AH IT’S HERE, IT’S HERE! EPISODE ONE OF LOVE STAGE IS HERE! Oh God, I can’t breathe, is this normal? Should I BE this excited? I may of mentioned this in the first glance post but I’ve been following the manga for this show for some time. So when I heard it was getting an anime, well you can assume how I looked.
Let’s give you a general idea of what Love Stage!! is all about. It’s the story of Izumi Sena, who is the son of two famous actors and younger brother to a rock sensation. The problem is…he’s a total introvert Otaku with no interest in entering the family business of stardom.He just wants to create manga, unfortunately for him…he has no talent.
When he was young, he was attending a commercial shoot his parents were working at when the little girl who was supposed to appear in the shoot got delayed because her plane couldn’t show up. So, since he was so young he could be passed off as a young girl, they draft him in to play the part. Skip to 10 years later, they want to film a sequel commercial to that one, but the person who played the little boy in the commercial, now a huge star, will ONLY act in it if they can get the same actress who played the little girl. I assume that’s pretty much all episode one of the anime is going to cover, let’s see how well the anime pulls this off!
WELP, the animation is totally gorgeous! J.C. Staff really seemed to bring it out for this one. The opening song is really upbeat and picks up a lot of the key points of the series in just the opening itself. Such as the wedding commercial, the good luck marble, and the other characters. There were some wonderful boy love moments that made me burst out into fits of fan girling.
So we get introduced to Sena and his school life and then when he comes home, they spring it on him, the 10 year later wedding! Good thing he grew up as girly as he did. Their family manager and his brothers boyfriend Rei, blatantly tells him he has no drawing talent what so ever.
Anyway, the obvious solution to this problem? Call Izumi’s doting, loving and totally obsessed older brother. So his brother, bribes him with an alarm clock with specialized recordings from the voice actress of his favorite anime character. So, he figures, dressing up as a girl for the commercial is kind of like cosplay….
Ryouma, the famous actor that was in the commercial with him to begin with is totally looking forward to the commercial because he’s has a crush on the girl from it for all these years. Yes, totally unaware that it’s a guy. You can guess where this is going. They start filming the commercial and Izumi is a ball of nerves. Ryoma gives him the good luck charm that worked to calm his nerves when they were kids.
Enter the ending credits, as we begin filming and Rei catches sight of something both him and Izumi missed in the script….
THE KISS! totally Izumi’s first, since he’s a shut in Otaku type.
Overall: OMG THIS WAS SO GOOD, IT WAS SO MUCH LIKE READING THE MANGA. It looked so pretty, all the voice acting was amazing. Am I going to be watching more of this? YES, so far this anime is perfect and exactly what i’d expect. Since the manga remains unfinished I’m pretty interested in the direction they are going to go with it, if they are going to leave on a season 2 cliffhanger or make up some kind of filler ending.
Possibility of watching: OMG YES
Possibility of blogging: YUP, DOIN’ IT!
The manga completely lost me after Ryouma got all apeshit on Izumi and started insulting him and all that, but I gotta say that this first episode was reaaaally impressive. It was funny, charming and romantic in all the right ways! Looked fantastic as well and sported great direction all around. Guess that’s to be expected from such a great director though (he did Honey and Clover’s first season!)