Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Hello, anime fans. I’ve had a bit of a week, as I’m sure you noticed if you’re one of my readers who happens to also follow me on Twitter. If not, no need to worry, as everything turned out just fine. But in recognition of my own good fortune, I endeavored to go into this week’s episode of My Dress-Up Darling as charitable as I could possibly muster. I do feel like I perhaps complained a little too much last week, even if I do stand by what I said.
So, maybe it’s just that spirit of charity that compels me to say that this is one of Dress-Up Darling‘s better episodes. But I think even if I’d had a more ‘normal’ week I think I’d be giving this one due praise. You see, I think I’ve basically got MDUD here figured out. There are episodes more about the geeky cosplay minutiae that distinguishes the show from any other ecchi comedy, and there are those that focus more on that very ecchi comedy. Bluntly, these are the good episodes and the mediocre to outright bad episodes, respectively. This week’s is mostly a good one, may it not be the last.
If I wanted to be rude, I could argue that I’m not even really reviewing or recapping an episode of Dress-Up Darling here. Even moreso than last week’s, a good chunk of this episode is dominated by footage of show-within-a-show Flower Princess Blaze. This is a double-edged sword of course; the very fact that we’re seeing so much of Flower Princess makes it pretty easy to call that it’d be a vastly more interesting series than Dress-Up Darling itself.
I’m just saying, it’s even got a lead magical girl whose theme color is pink. It’s hard to argue with that.
But of course, the series presents the framing device that lets us see any of that in the first place. The very short version is that Gojo commits to making outfits for both Marin and Juju of characters from the series. He decides that to properly get as many references as possible, he should actually watch the series, which a quick peek at an in-universe Wikipedia article(!) helpfully tells us a bit more about.
This is all narrative pretext to have Gojo head over to Marin’s apartment. The initial plan is for Gojo to borrow her box set of the show (of course she has a box set), but things quickly change once he actually gets there, and Marin ends up convincing him to watch much of the show at her place. Once again, we get some actual access to Marin’s perspective here, and it is a nice change of pace from the focus on Gojo’s point of view the anime has had until recently.
Marin, of course, is Dress-Up Darling‘s best character, and it’s genuinely a lot of fun to see her try to “subtly” win Gojo over by cooking for him and watching Flower Princess by his side.
You could conversely pretty easily frame this badly; it does not exactly require a degree in feminist literary analysis to point out that much of this episode consists of a male lead being handed cartoons and food on a silver platter, and it’s pretty inarguable that Marin and her pristinely kept but very nerdy bedroom are embodying a kind of otaku domesticity here. (I am sure many, many snarky people on Twitter have made “this will not improve the declining birthrate” memes about this episode.)
As Gojo discovers the merits of the entire magical warrior subgenre, of course.
Still, I have no conceptual problems with this kind of escapist fantasy, and if the show operated at about this level all the time, I’d probably like it a lot more. Flower Princess Blaze remains compelling, too. Although again, basically any time it was on-screen I couldn’t help but think that I’d rather be watching it.
This is another episode with a lot of cosplay talk. So, if you’re like me, and you find learning about the ins and outs of other peoples’ hobbies always at least mildly interesting, you’ll be satisfied here. There’s a fairly long digression in the episode’s second half about eye taping, a practice I’d not previously heard of, and which sounds vaguely unhinged to me. But hey, that’s subcultures for you.
The episode ends with Gojo and Marin meeting up with Juju and her younger sister, Shinju, who does her photography. (Hina Youmiya, whose career seems to just be getting started. She was in Selection Project last year.) Here, My Dress-Up Darling pivots from a genuinely funny joke–about the fact that Shinju is noticeably taller than her older sister–into a deeply tasteless one. And that is how what is otherwise one of My Dress-Up Darling‘s better episodes ends on a noxious crack about a middle schooler’s boobs being “hilariously” big, something that causes actual stress to no small number of young girls who are actually in middle school.
I could feign being angrier about this than I am, but at this point I have come to expect as much from Dress-Up Darling. It has its charms, and it definitely has its flaws. A general lack of taste is very much one of the latter. (And to give it more credit than it probably deserves, the original manga was written by a woman. Maybe this is meant to be Relatable rather than just meanspirited and gross, who knows.)
There are a few other things about the episode worth discussing. The translators continue to ride a fine line between clever and just slightly obnoxious. The use of the term “wuv” both in the episode title and in at least one line of dialogue might push it a bit over the edge, but I found Marin’s giggly, wordless “I have a crush” noises being subtitled as keysmashes legitimately hysterical. I suspect opinions will differ.
Yet more evidence for my “Marin is bi” theory.
And finally, after an absence that felt like a century, we can mark the return of the Bonus Nowa Screencap. She appears briefly toward the very end of this episode.
As for the Egregious Horny Score, which I feel an obligation to continue doing for some reason, I’ll slap this one with a solid 3/5. There isn’t actually much horny here, but what we do get feels more out of place than ever. The gag about Shinju’s chest being the most obnoxious example of the lot. Some of the posters in Marin’s room are contributing to that score as well.
And that’s about the size of it, anime fans. I hope you’re continuing to enjoy My Dress-Up Darling. If not, I hope you’re at least enjoying these columns. There won’t be a Frontline Report tomorrow, since I’ve been sick, but I’ll see you all again on Monday for Sabikui Bisco.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I honestly just never know what to make of My Dress-Up Darling. Last week’s episode was, to put it mildly, not a personal favorite. This week’s episode, “For Real?!”, isn’t either, but it starts off with one of the simplest and best story segments in the show so far.
For one thing, the first part of this episode is actually from Marin’s perspective, something we’ve largely been denied explicit access to up until now. We hear her internal monologue and see shots from her point of view. In one of those monologues, Marin reveals herself to have more emotional intelligence than the vast majority of anime romcom protagonists.
Indeed, this whole section is a pretty cute and emotionally striking piece of work. Marin rides the night train home alone, wondering if maybe she should’ve more seriously put the moves on Gojo while the two had some alone time. But it comes across as the sincere thoughts of a teenage girl, rather than something gratuitous or showy.
We get more of a sense than ever as to why Marin might like Gojo in the first place, and in the process, the season’s premiere malewife / cosplay gf couple become that much more believable.
Were that the whole episode, this would be a glowing review. Unfortunately, all of what I just described happens before the opening title and is not really what the episode focuses on.
The first thing of note that happens after the opening title is that Gojo accidentally walks in on a little girl taking a bath.
I’m not posting any of that actual scene, because ew, and because I don’t want to get my WordPress account suspended. So here she is having been caught in the rain. I like the composition of this shot.
Look, I will level with you. I feel like a fucking dweeb complaining about nudity in an anime. If I could show this article to my teenaged self, I’m sure she’d cringe out of her skin, but come the fuck on. We do not need a convoluted string of Anime Happenings to put a little girl in Gojo’s house off a case of mistaken identity on the part of his grandfather. We do not need the ancient-ass “accidentally walking in on someone bathing” trope. We certainly don’t need lovingly boarded, queasily fetishistic shots of her legs, the only barely-censored space between her legs, and prepubescent chest. God knows we don’t need the show’s shitty attempt at a joke by inserting a wildly inappropriate flashback to when Gojo and his grandfather talked about how “smooth” Hina dolls are. What does this add? Who is this for? Rejoinder: who is the fact that she turns out to actually be older than Gojo for? What am I watching here? Other than something that makes me feel like I’m going to be put on a list?
