Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

---

Alright, let’s get this out of the way. Yeah, this episode of My Dress-Up Darling is called “I Am Currently at a Love Hotel.” That’s the title they chose–and the premise they chose–for the penultimate episode of this show’s first season (let’s be honest, there’s no way it’s not getting more), and we just all have to deal with that together.

But why is it called that? Well, true enough, Gojo and Marin end up at a love hotel after a Wacky Misunderstanding ™. The explanation is simple in concept but winding in practice; Marin wants to cosplay a new character (a succubus named Liz from a comically-long-titled 4koma series. The sub track abbreviates its name to the frankly hilarious SuccIDK, so I will be using that here, too.)

She ends up booking a “cheap studio” to take photos at. The studio ends up actually being a love hotel. Whoops.

There are some good shenanigans in the episode’s opening, pre-mixup, where Gojo has to have both what succubi are and their appeal explained to him. He doesn’t entirely get it (and to be fair, I’m not sure I could rationally explain demonic gap moe` to anyone either), but he gets pretty into making the costume. Given that SuccIDK is drawn in a chibi art style, he has to come up with most of the details himself. He does not get that leeway with the bottom of the costume, which is basically just a pair of panties with frilly lace. Yet another excuse for the show to put Marin in showy outfits or just true to actual anime character design tropes? We here at Magic Planet Anime ask; is there any reason to assume it’s not both?

The actual love hotel portion of the episode is…something else.

On the one hand, it’s genuinely pretty funny in spots. Marin seems to make the wildly improbable mistake of thinking an honest-to-god vibrator propped against the bed’s headboard is an “electric massager” before revealing that she’s just pulling Gojo’s leg. And she also brushes off Gojo’s objections to them being there at all in a way that is both pretty insensitive and fucking hilarious. (It’s in exchanges like this where Gojo and Marin feel most authentically “teenager-y” to me, maybe that’s just me.)

Gojo, being an awkward bundle of nerves in a vague humanoid shape, verges on panic attack throughout a good chunk of all this, but eventually the two get too caught up in the actual process of taking cosplay photos to mind the environment too much. (And Gojo’s desire to photograph almost literally everything Marin does while in-costume is genuinely sweet.)

This bit is very cute, and as I often do, I wish more of the episode were like it. Things seem like they’re going to get awkward again when Gojo has Marin sit on him to get a better photo angle (no, seriously. He does this, and seemingly without any ulterior motive. That second fact might be the least realistic thing in this show so far.) But they largely don’t! Not through any fault of Gojo and Marin’s own, at least. The two get some good shots in this position and Marin talks about how much fun she’s having. It’s nice.

Ah, but then Gojo and Marin hear a woman getting her back blown out in the next room over, and suddenly they are again very keenly aware of where they are, and the moment of fun ends. We are treated to an absolutely delightful (EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS IS SARCASM) shot of Gojo getting an erection and awkwardly trying to get Marin off of him, which of course just makes things worse.

The final main scene here is the two of them sitting in dead silence in the dark, with nothing but the sound of their breathing filling the audio track.

And like, I get it, right? This entire 22 minutes is a juxtaposition of the absurd, the funny, the awkward, and the intimate. This bit is supposed to be that last thing; the two of them forced together for a moment that lasts an agonizingly long time, until an external force (a phone call from the front desk telling them to pack it up, they’re out of time) pulls them apart.

That slurry of different emotions and absurd situations is not a bad portrait of what being a teenager is like, and to the show’s credit this all does scan as believable, in its own way. But it’s all just a little much, isn’t it? This is not the worst episode of Dress-Up Darling (not by a longshot), and it certainly isn’t the best. But it is among the skeeviest. I won’t pretend I can dictate how other people feel about that, but to me at least, the final few scenes end up cutting the legs off the otherwise pretty solid first two-thirds of the episode. Maybe I just need to get out more, I don’t know.

I will say, as a positive side note, that whatever team actually did this episode is very good at capturing strong emotion in facial expressions. Marin really does look like she’s about to jump out of her own skin at the, ah, Moment, she and Gojo just shared.

(I have a suspicion some of the Akebi’s Sailor Uniform guys might’ve been involved, since it’s the same studio and some of the exaggerated facial shots remind me of a more reined-in version of that series’ weird faces. But I don’t have the show’s production details in front of me and, frankly, I don’t feel like looking it up.)

It’s also possible–though certainly not a given–that this all scans less weirdly if you’re still in the target audience of actual teenagers. As somebody who’s 28, it’s a little difficult to look at this stuff with the same lassiez-faire attitude I had ten years ago. It’s not like, say, B Gata H Kei didn’t exist during my teenage years, and I won’t pretend I didn’t like that show at the time.

In any case, the finale airs next week, and as such, our long national wet dream is almost over. Until then.

Egregious horny score, which I forgot to do last week, whoops: Yeah, this is a straight 5/5. There’s less skin shown than some other episodes but…well, re-read the whole article if you need further explanation.

---

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.