So, I recently had the pleasure of watching “My Dress-Up Darling” (or その着せ替え人形は恋をする / “Sono kisekae ningyou wa koi wo suru” for the original title) with a friend. For the most part, I really enjoyed the experience, but there’s a couple points that I found somewhat to highly questionable, and in the end it made me want to talk about the series in more detail in a post. Here we go again.

Please note that this article contains spoilers and I won’t mark them. Proceed at your own risk.

The Good

As I said previously, the series was very enjoyable to watch. That said, I have a rather hard time pointing my finger to why exactly this is the case. For the most part, it just feels like the series has a great flow. We binged the entire thing, which I usually find somewhat tiring even with good anime. That wasn’t the case here, often it felt like the episodes were over in the blink of an eye. That’s all the more impressive, considering that there are a couple episodes in which little to nothing of importance happens. Watching Gojou and Marin is just fun I guess.

I would classify the series as a rather typical romcom. There honestly isn’t that much to really set it apart from most stories in the genre, but a couple things stood out nonetheless. Perhaps the first thing was how genuine it felt right from the start. We follow Gojou, a 15 year old guy who is fascinated by traditional Japanese Hina dolls, and has been trying to make them since he was a little kid. But as a result, he’s become a bit of an eccentric loner with no friends at school. His social awkwardness is compounded by his tragic past, where apparently some girl found out he makes Hina dolls, and then, I quote, said “Why do you like girls' dolls even though you’re a boy? That’s creepy! I hate you!”

…yea honestly that part was stupidly weak, you couldn’t be any less shallow and generic. It still does the job I guess. What follows, though, easily turns the weak backstory around. We see Gojou sitting in his classroom in the middle of a break, and he listens to his classmates talking. Various topics come up, whether it’s club activities, some TV show, a famous actor or other things. It all confirms to him: he has nothing in common with these people and there’s nothing they could possibly talk about. He doesn’t fit in with them.

I’ve seen too many iterations of the “loner highschool boy” to count, particularly in romance manga, and they are mostly incredibly dull characters. It’s not like you need a good reason to be or become a loner at school, but the usual depictions are not enough to actually relate to these characters and their situations. Gojou and his introduction are different, for two reasons.

First of all, the series actually manages to get the feeling across. The feeling of isolation was relatable in a way that few of the other loner-protagonists managed. It’s not like the series did anything super special here, but the scene I just described already worked wonders for my perception of Gojou.

Secondly, Gojou has a “reason” for why he’s alone. While his “obscure” hobby should not really prevent him from making friends, and his “trauma” was introduced in a rather weak way, the series still managed to make it convincing. Gojou is passionate about making Hina dolls and seems to spend his entire free time on practicing. It’s a hobby, perhaps even more like a calling, that he really cares about. He stays up late when he’s “in the flow”, and that’s something very relatable for a software developer like me. As a consequence, he spends no time in clubs at school, and otherwise has no common interests with his classmates. It is a simple, yet convincing background for our loner protagonist. It also makes him instantly more interesting than the typical protagonist, as he has some actual drive and skills. He works hard for his goals, and the perceived distance to his classmates is merely a side product of this.
I also love how his clothes emphasize this aspect of him. When he’s not wearing his school uniform, he always wears this traditional clothing… uh, I have no idea what it’s called. Complete with the wooden shoes. That is just him.

After his first encounter with Marin, he happens to overhear a conversation with her and her friends. It is basically a story of some guy she met making fun of the anime figure she had on her backpack, and closed with her saying “You just don’t make fun of what other people like.”
They weren’t even talking to each other, but it was exactly what Gojou needed to hear, and was perhaps the greatest possible start to their relationship. In a way, she indirectly assured him that she isn’t like the the girl from his “trauma”, but would respect him and his passion for what it is.

Marin is mostly living the genki-Gyaru archetype. I’m not a big fan of the trope, and it typically struggles with being a very superficial character. While I wouldn’t call Marin a particulary interesting or deep character, this was a good introduction for her, giving her already a bit more depth than most genki-girls. Again, while the scene I just described isn’t anything particularly new or interesting, the show delivered her declaration in a way that seemed heartfelt and sincere. This is also what I meant when I said “I can’t point my finger” to why it works for me. It just works.
To clarify, I don’t believe that stories have to do anything special, new, creative or innovative to be enjoyable. Some of the best shows out there are just decent executions of the cliches and tropes we’ve known for ages. Dress-Up Darling is a good example of this.

