Why can’t I contain my excitement every time I see Love Stage is up? It’s like, my heart can’t contain all the feels I have for this anime. Well as we all may remember, episode 1 ended with the kiss at the end of the commercial and Ryouma blissfully unaware of the penis hanging between Izumi’s legs. Contrived Yaoi drama pending for me to eat up like the crazed fangirl I am! Let’s move into episode 2.
We start the episode with a dream of Izumi’s that he’s in class with his favorite anime character. Who is perfect at everything, math, cake making and such and she’s a magical girl…who was she think she is, Homura? The dream gets pretty intense when after school he’s talking to her and suddenly they’re attacked! She must reveal herself as a magical girl. As she goes to save him, there is an impending kiss!
And then reality hits like a truck, and we remember he’s being kissed by a guy.
Thus the natural reaction, he tosses the other guy away and vacates the room as fast as he can. His parents start saying things like it was “Izumi’s first kiss” you know, because gender pronouns are for losers. So Ryouma brushes off why ‘she’ was so startled as that being ‘her’ first. Well since it’s supposed to be a secret, I guess I can understand the lack of gender pronouns.
So his brother shows up, much to Rei’s dismay, skipping work all the way from London. I hope they animate some of the side chapters about this couple as well, I mean, look at um! NOW KISS! -presses them together-
OMG, LOOK AT THIS BLUSH AFTER SHOUGO SAYS, “If i succeed you should reward me later.” my tiny fangirl heart can’t take this!!! It’s so cute! Maybe in this episode we’ll get some of it? Am I hoping for too much? 
So, after a few minutes of exposition with Rei and Izumi’s father, we cut back to the room with Shougo and Izumi. Shougo seems totally fine with the idea of his younger brother being kissed by a guy…maybe because it was just for a commercial and he did most of his schooling in countries where small pecks were like greetings.
He bribes his brother back into the shooting with a Lala-Lulu body pillow. Wow, anime will get this kid to do anything….Okay, so it is super limited edition that only like a few people ever got and I can’t blame him at all. If there was a special 1 in 1’000 limited edition Death Note item i might do anything for it.
Ryouma being super considerate of the shy, innocent girl he thinks Izumi is has them take out the kissing scene. The rest of the shoot goes on without a hitch.
Ryouma and Izumi talk and Ryouma’s crush is so totally oblivious. He’s still blissfully unaware of the penis. They get attacked by fans and it’s a total mess. Izumi goes to escape and gets lost. He drops Ryouma’s marble and finds his dressing room.
Oh! Ryouma finds him, though he looks like he’s been messed up by the fan girls. Izumi goes to give the marble back but Ryouma gives it to him. It’s what reminded him of Izumi all these years due to the marble looking like Izumi’s eyes.
AND HERE’S THE LOVE CONFESSION! Ryouma is overheard by Shougo who lets the cat out of the bag about Izumi being a boy…he REALLY, REALLY, let’s the cat….you know the picture speaks for itself.
So yeah, Ryouma runs off in a huff all mad that Izumi is a guy and that he’s related to Shougo who Ryouma already hated. The important part here is that Izumi got his Lala-Lulu pillow!
We all know this isn’t this simple and something will happen to bring them back together, otherwise we wouldn’t have much of a series. That’s gonna have to wait for episode 3 though, I CAN’T WAIT! SERIOUSLY MY HEART POUNDS EVERY TIME. OH GOD, NEXT EPISODE IS THE ONE WHERE RYOUMA PINS HIM DOWN! -dies a happy fangirl-
“Well since it’s supposed to be a secret, I guess I can understand the lack of gender pronouns.” Japanese actually has very few, if any, gendered pronouns, so it’s not about it being a secret!
No. Absolutely wrong. Two years of Japanese classes and a double major in progress to tell you the Japanese have MANY pronouns for ‘I’. Atashi is a womanly way, Ore is a boyish self centered, Boku is boyish, Watashi is a formal neutral- there are many. Just..no xD