Dress-Up Darling continues to feel like two shows with wildly different tones and, frankly, levels of decency, that constantly interrupt each other. I’d say it brings down both sides of the series, but the anime’s ecchi half is so noxious to me at this point that I can’t properly gauge that. More to the point; I wish the ecchi anime would stop interrupting my romcom.
This character, for the record, is Sajuna “Juju” Inui. (Atsumi Tanezaki, who you may remember as the title role from last year’s Vivy – Flourite Eye’s Song.) Juju sorta sucks. She manipulates Gojo into making an outfit for her and is a judgmental little shit toward Marin when the latter shows up.
And what exactly is wrong with that, you snide little weirdo?
The real tragedy here is that the last third of the episode is pretty good! Juju wants to cosplay one of the leads, Shion, from in-universe magical girl anime Flower Princess Blaze, a broad homage to the last 30 years of the magical warrior subgenre. We see enough of the show-within-the-show that by the end of the scene I rather wished I was watching that instead. The scene is a full-on loving pastiche, it’s even letterboxed. It looks melodramatic, fun, and very, very extra as it briefly chronicles Shion’s totally-not-a-Madoka-soul gem becoming corrupted and her falling to the dark side. We get a full-on henshin sequence near the start of the scene! This stuff is great, and I really wish more of the episode were like this!
As always, Dress-Up Darling is the best version of itself when it’s about Geek Shit, so this part of the episode is pretty fun in general. Juju also mistakenly assumes that Marin and Gojo are dating, which floors Gojo and puts Marin in a tizzy.
The episode ends with Gojo promising to make Juju her outfit and with Marin chiming in that she’d like to cosplay one of the show’s villains, Neon. (Neon is also Shion’s older sister and apparently people in-universe ship them. Because Dress-Up Darling seriously cannot stop itself from being weird for more than five minutes at a time.)
I wish I could praise the episode with fewer caveats. I feel like a whiner whenever I complain about the fanservice in this series, but I feel entitled to mention it because it frankly really does ding my enjoyment of the show pretty hard. I certainly can’t recommend it to most of my friends who aren’t waist-deep in the anime rabbit hole, which is doubly a shame because romcoms are otherwise a pretty accessible genre. (I’ve had some success along these lines with Kaguya-sama: Love is War! That series isn’t perfect, but it has way fewer problems than this does.)
And not everything needs to be recommendable to necessarily be good. There are plenty of anime I like–from Kill la Kill to Bakemonogatari–that I would not casually recommend to someone without knowing beforehand their feelings on such things. The difference between those anime and Dress-Up Darling is that they are honest about what they are. Dress-Up Darling really feels like it’s trying to have it both ways, and it mostly just keeps tripping over its own feet. This wasn’t even always the case! The second episode was loaded with over-the-top cheesecake, but it fit within the context of what was going on, so it was easy for me to chalk it up to stupid but harmless fun that I was simply no longer in the target demographic for. Four episodes later, I am not sure I can do that anymore.
I will continue watching the anime, both because I am obligated to by it winning the community choice pick for this season and because I do believe there is no small amount of good in it, but I am not enthusiastic about it anymore because of how many things it gets wrong, and that sucks, because I really want to be. Maybe the show will improve in its second half as we move into an arc that’s again more focused on the actual cosplay side of things. But that increasingly feels like wishful thinking. I am not optimistic.
Until next week, I suppose.
Egregious Horny Score: This segment isn’t fun anymore/5.
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 Directoryto 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.
The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
I’ve been a bit sick over the past week. Not enough to impact my blogging, thankfully. I was originally going to have just three shows for you this week, but, what the heck, why don’t we start with a new face?
Seasonal Anime
Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure
If you write about a chosen medium, it’s generally good to know what your Geek Buttons are. A Geek Button is a thing–and it can really be anything, a series, a whole genre, a visual style, a specific actor, whatever–where the more “objective” part of your critical toolkit just fails to work, and you are reduced to a blubbering fangirl (or fanboy, or fanby, as the case may be). For me, magical girls in general, and especially Pretty Cure, are a Geek Button. I cannot pretend to be remotely reasonable about them. I love almost all of them like they’re my children and the few exceptions are girls who I just wish were in better shows. I will die on the hill that the magical girl warrior archetype is one of anime’s best and most important contributions to general popular culture.
So with that in mind, please say hello to the newest Pretty Cure series. And indeed, the newest Pretty Cure; Yui Nagomi, AKA Cure Precious (Hana Hishikawa in what is, astoundingly, her first named character role in an anime.)
She is adorable. Dare I say precious?
The first episode of a given Precure series has a lot of beats to hit; introducing the protagonist, introducing her mentor / helper characters, if any, establishing the broad strokes of the plot for the season, nailing down the basic thematic overtone it’s going for, and of course, introducing the bad guys and their particular version of the monsters of the week. It’s a lot of stops to have to hit in a 22-minute episode, but DePaPre swings it admirably. The general direction in this first episode is really just fantastic, and notably, it’s helmed by animation director Akira Inagami, who had a role as a character designer all the way back on the original Futari wa Pretty Cure. (A hearty shout out to my good friend Pike, curator of Dual Aurora Wave, for that information. I’d have never known!)
The whole thing is bouncy and joyous and just alive in a way that really defines the best kids’ anime. The episode is great looking from start to finish, though obviously the real Peak TV moment is Cure Precious’ first henshin sequence.
Also scattered throughout are the traditional “Precure Leap,” a fun nod to an episode of Futari wa, and some truly ludicrous attack names (a 500 Kilocalorie punch, huh?)
I’m also fond of Yui’s “mentor” character here, the lavender haired gnc king Rosemary. He’s delightfully camp in a way that doesn’t feel overbearing or like it’s making fun of anyone.
Her fairy is adorable too, of course.
And I must make a nod toward Gentle (or “Gentlu” as Crunchyroll’s official subs hilariously render her name), who both puts in a supremely cool showing as the anime’s starter villain and is also the smart pick for Character Most Likely To Undergo A Face Turn And Possibly Become a Precure Herself. It wouldn’t be the first time the series has done that. (My favorite example being from Fresh. Which, fun fact; was the first Precure series that Hana Hishikawa watched as a young child in nursery school, going off an interview she gave a few weeks ago.)
Gentle wouldn’t even be the first villain with this specific hair color to eventually become a Precure. Will history repeat itself? Time alone will tell.
The only “bad thing”, really, about DePaPre, is that it won’t appear in this column much. I’ll try to make exceptions for particularly great episodes but given that I watch it with friends on its premiere night, much like Tropical Rouge Precure before it, it can be difficult to find the time, given that these Reports go up on Sunday.
