I typed up a Tumblr post in which I laid out the theory and my evidence; I've copied over the portion where I'm just listing stuff off:
One other thing that occurs to me is the potential symbolism - at least in the Japanese version - of her claiming to be from Venus.
- She’s sort of coy with Shindo about the fact that she’s looking for her, though their being siblings could also account for her tone of voice here
- She’s immediately super warm and sweet to the space lady when she shows up on the boat
- She gets the opportunity to leave with the space lady and straight up ditches her coworker (he has to call after her, “Hey Naoko, I’m coming too!”)
- She doesn’t take space lady to like a cafe or just anywhere they could sit down for an interview, she takes her to a hotel (and it’s not like the prophetess would’ve suggested that), like dang Naoko slow your roll
- She constantly calls space lady “dear” and talks to her in a really sweet, obliging tone of voice
- The first thing she does when they get to the room is have a coworker bring a bunch of nice clothes for space lady?
- Her response to seeing space lady in that nice black dress is super enthusiastic and like? She’s been leading space lady around by the arms and shoulders the whole time but now she goes straight for the hand on the small of the back, standing next to her in the mirror and checking her out
- She’s holding space lady and gently reassuring her as they head up the hill after the final confrontation with Malness
- At the press conference at the end of the movie she’s closer to space lady than Shindo or any of her entourage, and barely takes her eyes off her the whole time
TL;DR: Naoko is definitely gay as fuck for the psychic space princess
This was pretty well-received among some other kaiju bloggers, austoundingbeyondbelief (ABB Gamma here) having picked up on it once before, and a great deal of discussion, shipping and shitposting ensued.
Seeing as TK on the whole tends to be more than a little bit more reactionary (to put it charitably, politically diverse), I didn't bother posting about it here since I figured the response would probably be muted if it wasn't outright negative, but I'm bored and procrastinating so fuck it, here it is.
What are your thoughts on it? Obviously I'm not suggesting that a Japanese movie from the 1960s intentionally included a canon gay subplot, but I feel like there's a lot of support for that interpretation and I enjoy it. What about you folks?