Love Stage (2022)

Silly, but Cute

Overall Impression: A cute and fun story. If you're not looking for something serious or deep and you're a fan of BL romcom, you'll probably enjoy this show. Don't take it too seriously or you might not enjoy it.

Pros:
- Funny/cute characters and story, a feel-good type of show
- Music is really catchy
- Actors have good chemistry together
- Follows pretty closely to original story, but some changes are made to fix some controversial material from the original and apply to a live action format (more serious than original)
- Scenery/sets are really beautiful
- Anda's character is still cute and somewhat innocent, but not nearly as childish and naive as the original
- The side characters are loveable
- Cute fanservice
- Anda's friends are so awesome!
- Uplifting ending

Cons:
- messy international release and subtitles (now available on AISPLAY official YouTube)
- Character and relationship development feels somewhat lacking with the leads
- Ryo's character is a bit unlikable at the beginning
- There is quite a bit of "filler"
- I wonder what happened to the side plot sometimes?
- Sometimes story seems inconsistent or repetitive
- Sometimes takes itself too seriously for a comedy

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A comedy that lost its way

Overall: I've seen the anime and also the Japanese live action series, so I have a couple things to compare it with. I have not read the manga it's based off of. AIS Play has released the episodes on their YouTube channel.

Content Warnings: non con touching (ripped off his shirt), non con repeated kissing (sleeping), homophobia, blood with an injury, body policing (don't eat that or you'll get fat), manipulation

What I Liked
- there were some crack comedy moments, especially in the beginning episodes
- the kissing/steamy scene was done pretty well (but I didn't like the overlap)
- at first I liked that Anda's brother was taking care/looking out for Anda, but then it just felt like he was infantilizing Anda and taking Anda's agency away
- I'd like to see the actors in other projects

Room For Improvement
- really wish they had removed the non con kissing, it was so uncomfortable to watch
- the relationship between Anda's brother and Jet was odd, I thought it was something and then suddenly it's something totally different? I wish they had a bunch more crack comedy moments between them.
- useless added love triangle
- gay for you trope
- cliche ending drama
- they should have kept Anda terrible at drawing and used that as a part of the comedy
- it has silly sound effects which aren't really my thing
- the cliche evil manager

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