>>3914373>it's a canon route but the writers/producers weren't very serious about it and just wanted to see if that would attract womenIt is THE canon route. Just because the producers originally thought "Our fanbase is mostly girls, we should have yaoi boys in our game" doesn't mean the writers didn't care about what they were writing. Tadashi Satomi said it was his favorite pairing and didn't canonize (again) to try and avoid irritating fans + later games were presumably up in the air before he got booted from the company.
But it's obvious from the actual fucking game that it's the canon relationship. Tatsuya sees Maya as a big sister and Lisa's love is blatantly unrequited.
>because they were not so genuine about itPersona 1 and 2 were extremely genuine games. Far more than the later games ESPECIALLY because they admitted to when they were pandering to their audience while 3+ land under plausible deniability (even though they're far more pandering and less sincere stories about their characters since they're friendsims and not just JRPGs about groups of friends.)
>>3914371>Note it's a really minor part of the gameIt's not. Jun's love is an extremely important element of Innocent Sin because it informs his decisions as JOKER and his absence negatively affects Tatsuya, Eikichi, and Lisa.
In fact, one might argue that the most important part of Maya's sacrifice in Eternal Punishment was that she was driving a wedge between the two lovebirds (in her words, "doppelgangers"- see: the intro of Innocent Sin) because of how much they idealized her.
They are incredibly and canonically very much in love. Just because it isn't blatant and they never fucking kiss or something doesn't undermine that. To say that it's a "minor" element of both games is ignorant and to imply it's some kind of queerbaiting is completely retarded.
Persona 2's creators cared about their game. They card about their characters. And they cared about TatsuyaJun.