Still, I’ll absolutely be watching every single week. And if my opinion is worth anything to you, I think you should be too.
CUE!
I don’t really know what to think about CUE! Any time I feel like I should just write it off and stop following it entirely, it does this.
“This,” for reference, is another subtly great episode about the inside of the voice acting profession. It doesn’t start out that way; the first third or so of this episode is actually mostly about Haruna’s pet turtle, about whom she says increasingly ridiculous things. (To wit; it’s not a turtle because he has a name, she asks him for advice, and he looks like “an old man” and “a philosopher. It’s all pretty funny.)
But the episode gets serious at around its 1/3rd mark, honing in on the art of injecting emotion into even very short exchanges of words. Haruna’s role, remember, is just “additional voices.” So in her first scene in Bloom Ball, which the girls record here, she only swaps a single sentence with Maika’s character, who only replies with one of her own. And we hear those two sentences some four or five times over the episode’s duration.
I’ve said this before, but running the same scene back-to-back, for any reason, is challenging. You risk boring your audience, and when the scene in question is this short you risk it even more. But, somehow, CUE! pulls it off again.
The mechanics are very simple; the girls learn a little bit about how voice acting works. They record their lines, Haruna and Maika’s get held because the author (present at the recording) remembers that the bit character Haruna is playing comes up again way later in the story. Once again, this is supposed to sell Haruna as someone with an immense amount of untapped voice acting talent. It doesn’t work quite as well as the showstopper she drops in episode 2, but it’s still pretty good, and it proves that when CUE! is on, it’s on.
For something that should be super dry, it manages to stay quite interesting, employing its favorite trick, jumping in and out of the world of the show-within-a-show. Here, since all present are actually recording, things are further embellished by the show being mid-production. No full-color cuts here; it’s all monochrome and pre-correction. (Let’s take a moment to appreciate the nightmare that making a finished cut that looks convincingly unfinished must be.)
Flummoxing as it sometimes is, if CUE! keeps making episodes like this I will continue to watch them. Just, please, I’m begging you, either focus on the idol girls less or make them more interesting.
Princess Connect! Re:Dive
One of the reasons I declined to give Princess Connect! Re:Dive its own dedicated column is that I know my limits. A picture truly can be worth a thousand words, and a gif from a show like this can be worth a short novel. What am I supposed to say about this?
Okay, fine. If you wanted to, if you were some kind of joyless miser, you could be mad that this episode is all set up and no resolution. Frankly I think that’s an absurd criticism, and the idea that everything must be resolved within the space of a single episode just because this show started out as a “slice of life series” is so far removed from how I experience art that I have a difficult time even comprehending it. Nonetheless it is what some people think, and I’ll give those people their moment of acknowledgement here.
For the rest of us; holy shit.
Princess Connect season 2’s fourth episode is the sort of absurd instant-classic that demands rewinds, screencapping, and a visit to Sakugabooru. And it’s the fourth episode of a twelve-episode season. That’s nuts. That’s the kind of comically overconfident flex that usually presages some great disaster. But why would that be the case here? CygamesPictures aren’t working on anything else this year. It’s amazing what a well-equipped studio can do when actually giving its workers proper time to do so.
The actual plot here is cartwheeling fantasy screwiness that wouldn’t be out of place in one of the many, many books with dragons and swords on the cover that I read in middle school. That sounds like an insult, but this sort of high-stakes epic-in-the-old-sense-of-the-word plot is what’s missing from a lot of modern fantasy anime. It’s spectacle; even down to details like Karyl still playing both sides, the guild of animal girls we meet here, and the giant golem fight that caps the episode.
I feel legitimately bad for the other fantasy anime airing right now. It’s not like In The Land of Leadale or Reincarnated as a Fantasy Knockout don’t have their merits, but they aren’t this. The only competition Priconne really has in this regard is Demon Slayer, but while that show definitely looks great, it’s always had issues with making its flashy animation feel like it entirely fit with the rest of the world. Priconne never even sniffs that problem; the compositing is as excellent here as anything else. Even moments where characters are literally just standing around look incredible.
The only real issue is that Priconne’s plot is so mile-a-minute I could see it getting hard to keep up. (I’m already a bit lost myself. Having not played the game probably doesn’t help.) But even so; at least for me, that feeling actually adds to the exhilaration of watching this thing in motion. The Proper Noun Machine Gun has rarely been put to such good use.
Tokyo 24th Ward
Unfortunately we must end this section of the week’s writeup on something of a sour note.
If I had known I was going to be covering Tokyo 24th Ward this frequently, I’d have just made it another weekly column. Maybe that would’ve been a bad idea, though, given how the show’s shortcomings are generally more compelling to me than its strengths, which I increasingly think are actually rather modest.
Fundamentally, the problem is this; if your anime (or movie or book or album or whatever) invokes political themes, you are inviting all comers to scrutinize it from their own political point of view. Everyone on Earth has such a point of view, whether or not they’re cognizant of it. In of itself, that’s fine, but if your work’s political themes are, say, shallow and inadequate, it raises a problem. Are Tokyo 24th‘s shallow and inadequate? I don’t really know. The signals are, shall we say, mixed.
Getting a big head over this kind of thing is nothing new to mainstream TV anime. Turn of the decade classic Code Geass, for example, managed to be good largely by trading away any actual meaningful political commentary for sheer camp value. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to nail more specific and well-thought-out political messages. Akudama Drive did it only two years ago. (Full disclosure: I haven’t seen Akudama Drive myself, at least not yet, but I trust Inkie’s judgment on the series utterly.) It’s also possible–although both less rare and not as impactful–to make broader statements without rendering them entirely meaningless. Something as goofy as Rumble Garanndoll managed that much just last season.
The gist of the plot forming over Tokyo 24th‘s last two episodes has been this; the graffiti artist / hacker Kunai (Souma Saitou, who has been in many support roles like this) is going to blow up a cruise ship full of the ultra-wealthy.
Normally I’d here provide his motivations, and just from what little we’ve learned about him–his upbringing in the ridiculously named Shantytown ghetto in the poorest part of the Ward, his grandmother’s illness, the fact that Ran has eclipsed him artistically–one could come up with a good half dozen motivations for why this poor man might feel motivated to extreme action.
Kunai’s actual motives are different, and much more personal. He’s been tricked into selling an app he developed by the owner of an enormous corporate megalopoly, a fellow named Taki. Taki rewires the program to turn it into that mysterious “Drug D” we’ve been hearing so much about over the past couple of episodes. Kunai’s resentment, then, is borne not from his situation but from something very specific. He feels as though he’s been used. And he’s right about that! He has been used. Ran correctly points out, when the two meet at the episode’s climax, that Kunai is not the “criminal” he self-laceratingly claims to be. He’s a victim of circumstance. On one level, Tokyo 24th humanizing an actual terrorist to this degree is admirable. On another, it seems like an easy out to give Kunai a single grudge motive rather than anything more circumstantial and messy. Plus, there is what actually happens to Kunai.
