Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinary folks of the jury, our long national wet dream is finally over. Yes, it’s been a long twelve weeks, but here we are, at the season finale of My Dress-Up Darling. Before we even talk about this episode at all, let’s go over some facts of the prior eleven. Some of MDUD’s episodes have beenspectacular, others have been pretty bad. This is an inconsistency not rare among anime or, honestly, among linear TV shows in general. Evaluating a run of episodes that includes both the former and the latter is difficult, especially since the “good episodes” aren’t entirely devoid of flaws and the “bad ones” aren’t entirely devoid of merits. Such are the limits of purely qualificative criticism.
One thing it has undeniably been, is successful, and while this is certainly the season finale I would not be at all surprised if the series were hastily renewed. An anime does not simply put an extra two million copies of its source material into circulation and not get a second turn at the plate. To argue that a second MDUD season is unlikely would be to argue that capitalist businesses aren’t actually that interested in making money. Things just don’t work that way. So, to put aside my own–and our own–collective biases for a minute, this is clearly a series that has connected with people in some way. Is it because Gojo is just really that relatable? Maybe it’s because something about Keisuke Shinohara‘s directorial style really resonates with The Youth. Or maybe people just want to wife Marin that badly. (Given the show’s target demo, probably at least some of that.) Maybe it’s all of these. But the point remains; MDUD is here, and it’s probably not going away any time soon. If you care about the current anime zeitgeist, it is at least worth consideration.
So, for the final time–at least for now–let us consider it. My Dress-Up Darling‘s 12th episode, its season finale, also called “My Dress-Up Darling”, begins with a heavy summer night hanging over Japan. A small breeze clinks a windchime as Gojo focuses on his first passion, dollmaking. He gets the sort of text that would send just about anybody–age, gender, whatever, aside–into a bit of a panic.
It is, of course, not actually that serious. She wants help with a costume thing and to vent about her dad not letting her go to a festival. Normal teenage girl stuff. Things happen, and our heroes end up A) working on summer homework and B) watching a scary movie. Also, somewhere in here Marin casually reveals that she has a side job as a model.
The horror movie itself is a real treat. We don’t see much of it, but, in keeping with MDUD’s prior visual ambition in this area, it’s animated totally differently from the rest of the series. The character designs are more grounded and realistic, and in general the visuals look like something out of the Boogiepop franchise. It’s pretty cool! Marin is scared witless by the film while Gojo nerds over costuming details, which, yeah, that sounds about right.
There are a lot of great character moments here, in fact. Gojo and Marin later end up needing to run to their high school to pick up some over-summer math homework that Marin left behind. (And, really, props to them, there. I don’t think you could’ve made me enter my high school over summer vacation if you put a gun to my head.) There’s a scene here where, after falling into a pool(!), Marin muses on how she loves going to the beach even though she can’t swim; to watch the Sun set and make the ocean’s surface sparkle, to talk with friends and eat tasty food. It’s a bit of quiet insight into her character that the show has done well a few times and I really hope it doesn’t let up on when the inevitable second season arrives.
Gojo gets his turn, too. He and Marin attend a festival after Marin finally does finish all her summer homework; one Gojo’s lived near for years but never actually gone to. There’s a lot of great stuff in this scene. Some of it, tropes that are so old to the genre that they’re practically cliche. Gojo is practically dumbstruck by seeing his love interest in a yukata, Marin buys way too much food, etc. But the one Dress-Up Darling works the best is probably the most classic. The fireworks go off; Gojo hears thunder and smells gunsmoke as a billion neon flowers bloom in the night sky. He spends more time looking at Marin than he does the actual show. Marin returns the favor by shattering the mood into a million pieces by goofily sticking out her tongue, which is a solid blue from the Blue Hawaii she’s been eating.
Is the moment actually ruined? Not really, Gojo has to carry her home. (Traditional sandals evidently do a number on your feet. I’ve never worn Japanese-style ones, but, that tracks with my experience with flip-flops.) And when Marin casually mentions being more careful with her footwear next year, when they go again, Gojo gets so hung up on the “next year” that the boy looks like he’s practically going to cry. It’s really sweet.
