I have zero tolerance for bait apologism... It's always worthwhile to think about why a story is written the way it is, especially when there's money involved.

—A comment on /r/shoujoai/

This post contains spoilers for the following anime series: Senki Zesshou Symphogear, The Aquatope on White Sand, Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury.

If you're a fan of yuri anime/manga, and probably LGBT media in general, it's hard to avoid discourse about queerbait—the all-too-common phenomenon of stories hinting that two characters of the same gender are romantically attracted to each other, but failing to ever confirm it beyond a doubt.

The quintessential example of queerbait in anime is the TV series Hibike! Euphonium, where the two female leads have a intense, passionate relationship throughout two seasons only for one of them to abruptly tell the other that she's in love with a man. While this example involves the queer relationship being replaced by a het one (something that was depressingly common up until the 21st century), in contemporary parlance, stories don't have to feature heterosexuality to be accused of being queerbait—they only need to contain an inadequate degree of homosexuality.

Whether a story is queerbait is wholly subjective, but at least when it comes to yuri, there are a lot of people with very high standards out there; perhaps best described as "if the ladies don't get to at least first base, they're out."

I didn't think we could surpass Destiel becoming canon via Castiel getting sent to Superhell, but here we are with Bandai claiming two women who spent the entire show engaged and had wedding rings in the final episode have a relationship that's "up to interpretation."