At the episode’s end, Kouki–that’s Cop Boy, if you’ve forgotten–bypasses the advice of his friends and orders Kunai shot dead by a police sniper. Kunai bleeds out in Ran’s arms, begging his friend to continue to be the one thing he couldn’t: an artist.
It is difficult to know how to take this.
Is it a shocking display–and condemnation–of police brutality? Does the show think he’s in the right to have done that? (I don’t want to think so, but I’ve gone broke overestimating anime before.) Or is this another thing where Shuuta’s enlightened centrist fence-sitting is going to somehow turn out to be the solution? Tokyo 24th has given me very little reason to believe the former might be what it’s going for, but I suppose it’s not impossible. A number of details about Tokyo 24th‘s worldbuilding lead me to believe that won’t be the case (it’s insane that an anime that uses so much graffiti aesthetic has perhaps two Black characters and zero major ones), but I’ve been wrong before. Honestly in this specific situation I’d be happy to be. But for the record, I’m not alone here. Some critics have been far harsherthan me. And I’m split between feeling like I’m giving the anime way too much slack and coming down on it way too hard.
It’s unfair, in a way. An anime that tries to be a Statement opens itself up to all kinds of nitpicking from audiences both domestic and abroad that other anime could easily dismiss out of hand. Should I not be giving it some points for even trying? Maybe, but “some points” might add up to a 3 or 4 out of 10 depending on how badly it fucks up the landing, and I’m not at all confident it won’t. Wanting to be a critique of the state of the world isn’t the same as actually being one. All of Tokyo 24th‘s effort will be meaningless if it cannot find some way to intelligently apply it.
We will see Tokyo 24th here again, maybe as soon as next week. For good or for ill I cannot yet say.
Elsewhere on MPA
Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 4 – “Ride the Crab” – For an episode that features absolutely zero Pawoo, this was still quite a good 30 minutes of Sabikui Bisco. There must be a solid Milo / Bisco shipping community out there, right?
That’s most of what I’ve got for you this week, anime fans. But before I go, a small recommendation! A new manga was picked up by Jump recently, and is available officially in English on the MangaPlus website. It’s called Magilumiere Co. Ltd., a magical girl-action-office comedy whatsit that poses the question; “what if being a magical girl was, you know, a full-on career? And what if an ordinary college grad seeking to enter the workforce suddenly found herself basically dropped into a small Magical Girl Company’s employ?” That’s kind of a long question, admittedly, but Magilumiere does have answers.
It’s to soon into the manga’s run for me to have any terribly detailed opinions on it, but I like it so far, and “magical girl + other stuff” is always a fun combination. Give it a read if you’re so inclined.
See you tomorrow for more Sabikui Bisco, friends!
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
You can’t be mad at something for being what it is, right? That’s been my philosophy since I started casually writing about anime on Anilist several years ago. I think it’s largely a good one, but it can be difficult to apply when something is working in a space that you’re only a bit familiar with. My Dress-Up Darling is a romantic comedy, and I’m versed enough in those to know what I like and don’t like about them. Less familiar to me is the ecchi side of the series. It’s not like the genre is alien to me–I was a hormonal teenager once, too–but it does put you in a truly weird headspace when you ask yourself what separates a good ecchi anime from a bad one. Is it a certain tone? A general sense of taste? A lack of taste? Maybe it’s better for these things to be totally shameless? I don’t know; I am many things, but I am not a connoisseur of Boob Anime. What I have discovered over the course of watching My Dress-Up Darling is that one thing I do require is for the show’s ecchi and non-ecchi parts to feel like they fit together, and if Dress-Up Darling has a single problem, it’s that they really don’t.
Before I go into detail and risk seeming like a total shrew, let me be clear; I don’t have a conceptual problem with Dress-Up Darling‘s premise. “Guy who makes cosplay outfits and girl who is a cosplayer” is a perfectly fine and cute idea for a fictional couple. I even completely get why one would want to extend this premise into the ecchi genre; it’s a natural fit for it. But Dress-Up Darling is still also a romcom. Gojo is supposed to be our likable everyman lead, and Marin, by all accounts, is way too enthused with cosplay as a craft to really care about how other people might react to her outfits. These are pretty ordinary teenagers, not H-manga characters. What you end up with is a series that occasionally feels like it’s trying to shoehorn fanservice into a show where it doesn’t belong, or, conversely, an ecchi series that is misguidedly trying to be romantic. If it were that simple, it’d probably be easier to dismiss Dress-Up Darling out of hand. Instead, it is somewhat more complicated. I didn’t have a problem with episode 2, because it dedicates to the bit. That episode is almost entirely fanservice. Here, things are more complicated, because it’s trying to do two things at once.
This week’s episode–the ludicrously-titled “It’s Probably Because This Is the Best Boob Bag Here”–centers around the show’s core strength, the simple, infectious joy of two people who share a passion for something geeking out over it. In theory, this should be one of Dress-Up Darling‘s best episodes. And there is a lot to like here! Marin comes up with a hilariously uncreative cosplay alias (Marine. That extra E is really gonna throw ’em off, girl.), and she and Gojo attend their first cosplay event. There, she poses for pics and mingles with other attendees.
In one of the few moments where the episode’s generally horny atmosphere makes sense, Marin is the one who sizes up the other cosplayers while Gojo just stands there feeling generally out of place.
Again. Bi icon.
The “infectious joy” side of things is pretty simple here. And when Marin bounds toward Gojo and the background music swells and the whole thing is just so melodramatic, it makes sense. He’s done something genuinely nice for someone, and it happens to be the person he’s crushing on. You get why he’s happy, and if the episode were fixed more on that emotion, I’d probably like it more.
But Dress-Up Darling is what it is. So, throughout this entire part of the episode–which takes up a good 2/3rds of its runtime–there are constant horny gags, mostly revolving around Marin’s figure. She sweats a lot because the dress’s fabric is heavy. She’s wearing two bras to emphasize her bust because the character she’s cosplaying has bigger boobs than she does. She nearly passes out from the heat and Gojo ends up having to cool her down on a random indoor stairwell, and as he wipes down her back with a cold cloth, she starts moaning in a comedically suggestive fashion. Marin Sexy: Do You Get It?
At least we get some Good Faces out of it.
It’s all just a bit much, isn’t it? The sweat and the jiggling and the leering camera and all? Part of me feels bad for even criticizing this. Dress-Up Darling is lightyears away from the worst offender in this genre, and it does not even speak the same language as some of those manga and anime do. On top of that, Dress-Up Darling‘s original mangaka is a woman, so I should at least be cutting her a little slack, right? Well to tell you the truth I think I have been. Maybe a little too much.
I know how even saying this sounds, but I didn’t hate this episode, and I really liked some parts of it. Perhaps I only feel this way because I’ve been talking about the show a lot today, including with some friends who like it far less than I do, but this was the first time where My Dress-Up Darling‘s flaws prevented me from enjoying the show as much as I want to, and that just sucks. I really hope this is as far into the H Valley as the show ever goes. This doesn’t sink the show for me, and I doubt other people who were enjoying it will be dissuaded for much the same reason, but I definitely didn’t love the episode.