There’s an equally-sweet after-credits scene, where Gojo keeps Marin company over the phone after the latter makes the brilliant decision to watch the sequel to the horror movie they’d seen earlier. We don’t get a concrete sense of how long the two talk for, but it seems to be quite a while. At episode’s end, Marin tells a now-asleep Gojo that she loves him. Maudlin? Maybe. Heartwarming? Absolutely, and the visual of their two separate beds being stitched “together” by their phone call is really lovely.
The episode–and the season–ends with Marin wishing him a goodnight, and a promise to see him later.
A promise that might well extend to us, the viewers, as well. One can say a lot about Dress-Up Darling, most of which I already noted in the opening paragraphs of this column. But, the show definitely cares about its own characters, and that’s a good thing. I have my own hopes and expectations for the near-inevitable season two, but there will be time to write about those in a future column. MDUD will almost certainly return to the pages of Magic Planet Anime in some form or another. (Perhaps sooner than you think, even.)
For now, I think perhaps I should end this particular round of Let’s Watches the same way MDUD itself ended. To that, I say; goodnight, and see you later.
Egregious Horny Score: We’re at a tasteful 2/5 this week. Although some teenager is going to watch this and discover he has a thing for exposed necks. Pray for him.
Overall Egregious Horny Score: A solid 4/5. Frankly this was my biggest complaint with the show and probably a lot of other peoples’ as well, and I sort of regret waving the extraneous cheesecake that was present early on off in the way that I did. Oh well.
And finally, by far the most important of these little mini-entries, returning for the finale is the Bonus Nowa Screencap. Let’s hope we get more Nowa in season two. If we can’t get an authorized Flower Princess Blaze spinoff I at least want Nowa: The Anime. I would take that as a consolation prize.
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!
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 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!
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-UpDarling 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Woof. Look at that title. I’m not on the writing team for My Dress-Up Darling–or indeed, the translation team–so I can’t be totally sure, but I’m pretty certain that that’s a somewhat crass joke.
Which is weird, because while the show’s general aura of “idk, horny” returns this week, this is actually a pretty solid episode. The main goal here seems to be fleshing out the character of Shinju, Juju’s younger sister. That does unfortunately mean we get more than a little of the same “isn’t it funny that she’s a middle schooler but has HUGE bazongas?” energy that marred her introduction. But at the very least, she’s humanized here to a degree that raises her well above the status of a one-note joke character. It’s enough to make me at least consider overlooking how weird the series sometimes is about her.
Before that, though, we open with more cosplay nerdery. We don’t get a whole episode about Gojo making the outfits this time. As such, while there’s still a fair bit of Dress-Up Darling‘s usual camera leeriness, it’s at least over fairly quickly. And the rest of this sequence is actually pretty good. There’s the odd Lucky Star-esque sitcom conversation that slips in.
And I’m particularly fond of the details of Marin putting on her Black Lobelia outfit for the first time. The way she gets so happy over having a perfect black soul gem to stick above her chest, or how she delivers this absolute 24-karat one-liner after applying some cosplay tape.
In general, Marin actually gets a lot of great dialogue here. Something I have to equally applaud both the original writers and the translators for. Who hasn’t felt like this at least once?
But as mentioned, the real heart of this episode is Shinju’s story. If you’ll recall, last week, after Juju fainted, we cut abruptly forward in time to spend the last ten minutes of the episode on that dreamy endless summer sequence. If you were wondering what exactly happened in between those events, wonder no more, as this episode establishes that Juju was fine. More importantly, Shinju and Gojo had a long talk about the former’s desire to start cosplaying, but reluctance to do so for pretty understandable reasons.
I have to admit that I was a little surprised to see this brought back up as any kind of actual character flaw. While last week did explain Juju’s extreme passion for cosplaying and general derision borne of jealousy, it doesn’t really excuse it, and seeing that her rather gatekeepy attitude has actually hurt her younger sister’s feelings is an unexpected bit of realism. I appreciate it.
