On the Kanji discussion, another important thing to note about Kanji is that it's not just his dungeon that clearly is coded to suggest that he's gay. It's not just Yosuke's homophobic attacks of Kanji on top of that. Those are both true, but there's even more to it than that.
Even on top of all that, there's Kanji's crush on Naoto. Kanji clearly, clearly, clearly thinks that Naoto is a man when the character first appears in the game, as does everyone else. And yet he still totally starts crushing on her anyway, 'causing Kanji to wonder even more if he's really gay or not.
Once it's revealed that Naoto is a woman in her dungeon, Kanji breathes a sigh of relief, and it's basically just treated as if he just somehow magically knew on some level that she was a woman, despite not giving any indication beforehand that that was the case, or that making any sense at all. Kanji clearly thought Naoto was a guy, and was crushing on her regardless, unlike any other character in the cast. No one,
no one does this other than Kanji, and Kanji himself was the same as everyone else in his thoughts about Naoto at the time (thinking Naoto was a guy) other than having a crush that no one else had.
That being the case, on top of the homophobic abuse Kanji suffers from Yosuke, on top of the stuff in the dungeon, that Kanji had that crush on Naoto and they only end-up making some stupid excuse after the fact makes it pretty damn clear that Kanji was in fact intended to be gay and they backed out at the last second.
Of course, to be clear, a lot of stuff like in Kanji's social link is indeed about toxic masculinity and how he's worried he himself would get bullied or made of if others learned that he was skilled in and liked doing stuff like sewing. But that can be true, they could have tackled stuff like toxic masculinity if they wanted to, and had Kanji be gay as well. Those are not exclusive concepts. They could have dealt with both: had Kanji be gay, and be a victim of both homophobia and toxic masculinity. Especially since like, y'know, especially in the kind of town Kanji seems to have been in, it's not like they wouldn't bully him for sewing and whatever just because he was gay. That would have happened and would be a valid fear regardless. And on top of that, a lot of vile homophobia and why people wind up being homophobic in the first place stems from toxic ideas of masculinity and what it means to be a real man and how a "real man would never let himself take it up the ass" and stuff like that. Toxic masuclinity and homophobia are often interlinked in those kind of ways, so they'd be a natural complement and there's absolutely no reason Persona 4 couldn't have tackled those issues with Kanji simultaneously, if they so desired.
I used to think that way myself, I used to think it had to be one or the other, that Kanji had to either be about either just toxic masculinity or whether he's gay or not, but I realized that's silly, and there's no reason they couldn't do both with him, especially with how he was written regardless.
And that's the thing. If you try to pick individual things apart, it's possible to come to the interpretation that Kanji was only ever supposed to be one or the other, that his story was supposed to be about toxic masculinity or whether he's gay or not, but not both. But when you combine not only all of the imagery in Kanji's dungeon and the Shadow Kanji boss fight, not only all the homophobic abuse Kanji receives from characters like Yosuke, but when you combine all that with Kanji's crush on Naoto, it's very clear that Kanji either is or was originally intended to be written as gay, and they just backed off from committing to that at the last second. Kanji's crush on Naoto on top of everything else is the final nail in the coffin for that one. Like, with Naoto, there's really no evidence outside of her palace that she ever truly wanted to be a man and wasn't just doing that because that's the only way she thought she could achieve her dream job. It's just Shadow Naoto to bring that up. With Kanji though, with his crush on Naoto, things are completely different, and there is distinct evidence combined with the dungeon to support it, so that's why I don't think that can be dismissed that easily these days and don't feel it's accurate to say that Kanji is just about toxic masculinity and nothing further because, as written, that doesn't seem to be the case, at least not to me at this point.
It absolutely doesn't excuse any of the jokes made at his expense, or the extent to which Yosuke gets off scot-free bullying him over it, I just think the insistence from some people after all this time that Kanji is truly gay because of his shadow and his personal interests is a bit of a reach and diminishes how interesting of a character he is instead as a straight guy struggling to understand what "being a man" means, not to mention carries problematic implications on things like arts + crafts being naturally "gay" for a guy to enjoy.
I think you're kind of missing the point there, since it's not just about the jokes being bad (and they most certainly are) or Yosuke getting off scott-free for them (which is also bad). What they're getting at, is both prior to and after Kanji's dungeon, a huge thing with his thing is "is he gay? Is he not?" and when it turns out he's not, especially after Naoto turns out to be a woman after all, it's basically treated as a huge relief moment, and that's not cool and is hugely problematic itself. That Kanji himself is ecstatic, and nobody, not a single person, not even the MC ever sticks up and says "y'know, it would have been just fine if you were gay and there would have been nothing wrong with that." With him turning out to not be gay, with the game being written the way it is, being gay is being treated as something to be feared and avoided, and so it's just a huge weight off Kanji's and everyone else's shoulders when he turns out not to be after Naoto's dungeon, and nothing in the game indicates otherwise.
With Kanji actually being gay, there would have been a perfect opportunity to clear all that up and actually go "no, it's fine that your gay, and there's nothing wrong with that, and we accept you for who you are" in accordance with the game's themes and messages elsewhere and avoid that whole mess. Instead, it's basically just left as "what a relief" with nothing indicated otherwise or further on that, which is a just really really bad place to leave it.