To not make this article an entirely bum note, there were, as mentioned, parts of the episode that I really enjoyed. Marin posing for pics is really cute in a genuine and enjoyable way, and on the topic of things that are horny but don’t bother me, there’s this lady, who seems even more into Marin than Gojo is in the minute or so of screentime she gets.
There’s also the very genuine moment of emotional connection that Marin and Gojo share on the train ride home. Sleep-deprived as hell, Gojo says she looked beautiful, and we get Marin blushing like a dummy. It feels sincerely romantic in a way that most of the rest of the episode is clearly reaching for but just doesn’t get ahold of. I can only speak for myself, but I’d love to see more of that going forward, and less of the egregious leering.
And speaking of egregious, I’m putting this episode’s Egregious Horny Score at a solid 4/5. There’s probably less of it overall than episode 2, but it’s more interwoven into the actual, you know, story, which really pushes up the “egregious” part. Egregious is a funny word, don’t you think? (There was no Nowa this week, sadly. So, no bonus Nowa screencap. Those are also egregious, but in a good way.)
Now, if you’ll all excuse me, anime fans, I have a big event to go prep for. See you next week.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
“It’s because you want to make someone happy that you can keep going, even when it’s hard.”
Gojo has a problem. Well, it’s more like he has several problems. Near the start of “Are These Your Girlfriend’s?”, My Dress-Up Darling‘s fourth episode, Gojo’s grandfather takes a nasty fall. It’s not bad enough that he needs to spend weeks recovering in the hospital, but his adult children temporarily take him in to care for him while he heals up. This puts Gojo, already short on time to finish Marin’s costume, in a bind. Oh, and midterms are coming up. Someone visiting from France wants to visit his and his grandfather’s doll shop on super short notice. It’s all just quite a lot.
This is probably the most relatable Gojo has ever been, at least to me. Yeah buddy, I let stresses pile up on top of each other until I feel like I’m physically going to sink into the floor, too. I feel you.
These things stack on top of each other until Gojo is little more than a ball of anxiety. He works himself to the bone on all of this; the outfit, taking care of his grandfather, the exams, etc. Frankly he overworks himself, to the point where I wondered if Dress-Up Darling‘s sharp turn into the dramatic signaled some sort of permanent tonal shift for the anime.
It doesn’t, which is perhaps for the best. Gojo is able to pull through by remembering some words of wisdom his grandfather once offered about why he’s able to paint Hina Dolls every day. By the episode’s final act, Marin’s outfit is done.
The real irony is that he needn’t have rushed. The entire “deadline” has stemmed from a misunderstanding; Marin simply mentioned a cosplay event that was happening, not one she intended to participate in. But, despite the fact that the two swap phone numbers in this episode, Gojo never thinks to ask for clarity. He works himself ragged for, basically, no reason!
That might sound like a criticism of the episode, but it isn’t. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things you think you have to do in this manner, especially for a teenager whose brain is probably boiling over with feelings he doesn’t fully understand at this point. So yes, when he collapses on his floor crying that he’s a failure because he can’t seem to get all this shit done on time? That’s the dash of realism something like My Dress-Up Darling needs to feel like it has real emotional stakes. The poor guy is pitiable, here. He’s arguably acting pretty stupidly, too, but he never feels like he’s doing something incomprehensible. It makes a perfect, sad sort of sense.
All of this, to Gojo, becomes worth it. Because in spite of the misunderstanding, Marin is genuinely very happy to have the outfit finished, and her happiness informs his. And hey, for what it’s worth, she does look pretty good in it.
-Listens to The Cure Once- Two weeks later:
This is probably the most genuine connection they’ve yet had in the series, and I think this is the first time I’ve really bought them as having romantic chemistry as opposed to a simple friendship based on some shared interests. She’s angry at herself for the misunderstanding, a little mad at him for overworking himself so hard, but also truly, genuinely happy that she has this wonderful gift that Gojo’s made for her, now. There’s a real potpourri of emotion going on in just this single sequence and it’s to both the original mangaka’s credit (Shinichi Fukuda) and to Hina Sukuda’s performance that it all comes across so well.
All this is also the first time that My Dress-Up Darling‘s slowball pace has entirely made sense. Giving this whole episode its own…well, episode, makes it feel complete in a way it probably wouldn’t if it were splitting time with, say, another 15 minutes full of Marin in a bikini.
In the end, the payoff is Marin dressed in her Shizuku outfit and the two of them–a near-ecstatic Marin and a deeply exhausted but still enthused Gojo–geeking out about how great she looks. That’s a fun end to what is certainly Dress-Up Darling‘s most involved, and frankly, best episode so far. I would like the series to eventually dive into the roots of Gojo’s workaholic and perfectionist tendencies. Whether or not it ever will is another question, but there’s only one way to find out.
Until next week, anime fans.
Bonus Nowa Screencap:
Egregious Horny Score: This one’s a solid 1/5. It’s not like there’s no fanservice here, but it’s pretty tame compared to other episodes and it’s entirely restricted to the last couple minutes when the big emotional beats are firmly over.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Key to understanding My Dress-Up Darling is that Gojo and Marin, our leads, are both incredibly awkward people. “Then Why Don’t We?” opens with Gojo having a, shall we say, rather involved dream starring his new bestie. Understandably he feels nervous and even a bit guilty about it. Less understandably, he tries to avoid Marin for most of the day because of it.
Dress-Up Darling has this issue wherein the leads’ awkwardness, especially Gojo’s, can be either endearing or incredibly annoying, and the line between the two is dental floss-thin. This entire segment is thankfully pretty brief, but for the first third or so of the episode, which it takes up, I wanted to strangle Gojo. I don’t believe in any silly gender essentialist nonsense like the man “having a responsibility” to confess or whatever, but he makes someone he already considers a friend feel pretty bad because of his own insecurity, and that just sucks.
On the plus side, hey, the girl with the two-tone hair puts in another appearance! She introduces herself as Nowa (Larissa Tago Takeda, who has a string of support roles like this under her belt and is also an illustrator, among other things.) and she and Marin’s other gal friends do little to help the situation.
She also refers to lollipops as “suckers,” but that’s fine. Character flaws are important.
Things are better elsewhere in the episode, and the whole misunderstanding (if you can even call it that) resolves itself pretty quickly.
Much of “Then Why Don’t We?” is shopping montage, which sounds dull on paper but is spiced up here by Gojo and Marin’s common ground; their love of fashion. It can be easy to forget from moment to moment that Gojo is a near-prodigal designer, and Marin is duly impressed by the incredibly elaborate design drawing he’s made for her cosplay outfit. (The fact that the subtitlers went through the trouble of actually translating his notes deserves praise here. They clearly care a lot about the series.)
The two hit up a fabric shop and a wig store, and Gojo’s eye for detail helps bring the outfit to life, much to Marin’s delight. The joy is infectious, and My Dress-Up Darling remains at its best when it’s geeking out over cosplay minutiae.
This is the face of a woman about to drop $200 on a wig.