Gojo is able to assure her that she should try anyway, and naturally, Shinju is quite moved. (Will this develop into a third character in the show having a crush on Gojo? It’s hard to say. I rather hope not. Anything beyond the core Gojo / Marin relationship is cruft.)
But there is an issue. The entire reason Shinju is worried about “looking weird” is that the character she wants to cosplay doesn’t match her body type at all. (A real issue that many cosplayers face! To say nothing of broader clothing availability problems.) That character? Why, a cool older brother of course.
One can see how this might be a challenge.
Nonetheless, Gojo is nothing if not a cosplay wizard. He’s able to whip together a pretty convincing outfit in a matter of what seems like mere days, using one of his own old school uniforms as a base. Now, does this sequence also contain unfunny jokes about Shinju’s boobs and weird, leering shots of the same? Unfortunately, yes. Does it completely cancel out the actual good that Gojo is attempting to do? I wouldn’t say so, since he, at least in Watsonian terms, seems to have the decency to not be attracted to a middle schooler.
Clearing that so-low-it’s-underground bar aside, this sequence shows the two building a nice friendship. It’s worth remembering that Gojo doesn’t just do all this outfit-making work on a whim, he does it because he finds it meaningful. Shinju, similarly, doesn’t want to cosplay just for fun. She wants to do it because this character means a lot to her. As Marin said several episodes back, it is a way of expressing love. It requires a fine touch.
And, hey, there’s also some genuinely funny bits in here, like the pair being shocked at the affordability of certain kinds of chest binders.
When all is said and done, the show cuts back to its present–the day of the cosplay photoshoot alluded to last week–and Marin, Juju, and us, the audience, see Shinju’s complete cosplay for the first time. It is a genuinely remarkable transformation.
The two, being cosplay otaku first and foremost, naturally freak out.
And Marin bestows upon Shinju the greatest honor any gyaru can grant to anyone.
Now, arguably, the episode could be said to undercut its own message by showing that Shinju basically does pull off a perfect cosplay of this character. But I think the intended takeaway of “trying your hardest to capture the spirit of your character is the most important thing” shines through well enough. Despite any of my qualms with it, the main shade present in this episode is one of sweetness. I think My Dress-Up Darling shines best when it’s showing its characters the love and humanity they deserve, and that is definitely true here.
Egregious Horny Score: We’re at a firm 3/5 this week. The show’s definitely been more egregious than this, but the pervy camera is back in full force. It’s unfortunate, but I’ve run out of meaningful commentary on the subject (at least for now), and it didn’t kill my positive feelings toward this episode.
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.
Believe it or not, anime fans, I’m not dead! After a rather rough week and a half I managed to recover enough this week to watch a bit more than just the bare absolute minimum of anime. I’m not quite 100% yet, to be totally honest, but hopefully you’ll enjoy my small writeup below. I won’t pretend it’s terribly likely that next week will be much beefier, given that Elden Ring just came out, but I’ll try to not make it totally barebones. 😛
Maybe I’ll end up bringing back Magic Planet Arcade, while I’m making lofty promises. Ah, that’s a joke. I suck at reviewing video games.
Seasonal Anime
Princess Connect Re:Dive Season 2
What is Princess Connect? On the surface, that’s a simple question with a number of simple answers. It’s a fantasy anime series. It’s a tie-in to the mobile game of the same name. It’s a hell of an animation showcase. Priconne is all of these things, that much is true, but one layer beneath all of that, it’s also a story about memories. Making precious ones, yes, but also about things that are forgotten, and that those who’ve forgotten them may be better off not remembering.
Even though its lead has amnesia, it took me a long time to pick up on this particular thematic thread of the series. It’s an embarrassing admission, but I’m not in the business of lying in these writeups. For anyone who’s like me and is similarly having parts of the show go over their head, this past week’s episode about a memory-altering spirit plaguing the cast should help. I won’t give you the play-by-play–the episode is great enough that if you haven’t caught up yet, you absolutely should–but it does certainly push this particular part of Princess Connect to the front and center. The spirit’s brief effects on Yuki, where he appears to remember some part of his past life, are the main plot development here.
