Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Since I started the Let’s Watch column late last year, I’ve noticed that over the course of a full twelve weeks talking about a specific show, I do tend to repeat myself. This is probably normal–if a little annoying, as a writer–since there’s only so many ways one can make the same broad statements about an anime’s central characteristics.
For example, how many times have you heard me say that My Dress-Up Darling shines when it’s focusing on cosplaying, its primary subject matter and its chief distinction from other romcoms? If not in those exact words, I’ve expressed the same sentiment about a half-dozen times over the course of these columns. Maybe I’m being repetitive, but on the other hand, it’s true. So, when “We’ve All Got Struggles” opens with the Flower Princess Blaze cosplay shoot we’ve been building up to over the past several weeks, it has a pure warmth to it that matches MDUD’s prior best moments. The series deftly calls back to several prior insights we’ve gotten into Juju and Shinju’s characters, and the episode’s title is a quote from a sympathetic Gojo. It’s great stuff, and not just because Marin looks absolutely amazing as Black Lobelia.
Or because the style-cut gags make a welcome return here.
It’s nice because the whole cast clicks together in a way that just works and is good, simple fun to watch. And all of that happens in the episode’s opening six or so minutes, before the OP even rolls.
Most of the rest of the episode is about Marin’s next cosplay. And also, her being a bit jealous after she finds out that Gojo and Shinju spent time alone together. Because this is Dress-Up Darling, this creeping jealously is cut with scenes of Marin rewatching FBZ. Specifically, the scene where Shion’s soul gem becomes corrupted. Funny visual gag or foreshadowing of something darker in the show’s future? Who can say? (Probably just the former, though, if I had to guess.)
This time, she wants to cosplay a girl from an unnamed game, Veronica. There is a pretty substantial difference between Marin and Veronica. See if you can spot it.
To say that cross-skin color cosplay has historically been somewhat of a contentious subject would be greatly understating it, especially when skin tone-altering cosmetics are involved, as they are here. It’s also not a subject I feel terribly qualified to comment on, for a number of reasons (my own whiteness, my being American and not Japanese, and the fact that I don’t personally know many cosplayers being the first, distant second, and ever more distant third, respectively). But it is at least worth noting that the completely blasé tone the show takes toward this feels a little weird, even as an outsider by all metrics. If someone were outright angry, I would understand completely.
Thankfully, this particular plot point is shuttled past pretty quickly. Gojo is unable to overcome his own awkwardness and can’t really bring himself to help with the Veronica cosplay beyond making the basic outfit itself. (Which, given how little Veronica wears, a whole other subject of conversation in of itself, is not much.) The cosplay ends up shelved, at least for the time being.
Sorry, Ver. You’re simply too edgy for this world.
That doesn’t mean we don’t get anything good out of the effort, though. One of the things Gojo makes for Marin before eventually bailing on this particular cosplay is a set of fake pointed teeth. Marin goes nuts for them, of course.
And on that day, something awoke inside Gojo.
The final bit of the episode is spent with Marin taking Gojo out clothes shopping. This is another case of the two of them being uncomplicatedly sweet together, even if that sweetness mostly expresses itself this time around by Marin not realizing that Gojo looks like an absolute turbonerd in any outfit she puts him in.
This all concludes with the scene I mentioned earlier, where Gojo confesses that he can’t bring himself to help any further with Marin’s Veronica cosplay, and awkwardly explains why. Despite the brief hint of genuine tension, once Marin learns his reasons, she immediately dials back into ruthlessly teasing him. You know, like couples do.
In an unusually shrewd move for Marin, she even sees the opportunity to double down, by saying she’ll keep the outfit as housewear, and then doing this to whisper something about sending him pictures in Gojo’s ear.
She almost immediately retracts the “offer” of course, though I doubt Gojo’s heart got the memo right away.
I could see someone finding all this silly or maybe even just dumb, but I think another strength of My Dress-Up Darling‘s is when it works in this fairly traditional light-romcom mold. We don’t get the coveted confession scene yet, and hey, maybe we won’t get that this season at all (a second season seems like a given for something this popular), but progress is being made, inch by inch. I imagine anyone who watches this show for the lead couple will walk away from this week’s episode happy.
Anyway! The next episode is called “I Am Currently at a Love Hotel.” See you next week when we learn whatever the hell that’s about, Dress-Up Darling fans!
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