They also make their way to a lingerie store, which results in predictable Gojo awkwardness. Less predictable is how they discuss the H-game character this outfit they’re making is based on. No one around them, of course, has the context for understanding the conversation, so people…get the wrong idea. It’s pretty amusing.
Later, Marin geeks out even more about cosplay stuff; flipping through her phone and showing off photos of cosplayers she likes. She gives us this bit of truth and wisdom.
Do not ever forget that Marin is a bi icon.
Other than a brief flashback where Gojo explains that he has difficulty calling these pics of cosplayers truly beautiful–his standard for such things is his dolls, of course–there isn’t much more to the episode. Gojo finds out he has two weeks to finish this outfit which sure doesn’t seem like a lot of time to me, but what would I know?
“Then Why Don’t We?” is a very low-key episode of an already pretty low-key show. The production remains compelling; Marin gets a lot of great expressions here, and the music is frankly so bouncy that it skips into a Hallmark-y light music register that doesn’t quite match the episode’s tone. (It’s fun, regardless.) All told, this is a decidedly minor beat in the story of My Dress-Up Darling.
Even that in mind, it’s a worthwhile one, mostly for the mutual geeking out that Marin and Gojo get, which remains their strongest point of chemistry. I will say though, hopefully we actually get to see Marin’s finished cosplay next week. In terms of pace, there’s a fine distinction between easygoing and languid.
And as a bonus, the Egregious Horny Score, back by inexplicable popular demand: 2/5
Until next week, anime fans.
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 Directoryto 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.
The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hello guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! I hope you’re all doing well out there. Premiere Season is basically over here at MPA, so I hope you’re enjoying my settling into a more relaxed seasonal groove.
I wanted to make a personal plea here before moving on to the (relatively short) FR writeup proper for this past week. Between the last Frontline Report and now, I have started HRT treatment, which, if you’re not familiar, is a crucial step of the transitioning process for most trans women. Why mention this on my anime blog? Two reasons; for one, I am hoping this treatment will lead to me being happier and healthier (I feel better about myself in general already, but that could be the placebo effect this early on.) For two, the more practical side of this is that I now have a medical bill–the cost of the HRT treatment–to pay every few months. It’s not a ton of money, averaging out to about $60 after the local clinic’s discount for low-income people, but it’s an added financial pressure.
On top of this, I’m hoping to get some other long-standing medical problems treated this calendar year (among them; I need new glasses and need a bad case of hearing loss in my right ear treated.) All of this to say that if you read my blog and can afford even occasional small donations, please please please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or becoming a Patreon patron. (I don’t currently offer any Patron bonuses because I frankly just don’t have enough of a subscription base. If I start to get more subscriptions over there, I will give it some thought.) I also offer review commissions; you can see my policies for review purchases, complete with a pricing chart, here.
I don’t really like to beat the “give me money” drum too hard. The primary reason I write anime criticism is because I enjoy it and find it personally important. But the monetary side of things really is what allows me to continue doing this, so thank you for bearing with me in this regard.
In any case, onto this week’s anime! The actual writing roundup is pretty short here, but I hope you’ll find these entries worthwhile.
Seasonal Anime
Ranking of Kings
As Ousama Ranking enters its second half, war clouds begin to blot out the sky. Recent episodes have made it clear that Miranjo’s machinations intend to drive the entire Kingdom of Bosse into ruin, not merely displace Bojji. We’ve explored everything from the depths of Daida’s own mind in the Twilight Zone-esque episode 11 to a small rogues’ gallery of evildoers in the more recent two episodes, which have kicked off the series’ second cour.
In the most recent episode, with said rogues’ gallery besieging the castle Bojji once called home, Queen Hilde’s retainer Dorshe ends up getting a lot of love. He puts up a hell of a fight, though the episode’s sinister ending makes it ambiguous as to whether or not he’s actually successfully protected his charge.
Equally emphasized here is the sinister and downright bizarre Ouken, the so-called “Sword King,” an effective force of sadistic nature who we know vanishingly little about. Save that Bojji musn’t be allowed to confront him directly, for some reason or another.
Ousama Ranking remains, really, almost too good for its own good. I can think of little better to tell you to do than to watch the series if you aren’t already, and to catch up if you’re a bit behind. It remains a wonderful thing to watch.
Tokyo 24th Ward
If you squint, you can see what Tokyo 24th Ward is trying to do with its second episode. The intent is two-fold; to show how our main group of protagonists came together as the “hero” unit they once were (and how they got the nickname “RGB” in the first place), and more abstractly, to demonstrate how past trauma can intrude on the present. Both ends are served by the episode frequently cutting to flashbacks, often in ways that don’t make it instantly obvious that they even are flashbacks. To Tokyo 24th‘s credit, this does give the episode a slightly hallucinatory quality. In all other respects though, this mostly renders the episode confusing, and serves to disguise the fact that very little is actually happening.
What the episode does have in spades is talking. There is a lot of exposition here; about our characters’ pasts and relationships to each other, about the history of the 24th Ward itself, about why certain characters act the way they do, about the upcoming “Gourmet Festival” in the Ward that may or may not become a major plot point, etc. etc. etc.
This is a classic example of the “show, don’t tell” maxim not being followed, and while there are no hard and fast rules in the arts, this is certainly an example of “tell” being done pretty badly. Add to this the fact that the episode’s production is overall lackluster (what happened to the pop-in technique the show used so liberally last week? It’s totally gone here!) and you have a recipe for an episode that is in all respects disappointing. Even the subtitles seem asleep at the wheel, which is hardly the series’ own fault, but it definitely doesn’t help. Winding, ramble-y phrasings abound, and there are a few straight-up errors too. (Although all this does produce a few funny lines.)
Mari, speaking of that image, also gets a little bit of character development here. Which is nice, even if it is buried in a pretty bad episode overall.
My hope is that this is a rough patch for Tokyo 24th and not the start of a full-on freefall, but I suppose time alone will tell.
Elsewhere on MPA
I have been busy recently! Here are some highlights from the past little while.
Way too many First Impressions articles to reasonably list all of them here.– I didn’t cover quite as much as I did last season, but I still wrote about 7 different broadcast anime and also an ONA, which I think is a pretty good spread. (Plus My Dress-Up Darling, which I didn’t technically write a “First Impressions” article on because I knew I was going to pick it up for weekly coverage, but is included in the list because, you know, reasons.) Some of these I quite liked, some I was mixed on, one I outright hated! Give the list a look if you’re wondering what to pick up this season.
(Review) The Magic of Artiswitch – I watched this fascinating little web series basically on a whim and reviewed it for much the same reason. It ended up becoming the 300th anime in any format I’ve logged on my Anilist profile, which I must say, I couldn’t be happier about. I don’t like calling things “hidden gems,” but I think the term applies here. Give this one a look.