But even outside of all that, it’s just another really great episode. Doubly welcome in the wake of the previous week’s still solid but rather puzzling story about a blind swordsman that only just barely involved our core cast at all. The fluid and expressive animation everyone’s come to expect from Princess Connect is all here, and there are some great character moments. My personal favorite being here, with Karyl and Pecorine’s romantically shaded journey to a spring.
Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 8 – “Backlighting is the Best”: On the other end of the scale entirely, we have easily the best My Dress-Up Darling episode so far. As a sidebar; how successful do you think this show would have to be for someone to make a real Flower Princess Blaze anime? I kind of want that. I kind of need that badly. Honestly, now feels like the perfect time. When Magia Record‘s third season and Tokyo Mew Mew New premiere later this year, we’ll have the second time in two years that three magical girl anime are airing at the same time. Obviously FPB couldn’t join that particular class, but in a few years, who knows? I’m just saying, anything can happen.
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!
There is a plethora of reasons I can imagine someone wanting to drop, or simply never pick up in the first place, My Dress-Up Darling. It’s a romcom, and those are not for everyone to begin with. It’s a straight romcom, so the rabidly queer segment of my readerbase (hi friends) may be inclined to dismiss it out of hand. More specifically, the show’s tonal coherence has been a victim of poorly-worked fanservice–enough so that I’ve made a running gag out of it in these columns–and occasional tasteless humor. Any and all of this, take your pick, I absolutely get why MDUD does not have universal appeal.
But in spite of everything I’ve said about it over the pastfewweeks, I continue to watch it. Partly out of obligation, yes, but also partly because I do genuinely believe it has some good ideas. When the show gets out of its own way enough for everything to truly click into place, it can pull off some spectacular stuff. Episode 8 is that spectacular stuff. It is the best-yet episode of the series by a country mile, and while it doesn’t wave away my previous criticisms of the series (it may make them all the more frustrating, really), it does point toward a path forward for this show. Romcom Hell is escapable, and My Dress-Up Darling might just find an exit yet.
Up to this point, the show’s highlights have revolved around our leads, Gojo and Marin, and they get a good turn here, too. But a good chunk of this week’s episode, “Backlighting is the Best”, is instead about Juju, a character I’d previously basically written off as a one-note joke.
Let it never be said that I am right about everything I assume about a series.
Allow me to go on a tangent for a moment, it’s the proud tradition of the editor-less internet critic.
When I was very young, there were a few shows on Cartoon Network’s nascent Toonami block I really loved. Most of them were standard fare for a young boy growing up in that period of time, and as a small AMAB child, I believed I was a young boy. So naturally, most of the cartoons I gravitated toward were “for boys.” In as much as any cartoon truly is for only one gender.
There was one exception. You’ve probably heard of it, if I had to guess.
Sailor Moon was far and away Toonami’s most successful “girl show.” They only tried their hands at a few others (one was Hamtaro, which I was also fond of), and this aspect of the block has largely been scrubbed from the current incarnation’s image. (Retroactively, its inclusion has been recontextualized as fitting the block’s “action cartoons” mission statement. Which, to be fair, it certainly did.) I haven’t seen much Sailor Moon properly–I was quite young during all this, and my memories of the show are largely a hazy jumble of disconnected images–but something about seeing this pretty soldier stomp monster ass every week while also finding the time to deal with normal teenage girl issues struck a chord with me. I liked a lot of anime characters at the time. But I never wanted to be most of them. I did want to be one of the Sailor Scouts. That’s an important distinction.
So, what do 20-year-old Gender Feelings have to do with a random mid-season episode of a romcom anime about cosplay? Well, I can’t claim the feelings are exactly the same, but Juju certainly seems to be able to relate. About halfway through the episode, Juju–nervous because they’re doing a photo shoot in an abandoned building(!)–confides in Gojo why it is that she got into cosplay in the first place. He wants to know why Juju wanted him to make her outfit, instead of any of the number of other people she could’ve contacted, and this dovetails into Juju explaining why she cares about the craft in general. I’ll just say, I found the sentiment familiar.
