Love Stage!! - User Reviews

loved the idea and the concept; unfortunately the execution is not my cup of tea, but I definitely think this could be popular. What kept me from enjoying this movie fully were two things. One is the casting. I have not read the original manga and even if I had, I'm usually not a character purist; I don't need the actors to look like the character 100% to be happy. However, here one of the main actors is visibly like 10 years older than his co-star, which I'm not liking for this story. The point is that both characters were in an ad together as child actors and ryoma started crushing on izumi back then. That becomes very weird when in the present day scenes, ryoma's actor looks ten years older than the guy he was crushing on. I *know* in the flashbacks they're the same age, but it just takes me out of the present day storyline when he says "I've loved you for ten years" and my brain automatically starts calculating like,,, "so when you were 20 and he was 10??" It also didn't help that the character ryoma was a little more mature in work while being extremely immature romantically/sexually because now it just looked like an unbalanced age gap relationship in which the older weirdo keeps sexually harassing a young, barely college aged guy. Which brings me to my second point: the humour was just not humouring for me. This is very subjective and I hope my rating doesn't turn anyone off from giving this movie a chance if they're interested in the story. it just wasn't for me. there was a three minute scene in which ryoma kept pecking izumi on the cheek and lips while he was sleeping (that's sexual assault btw!!) and he looked like he came into his pants for the entirety of it. interesting choice on the directors part,,, not one I particularly agreed with, but the choice was made... whatever they paid Hiroki Nakada,, it wasn't enough bro. In conclusion,,, idk bff