Let’s Watch CUE! Episode 2 – “Their Respective Colors” – First of all; yes, I did change how I format the titles for the Let’s Watch posts. Secondly; is it weird that CUE! might be my favorite thing airing right now? It’s not some grandiose production monster, but it has heart in a way I really like. Oddly, it reminds me of The Idolmaster. Maybe I only think that because of the huge cast? Regardless, it’s an entertaining show, and I already love rooting for Haruna, the protagonist, in her quest to become a great voice actress. I really want more people to pick this up. Consider making room for it in your schedule!
Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 2 – “Wanna Hurry Up, and Do It?”– Woof, that episode title. Pop culture critics like myself have in recent years picked up a habit of calling anything that remotely deals with anything adjacent to sex or sexuality “horny,” using it as a loosely-defined but vaguely positive adjective. I’m hesitant to apply the label to things, so when I say Dress-Up Darling is pretty horny, please know I’m not exaggerating for clicks. That said; I thought this week’s episode was pretty fun even if I can absolutely imagine all the cheesecake (remember that term?) putting someone off. I do agree with the general consensus in hoping the show moves in a direction a bit more narratively-focused soon. I’m not expecting this to turn into Evangelion or anything, but trading in some of the, ahem, “plot” for more actual plot would be nice.
(In spite of all this; Dress-Up Darling is not the horniest anime airing this season. That would be the hormonal anxiety nightmare that is World’s End Harem. I watched the first episode of that and, frankly, had no idea what to make of it. You’ll have to turn elsewhere if you want someone to cover that series I’m afraid.)
And that’ll about do it for this week’s content on the site. I’ll be seeing you all again pretty soon, have a good week, anime fans 🙂
Wanna 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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I’m revealing my age here, but humor me for a moment. Are you, dear readers, familiar with classic party rock track “Centerfold” by The J. Geils Band? (If not, Stereogum’s Tom Breihan, a critic I admire very much, wrote a pretty great article about it as part of his pretty great-in-general column The Number Ones. You can consider this a recommendation.)
That song is a boiling soup of emotion. The song’s narrator finds out his high school crush poses in an adult magazine now and he’s hit by some admixture of guilt and desire. “Centerfold” doesn’t sound guilty, though, it sounds celebratory, from its production to the nagging “nah-nah nah nah nah nahs” in the chorus. Any actual negative feelings in the song are washed away by its presentation. It all sounds like a good time, and because pop media’s presentation informs its message, it is a good time.
I bring this up because, in a very roundabout way, that’s also, in a very broad sense, sort of what I think of My Dress-Up Darling. The situation presented in its second episode, “Wanna Hurry Up, and Do It?”, would be, in a series that were even slightly more connected to the real world, appalling. Marin completes her strong-arming of Gojo into becoming her cosplay outfitter. Along the way, she both rambles at him about eroge games and eventually shows up at his house unannounced to make him take her measurements. (That’s what the episode title is referring to. What did you think it meant?) But the presentation sells it as a good time, at least in a comedy anime sort of way. Dress-Up Darling‘s second episode is almost all comedic, and it leans heavily into the series’ ecchi side. (If I’m giving every episode an Egregiously Horny Score out of 5, we can call this a solid 4.) Which isn’t to say it’s devoid of more substantial character moments, as there are a few, but let’s just say this is an episode where I had to be judicious about what to take a screencap of.
But let’s talk about our actual characters for a moment here, because it’s Marin who launches this whole sequence of events to begin with. One of the things that makes Marin seem like a real character as opposed to a cardboard cut-out is that she’s extremely assertive. Honestly a little too assertive, to the point of obliviousness, which is where a lot of the comedy here comes from. The episode opens immediately after the closing scene of last week’s, and it’s in the very same room where the two have basically just met that Marin goes into a bit more detail about this character she’s trying to cosplay. For one, her name is Shizuku-tan. She’s the gothic type.
At one point Marin refers to the chest area of Shizuka’s outfit as a “boob bag,” which gives My Dress-Up Darling the dubious honor of being the first anime I’ve ever seen use the term in-fiction.
For two, she’s from an erotic dating sim. Called…this.
(The title is immediately drawn attention to, of course.)
Gojo takes all this in with a disbelief that is pretty common among those who have just had their head dunked into the far side of otakudom. (I’m actually kinda with him here, I’ve never really understood the appeal of eroge either. Not out of any moral objection, I just can’t fathom being horny while gaming. They are mutually exclusive activities in my mind.)
Marin also repeatedly calls the series “epic,” which I’d say is only a bad pick because someone her age nowadays would probably say it’s “based” instead.
There’s also a pretty funny style cut where Gojo brings up that stuff like this tends to be 18+ and Marin, we’ll say, selectively declines to hear him.
It sounds–and is–simple, but a huge part of what makes this come across as funny instead of just weird is Gojo’s reactions. Over the course of the episode, they slowly ramp up from “in vague disbelief as to what he’s hearing” to “looks like he’s just survived a war.” I will cop to finding his increasing distress amusing.
That second reaction doesn’t come until the latter half of the episode. While Gojo does agree to help Marin with her outfits, he reasonably proposes that they should wait to do measurements until Monday, since by the time this episode starts it’s already quite late on a Friday evening.
Naturally, Marin shows up unannounced at his house the next day while his grandfather happens to be off running an errand. (She notes that she googled his last name and “doll shop” to find the address. That’s honestly kind of creepy! But hey, comedy anime.)
Sidenote: the fit is insane.
She barges in and shows herself around. This alone makes Gojo nervous, but it is absolutely nothing compared to the fact that–as Marin correctly points out–measurements are generally taken while the measure-ee is undressed. Of course, Marin is very cognizant of the fact that she can’t well strip down to her underwear in the house of a boy she only met a few days ago. That would be nuts!
A bikini though. That’s fine. Obviously.
There is going to be a whole section here where there are very few pictures of Marin and a whole lot of pictures of Gojo’s absolutely devastated facial expressions. You may thank / curse me for my modesty in the comments.
Maybe I’m a simpleton for still finding stuff like this funny over a decade into being an anime fan. I think I actually appreciate naked stupidity like this a bit more than I did when I was actually in the target audience for this series. But can you blame me, here? Look at Gojo, guy’s about to die.
Na na na na na na.
This particular visual dynamic–Marin doing something teasing and sexy and then Gojo reacting like he’s been stabbed in the gut–makes up most of the rest of the episode. It’ll wear thin if this is what the whole rest of the show is going to be like (I want the cosplay dates alluded to in the OP sequence, damn it!), but as a single episode thing? It’s pretty fun.
In spite of his own raging hormones, Gojo does successfully take Marin’s measurements. Marin herself even gets flustered at one point, in an amusing but also genuine and human moment. This episode was fine–if one has a high tolerance for H comedy, that is–but those moments of real connection between our two leads are where I think Dress-Up Darling is at its strongest. I hope we get more of them as the series rolls on.
But if not, hey, the sight of Gojo studying Slippery Girls 2 like he’s prepping for exams so he can get outfit references is pretty goddamn funny.
Godspeed, Gojo.