There’s a lot to unpack here. Juju doesn’t specifically say she had an at least somewhat unhappy home life, but the very fact that she felt compelled to seek refuge in these stories does sort of imply it. She also distills the appeal of the entire magical warrior-style mahou shoujo down to a couple sentences. It’s clear that she (and by extension, the author) have a sincere and deep love for the genre. But of course, things aren’t as simple in real life as in fiction.
Magical girls (tragically) do not exist, and Juju’s realization of that fact at a young age is what drove her to become a cosplayer in the first place. Not “the next best thing,” but the sort of sublime momentary transcendence of our everyday reality that all great art–of which cosplay, and indeed fashion in general, is certainly a part–is capable of inspiring.
Even Juju’s previous nasty attitude toward Marin is explained here. She was jealous. A jealousy that can only come from caring about something very deeply. She saw an absolutely perfect outfit and had to get in on whoever was making it. It makes total sense.
Gojo is of course deeply touched by this. Why wouldn’t he be? Someone basically just poured her heart out for him to compliment his design skills. He’s so grateful that he unthinkingly seizes her hand while muttering a thank you.
Well, a “fank you.”
My Dress-Up Darling then almost immediately resumes being My Dress-Up Darling. (Read: Juju, who goes to an all-girls school, faints from surprise, because she’s never held a guy’s hand before. Sure.) The moment is over as quickly as it began, though the somewhat doofy gag is not nearly enough to actually undercut it. The rest of the episode is actually also pretty excellent, but completely unrelated to any of this.
Instead, the rest of the photoshoot left implied, we cut to the last day of exams in Gojo and Marin’s classroom. On the spur of the moment, Marin invites Gojo to the beach, and it’s there that we spend “Backlighting is the Best”‘s final ten or so minutes.
The impromptu beach date here is just adorable. It’s naturalistic in a sincere, warm way that the show’s best moments have previously touched on but only delivered intermittently. I’ve never had trouble “buying” Marin and Gojo as a couple; they’re clearly into each other in a way that most stock romcom leads could only dream of, but if anyone has, this sequence should put all of that to rest. Gojo stoically takes in the beauty of the seaside. And the visuals do a lot to sell that nautical beauty; this entire segment has a wonderful in-direct-sunlight look. A sort of deliberate overexposure applied to the drawings themselves.
Marin, emboldened by their comparative isolation at the relatively deserted beach, asks Gojo if he’d like to spend the summer together after learning that he didn’t get out much as a kid. Gojo enthusiastically agrees, and in what is easily her cutest moment in the show so far, Marin has to quickly scuttle back to their beach blanket to hide her blushing. (She’s also developed a pretty fantastic character tic of cupping her face in a W-shape when embarrassed. It’s immensely endearing.)
There’s also a pretty incredible sequence where Marin buys a hamburger and has it stolen by a bird, proving that My Dress-Up Darling can, in fact, be genuinely really funny when it wants to be.
I would honestly not be surprised if this ends up being the show’s overall best episode. Its two halves are great in totally different ways, the directing is on-point throughout (there is a lot of creative storyboarding here, and in a general sense the episode is visually fantastic), and most importantly, it has heart. There’s actually enough good here that I didn’t even find proper space to mention some of it, such as Marin’s truly powerful Girl Dad Fashion, or the episode’s entire first third, which is mostly enjoyably nerdy talk about cameras.
This is the sort of episode that sticks with you, and I sincerely hope it points toward the direction the series intends to take as it enters its final stretch. But even if MDUD never returns to these heights again, watching the whole thing will have been made worth it by these twenty-three minutes alone. That’s worth something, and everyone who worked on this episode should be very proud.
Until next time, anime fans.
Egregious Horny Score: I’m pleased to report that we’re at a tasteful 1/5 this week. There’s a panty shot (which Gojo gets comically flustered by) as Marin frolics in the water, but aside from that single instance there isn’t anything in the episode that’s so much as mildly suggestive.
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!
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.
The Magic Planet 