I really love stories where the male characters have strong and precious bonds, whether platonic / familial / otherwise, to the point some stories may even be classified as BL. The key point is that they (or even one-sided) value the other person over anything and everything, including love interests.

I'm fine if there isn't BL, like if it's just a pure and strong friendship, but it's also fine if there is.I'm looking for the type of story where at least the beginning is a focus on their strong bond.

For example, Komatta Toki ni wa Hoshi ni Kike is pretty great.

Thanks for any and all suggestions!

For BL, there's another title by the same author as Komatta, it's called Kimi wa Boku wo Suki ni Naru. The entire thing is pretty much about male relationships and friendships. In addition to this, the author Morimoto Shuu does a lot of shounen ai type bromance. My personal favorite was Asterisk, but Jinjuu Houretsuden was very good as well. Both have supernatural/fantasy elements. Finally, there's also Silver Diamond, which was very good as well.

For non-BL, one of my personal favorites is Otomen. If you don't mind romance as well, this is one of my all time favorite series. The main character, Asuka, is a bit different than normal shoujo manga boys and his relationship with his friend, Juta, is definitely expanded on as much as his relationship with his love interest, Ryo. The manga Adekan is very very good as well, it's still ongoing, and there's so much fan service. It's not technically BL, so I classified it here. The last one I'm going to mention is my favorite manga/anime of all time, Natsume Yuujinchou. I could talk it up for hours but I'll just say that you certainly won't regret reading it.

All of these manga have pages on this website, so you can just search them for more details if you're interested. I hope this helps! Let me know if you want more suggestions.

I’ll recommend some of my favorites:
Golden Days
Sakamichi no Apollon
Banana Fish

And you would probably like these as well:
La Esperança
Isagi-Kojima

Noblesse hands down. The relationship between Raizel and Frankenstein is the best.

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Definitely: Blue Sky Complex.
Narasaki and Terashima have the kind of bond and dynamic you're looking for.

Honorable mentions:

Uragiri wa Boku no Namae o Shitteiru
Ilegenes

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Sunagawa from Ore Monogatari!! and Oota from Tanaka-kun wa Itsumo Kedaruge are two of the broest bros that ever broed.

Adekan
Toukaidou Hisame
Toukaidou Hisame - Kagerou
Shinkuu Yuusetsu
Sasaki to Miyano
Lookism
Kaizoku to Ningyo
Usotsuki Boyfriend

Last edited by princess_bubblegum at 5:48 am, Aug 18 2018

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"The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." <BR> - Albert Einstein

Banana Fish

The plot might not be your cup of tea but the friendship is crystal clear throughout.

Coda

If you're fine with one of them crossdressing. At first, they don't really get along, but, you know, it develops. No BL.

Nanohana Boys is a pretty good read. The bromance between the two main characters is great and 100% platonic, but can probably also be interpreted otherwise if you choose to do so. It's a drama, very similar to Koe no Katachi (normal person helping a PWD out), so expect lot of hurt/comfort moments

edit: fixed spelling mistakes

Last edited by caeli at 10:53 am, Aug 18 2018

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Definitely check out the titles under the bromance category. Almost all of them fit your requirements. Perhaps the BL subtext category as well, though less so than the former, since mistagging is more common there.

There are also several topics which are similar to yours, and they have a lot of good recs (to which I've also contributed). Such as this, this, this, this and this.