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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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
You wanted it, you got it. When I put out the word for my first-ever community survey to help me pick a series to cover this season, My Dress-Up Darling was easily the most popular choice, with 47% of the vote. (The next-highest show was a full 15 points lower.) Admittedly, I was a little surprised by this! Romance anime tend to be divisive just in concept alone. But being only passingly familiar with the Dress-Up Darling series prior to the anime’s premiere, I figured there must be a good reason behind the enthusiasm. And having seen the first episode, I still think that, but I want to take things a bit non-linearly and get into what this column will actually be for My Dress-Up Darling. I’m out of my wheelhouse in more than one sense for this one, so bear with me.
What I mean is; I think it’s very easy to construct an uncharitable narrative around works like this. I myself am pretty romcom-skeptical most of the time. The exceptions are outliers like Kaguya-sama: Love is War! that also dip their toes into other genres and are just generally more ambitious than the norm. I like Dress-Up Darling, at least so far, but “ambitious” is not a word I’d apply. To wit, throughout this first episode, we hear only one internal monologue, that of our nerdy male lead Wakana Gojo. (Played by Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS veteran Shouya Ishige.) He seems to regard not just women but other people in general as enigmas. And he gives off a vaguely self-pitying vibe. To be honest, for a decent chunk of the episode I found him a bit annoying, only changing my mind when he started nerding out toward the end.
Then there’s Marin Kitagawa, (Hina Suguta, in her first major role) our female lead and Gojo’s love interest. Marin, being both a gyaru and a pretty huge nerd, is treated as an exotic anomaly. This character archetype–the “surprisingly nice gyaru who happens to share some of the male lead’s interests”–is a standard trope of its own by this point. That’s without getting into the fact that the camera nakedly leers at her from time to time (in shots that mostly seem like they’re from Gojo’s perspective.) How, in the final part of the episode, Gojo is rewarded for meticulously pointing out how bad Marin is at sewing (a traditionally feminine craft.) Etc. etc. You get the picture.
I want to be careful in how I phrase this, because I do genuinely think that others’ work is just as valuable as mine, and I can imagine people–especially other critics–having sharply divergent opinions on this series. I want to respect those opinions.
To put it bluntly, we are not really going to be grappling at length with that side of Dress-Up Darling. I think these issues (to the extent that they are issues, I think some are more serious than others) permeate the medium, and some of them are endemic to popular art in general. I could hold Dress-Up Darling accountable for not addressing them, but I think that would be an unrealistic burden to place on what is at its core an extremely simple series. Given the choice to be negative and rake a series over the coals for its faults or to praise it for what it does well, I will generally choose the latter. (And frankly, I have written more than enough negative material on this blog recently. It’s unfair, but it’s hard for me to hold much against a series airing in a season that also contains Police in a Pod.)
None of this is to say I am excusing these issues entirely, and if I think Dress-Up Darling has committed some particularly notable offense I will mention it, but it is not what I’m going to be focusing on. Because I think at what it sets out to do, Dress-Up Darling is pretty good so far. To be totally honest, I would just rather talk about that.
So, you may ask, now that I’ve spent six paragraphs running in circles, what does it set out to do? Oh, you know, boy meets girl. Simple stuff.
Fundamental to understanding Dress-Up Darling is understanding that Gojo is a turbonerd, but not just any kind of turbonerd. If we were dealing with a garden variety otaku, Dress-Up Darling would be a lot less interesting. No, Gojo makes outfits for traditional Japanese dolls. His grandfather, who he lives with, makes Japanese dolls. It’s kind of their whole thing.
Having a rather niche hobby that he devotes quite a lot of his spare time to, Gojo does not have any friends. And often when an anime says something like that, it’s an exaggeration. But as far as I can tell, no, Gojo literally has no friends. There’s even a mean/funny moment as he’s walking to high school mid-episode where another guy runs up to him and playfully smacks him on the back. Naturally, it turns out that this is a rando who thought he was someone else. Ouch.
Teenagers, being in general, assholes*, notice Gojo’s lack of friends, and generally both are hesitant to talk to him and take advantage of his timidity to dump classroom chores and such on him. Gojo is sad about all this, because he feels he’s being ostracized for having a niche interest. This being a romance anime, you can probably guess what jolts him into self-improvement.
Here’s a hint; this is one of the most hilariously on-the-nose meet-cute sequences I’ve ever seen. Marin trips and falls while entering the classroom, and somehow rockets over to Gojo’s seat, entering his life like a near-literal bolt from the blue. It is, in every sense of the word, incredible.
If this happens to you, you may be entitled to financial compensation.
This is, even more remarkably, not actually the meeting that gets them talking. Between this and that, we do get some additional insight into Marin’s character, which has the benefit of making her not just a complete slate for geekboy projection. (Among other things, she turns down guys who make fun of her for being a nerd. That’s pretty smart! Although damn, it’s sad that she’s already had to learn to recognize negging despite being, like, what, fifteen? Sixteen?)
The real meeting comes later, when Gojo’s sewing machine at home breaks and he comes up with the brilliant idea to use the school’s apparently abandoned home ec. room’s as a substitute. Surprise! Marin has had this same idea.
The expressions in this show are pretty great.
Not to work on doll costumes in her case, but cosplay outfits. They get to talking, and Marin surprises Gojo by being interested in his dollmaking hobby. She, in turn, shows him the cosplay outfit she’s been working on. (In what is probably the most unapologetically horny scene in the entire episode, given that she changes clothes in front of him with only his word that he won’t peek. Marin, honey, I’m glad that you like the guy but be a little more cautious!) The aforementioned Gojo-criticizing-Marin’s-sewing scene happens, and Marin, of course, counters that hey, if Gojo’s so good at sewing, why doesn’t he make her cosplay outfits? (When you think about it, aren’t cosplay outfits just doll clothes but person-sized? No, they aren’t, but that’s the premise this entire anime is built upon, so just roll with it.)
I’m going over all of this pretty briskly, but Marin’s genuine enthusiasm for Gojo’s dollmaking is, really, quite endearing.
The sub track has Marin refer to the doll as a “little hottie,” which is one of my favorite pieces of translation work of the season so far.
It’s probably the single most important emotional beat for this episode to nail, and it does so admirably. And, yeah, even this early on the two are transparently pretty into each other. I’m not afraid to say it’s cute.
So that’s Dress-Up Darling. Or more accurately, its first episode, “Someone Who Lives in the Exact Opposite World as Me.” (A line from one of those vaguely annoying inner monologues I mentioned.) If I were grading this like a first impressions article, I’d probably give the show a B or so. It has some issues, but I like it overall. (I worry I’ve come across as perhaps rather sarcastic in this article. Some of that is on purpose, but I did genuinely enjoy this episode.)
This, of course, isn’t a first impressions article. Like I said, anime fans, you wanted it, and you got it. Dress-Up Darling will return to this column next week.
See you then.
Extremely important bonus screencap: Marin’s clique of friends goes unnamed here, but I wanted to give a shout out to this girl. I have no idea if she’ll ever be important to the plot of the series, but I love her two-tone black and red hair. That’s a look.
*If you are a teenager, and not an asshole, I apologize for the generalization, but I’m speaking from experience here.
Wanna 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 Directoryto 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.
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