to compete for Yukari's affection. This culminates in the climax of the episode where Yukari opens up and reveals her insecurities to Akira and Akira outright saying that she loves Yukari when she's getting beat up by a villain. The rest of the girls don't even try to break it to the foreign prince that Akira is actually a girl. Even the Monster of the Week joins in the fun by being a pot of lily - yuri in Japanese - blatantly telling the viewer just what kind of content this episode is all about. Even more so, when Crunchyroll brought Kira Kira internationally, Yukari explicitly says “I love her!” in the subtitles!
- An interview before Episode 25 aired has the producer of the series wondering if the development between Akira and Yukari is "OK for Precure". The interview then also says that the relationship between Akira and Yukari "will evolve" after Episode 25.
- Episode 29 has Yukari literally leaping into Akira's arms, which is quickly followed by the two ballroom dancing in midair.
- To round off the Akira/Yukari shipping, Futago Kamikita posted a picture of a June Bride meeting her groom in 2018. Two guesses who the happy couple was.
- In chapter 10 of the official manga, where Ichika suggests making a sweet that helps people "fall in love", Himari suggests using the PEA (phenylethylamine) in chocolate. She ends up falling in it, which causes her to fall in love with Aoi. Episode 35 also explores their relationship.
- Episode 12 when Julio is playing soccer with his male classmates and outsmarts them. One almost falls over and he keeps him from falling, in a very suggestive manner.
- Perhaps unintentionally, when Julio confronts a guy outside of the sweets shop, he has him against the wall, which can be interpreted as something… different.
- Episode 29 features a scene of Himari fawning over Yukari.
- Episode 26 revolves around Ciel trying to help Bibury and extend friendship to her, including catching her when she falls off a cliff. After Bibury's redemption, they run Ciel's cafe together.
- Episode 31, in which Bibury is first purified, features a lot of moments between her and Ciel.
- Ichika's general devotion to Ciel comes off like this definitely as she immediately wants to be by her side the second they meet.
- In Episode 20, when Cure Whip catches Ciel from falling, Ciel blushes and immediately fangirls.
- Emiru and Ruru seem to get along with each other. Even saying that they love each other very much. Plus, their transformation sequence says it all. One episode shows that when Ruru tells Emiru she loves her, Emiru says that it makes her blush.
- Then there is Henri Wakamiya and Masato Aisaki with some even wondering if Henri is Masato's Closet Key:
- In Episode 33 where Henri makes a flying kiss to the audience, leaving the female audiences with hearts in their eyes, but in Masato's case, his left chest has a glowing heart.
- In Episode 42, Henri ends up with a broken leg due to a car accident with Masato and Homare arriving the see if he's okay. Upon seeing Henri's state, Masato wishes that he was the one who broke his leg instead of Henri and when Henri's transformation into Cure Infini wears off, Masato immediately catches him with Henri patting him on the back to show that he's okay.
- In the final battle, where everyone becomes a Cure, Masato lifts Henri and carries him like a princess.
- In the epilogue, we have the now choreographer Henri making another flying kiss with Masato catching it.
- Lala and Hikaru are set up for this from the moment they first understand each other in episode 1, all the while holding each other's hands. The movie is essentially an extended Hikaru/Lala story where they raise an alien "child" together, and Episode 40 has Hikaru hugging and comforting Lala when her classmates learn she's an alien and she believes she'll never fit in with humans. In Episode 12, they're made to play the fisherman and the goddess in an adaptation of Hagoromo, which causes Hikaru to give Lala a heartfelt speech begging her not to leave and stay by her side. When this comes to pass in episode 48, Lala's last words before she leaves are a strained, tearful "thank you, Hikaru". Episode 49 takes this further, as it's revealed Hikaru spends over a decade trying to reunite with her.
- In Episode 7, Elena and Madoka are seen clasping each others hand's while floating inside the rocket — furthermore, they're blushing. Episode 18 depicts this as well; Hikaru's mother portrays Elena and Madoka as a male doctor and female nurse who fall in love in her manga. Episode 28 reveals they respect each other a lot and think the other is more impressive than themselves, and as the later episodes go on, they begin spending more time alone with each other and sharing intimate conversation.
- This series pretty much starts with Manatsu and Laura being strongly implied to start crushing on each-other right in the first episode, and the way the two continue to interact basically leaves no way to interpret it as anything other than actual romance. By halfway through the show, they're semi-regularly sharing a bed, and the ending (which breaks the Mermaid Kingdom's policy of isolation) does nothing to discourage the audience from assuming that they Hooked Up Afterwards.
- The Witch of Delays and Cure Oasis, due to how the Witch delayed destroying the world because she found her precious. Even Butler gets a bit sad that he didn't leave with her instead.
- Par for the course for the franchise, but people immediately went in this direction in episode 3 as Cure Precious carries Kokone in her arms. The following episode has Kokone give a passionate speech to Pampam that she wants to be able to eat bread with Yui again, because she makes her feel a warmth in her heart. And then she starts blushing in Episode 5 when Yui calls her by her first name.
- Later, Amane joins in on it, with her using Yui's own catchphrase on Gentlu, and catching Cure Precious.
- And even later, Amane and Kokone end up getting a whole episode which is full of moments that could be interpreted as such.
- Episode 43 shows Secretoru blushing and stumbling over her words once she realizes she's talking to Fuwa Hatsuko, the Genius Taster. In the following episode, when she appears to help the Cures, she's even wearing Hatsuko's coat over her Bundoru Gang uniform.
- Sora and Mashiro have several moments. For bonus points, the latter's Cure form is even has regular rainbow colors:
- Sora tells Mashiro she's the first friend she's ever had, and in Episode 5, Mashiro asks to keep holding Sora's hand for longer.
- The entire of Episode 6 is Sora coming to terms that she can't continue on with her life without Mashiro at her side, being unable to last more than a few hours without her companionship, and almost manages to confess the fact.
- Episode 13 has Sora and Mashiro initially denying (well, trying not to think about it) and finally coming to realize they will be separated when Sora takes Elle-chan home, ending with them crying and Holding Hands.
- Episode 24 sees Mashiro see the Cures as a family, with her and Sora as Ellee's parents.
- At the mid-point of the series, Mashiro is all but told that Elle was destined to be her daughter from birth, imagining the Cures as a family, with Sora as Elle's other parent, and Ageha and Tsubasa as her aunt and uncle.
- Episode 45 and 47 have the interactions between Ellelain and the Undergu Empress be incredibly close, with Ellelain unquestioningly trusting the Empress upon their first meeting, and until their final days together, the Empress repaid that trust in spades.
- In Pretty Cure All Stars F, Supreme is considered by some people to be a walking, talking pride flag, as well as being Non-Human Non-Binary, with several artists depicting Preme and Puka as being a couple, despite them being two halves of what was originally the same being.
