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.
![](https://i.imgur.com/AK9hsBV.jpg)
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.
![](https://i.imgur.com/VJ1W6DG.jpg)
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.
![](https://i.imgur.com/KGMPncu.jpg)
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?)
![](https://i.imgur.com/CX4NC2A.jpg)
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.
![](https://i.imgur.com/8Yqh7r0.jpg)
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.
![](https://i.imgur.com/YAQwAHl.jpg)
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.
![](https://i.imgur.com/UkjQVYE.jpg)
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.
![](https://i.imgur.com/lrh8TNZ.jpg)
*If you are a teenager, and not an asshole, I apologize for the generalization, but I’m speaking from experience here.
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