Yeah, I just chalked that up to translations issues maybe because her talking about she loves him came out of left field. And was completely out of character. Granted, I'm still only on Chapter 7 but unless she expounds on why she said it later in the game....it didn't really make much sense. Unless in Japanese it was specifically a platonic love....I don't know.
Fred.
There were hints towards it (quite a bit imo) but they were mostly within the heart to hearts. Anything within the regular story was pretty subtle. I think the issue with the localization was that they weren't 100% on what relied on what. There are some blade sidequests that pretty much lay it all out - I think the main story just depends on that way too much.