Okay, so I’ve reached a decision about which new series I’d like to blog, and it was a difficult one. In the end…I chose two, which is probably going to be a terrible decision on my part that I will definitely regret but hey, it makes up for me not blogging anything last season. You can see what the other series I picked is later! I didn’t actually plan on blogging Love Stage but the show is honestly so much fun.
Where we left off last episode, Ryouma had just kissed Izumi as per what he thought was part of the commercial script – still blissfully unaware that the girl in the wedding dress is actually a boy. Izumi freaks out, because this was not in the script (although it was apparently in the original script, which only Ryouma received for some reason or other) and runs away, aghast that his first kiss was taken by a man and not someone like his precious waifu Lala-Lulu.
With Izumi now highly reluctant to get back to filming, it’s once again up to his older brother Shougo to calm him with bribe him with a Lala-Lulu dakimakura. The shoot ends successfully, and Ryouma works up his courage to finally tell his love of ten years how he feels…! Except then he finds out that Izumi had been a boy all along, and Ryouma’s true, less pleasant colours are revealed.
Well, this show is still charming to me. This episode opened with a 2 minute and twenty second sequence involving some kind of Lala-Lulu AU taking place entirely within Izumi’s imagination, and it was probably the greatest start to a second episode of all the second episodes I’ve watched this season. My memory of the original manga is kind of vague, so I‘m pretty sure this was all anime-only, but I could be wrong. But if so, it really shows how effort JC Staff are putting in to make it genuinely fun. Once again, I’m completely struck by how good it all looks. What I like is that JC Staff seem to be treating it as they would any other romcom, it just ‘happens’ to involve a same-sex couple. Something about the general feel of it is just so refreshingly different to other BL anime…but then again, this could have more to do with the fact that the source material isn’t completely terrible for once.
There is of course some red flags – Ryouma’s douchebag side is finally revealed, which, according to Shougo, is actually his usual self, with his perfect charming prince act being something only for pretty ladies. His resulting rant at being ‘tricked’ by the cross-dressing Izumi is mildly offensive, but I do like that Ryouma here is portrayed as being incredibly childish for thinking so. Also, he’s majorly covering up; it’s plainly obvious that he can’t deny his crush on Izumi, gender be damned.
The main thing that’s irking me at the moment though is how drawn out things seem. I’m pretty sure everything that was in these first two episodes made up only the first chapter of the manga, and it seemed like they took too long with the whole commercial shoot. It was even padded out as much as necessary with the constant flashbacks to the shoot ten years ago. The problem is, had they squeezed it all into a single episode it would probably have felt too rushed. I do hope this isn’t an indication of the overall pacing of the show – because according to MAL, it’s only going to have 10 episodes and an OVA. The manga is ongoing, and is JC Staff play their cards right they might even succeed enough in getting a second season. But I’m still wondering exactly how much of the story is going to be animated.
Also, a random tidbit I learned after watching the first episode – Shougo, Izumi’s older brother, is apparently based on the mangaka’s brother in real life…who is voicing Shougo himself. I have heard a few complaints about the quality of his voice acting – including some people outright saying that he ‘can’t act’, and I honestly don’t hear a problem. Actually, the more I hear his voice the more I like it, and I wonder if those who are criticising it just wanted him to sound ‘more anime’ and don’t know how japanese people actually sound or something. I think he has one of the most suitable voices in the show.
I’ve chosen to blog this partly because it’s a fun series to watch so far but also because I’ve never blogged an outright BL series. I’m pretty sure there will be some of my usual least favourite tropes about the genre in future episodes, which I plan to criticize (if this anime adaptation isn’t planning on smoothing them over), but for better or worse I’d really like to blog the whole thing. (Also Izumi is adorable. Really adorable.)
Out of 5,
Moeronpan 