In any case, Marin’s entire character is another such case for me. As I said, I’m not a big fan of the genki-girl archetype. Most of the time, they seem a bit too hyper and end up annoying me, while also being mostly boring characters. But Marin just… works for me. She isn’t the most interesting character either, and still seems to fulfill the genki-girl trope all too well, but still… Well, I can’t express it any better, so let’s move on.

Another positive was how the anime *mostly* showed a lot of trope awareness, avoiding the majority of the romcom tropes I hate so, so much. Sometimes this was also used for great comedy. Marin introducing the plot of the game she wanted to cosplay a character from, and basically recounting a painfully generic and tropey harem/hentai plot was peak. Another moment that, in itself, doesn’t seem too funny but the anime delivers it to great effect.

All in all, I liked how their relationship developed. The series really emphasized the start of their relationship by how their passions synergized, in a way, instead of being all forced romance-y from the outset. Marin managed to convey her passion for her favorite media and cosplaying, and made Gojou feel like he wants to support her in her endeavour. That said, I still feel like the series should have talked a bit more about how his work making costumes for her affects his own practices. The series mentioned at some point inbetween that he barely got to practice. Then later it is mentioned how his work on Marin’s outfits and makeup actually improved his craft. While I really liked the synergy here, it is a bit hard to believe. He has objectively less time to practice now, and him helping Marin is a direct impediment to his own passion, in some way.

Anyway, getting back to their relationship: to me it felt like mostly natural and believable development. While Marin’s innate confidence gave them a bit of a headstart, they really do feel like good friends at some point. They watch anime together, she sometime comes over to eat with them so he can fix her questionable diet etc. The latter is another great example for how the show avoids common bad romance tropes: often the main girl is shown to be completely inept when it comes to doing anything around the household and would probably die from malnutrition without the main guy. Here, it is instead shown that Marin’s nutrition is just not particularly healthy, so Gojou’s grandfather invites her over. It feels natural and realistic. It also means she neither seems like an absolute failure of a human being, nor does it make her overly dependent on Gojou. This is further emphasized by how she tries to cook herself, and actually somewhat succeeds. I was also lowkey expecting her room to be a dirty mess when Gojou visited her the first time, but no. It was a normal, clean room, with a ton of merch from Marin’s favorite media. A positive surprise and perfectly in-character.

It takes almost half the anime for Marin to realize that she’s in love with Gojou. At this point it feels like a well-paced and believable payoff at the end of what could be a movie. Also, Marin fawning over Gojou is absolutely adorable. Again, the show avoids most shitty romance tropes here. She’s not “head-over-heels” for him in a way that she would do unconditionally everything for him and loses any bit of character in the process. She doesn’t turn into a tsundere either, and is still able to control herself like… a normal person. I feel like I’m repeating myself here, but this is stuff that I’m seriously worried about when watching a show like this. I have very little faith in good execution and I’m always expecting my worst fears to come true when the situation presents itself. You may think that “My Dress-Up Darling” has proven itself at this point, but… eh, we’ll see about that later.

There’s a ton of other plain good moments I could mention here, but I’m not sure they’d really add anything. Let me just say that there was some great comedy as well.

The Cosplaying

The way cosplay was integrated into the show was great in pretty much every possible way. First of all, I like how the show managed to get the passion for this hobby across, to some extent. We continuously got glimpses of the work that goes into it, whether it’s details on fabric, wigs, makeup, photography etc. It is easy to write a story around a certain subject, but presenting it in a way that catches the viewer’s interest and maybe even teaches them something new entirely, is a totally different beast. I feel like most stories like this end up making it too technical, providing info dumps at random intervals that are too detailed and simultaneously not interesting enough for the audience to care. “If my Heart had Wings” would be a great example of this. I’ll turn this into a link to the article when I actually get around to writing about that game… anyway, Dress-Up Darling has none of these problems. While I have no knowledge about cosplaying from other sources and thus cannot comment on the depth or accuracy of how cosplaying is depicted in the show, from my perspective, it was really well done. It captured a wide variety of aspects through the making of the custome, photography and finally conventions, but also kept the details at a level that was interesting to follow.

Thematically, it also fits perfectly. The underlying message is that, while it may take a lot of hard work, you can be whoever you want. While cosplay is obviously focused on looks only, this doesn’t weaken the message. It is something that fits Marin’s character all too well. She expresses herself in all the ways she wants, and no one can stop her. It also underlines her model function for Gojou. I wonder if he’ll eventually take part in the cosplaying himself. I think it would make for great closure for him. All in all, the way cosplaying was integrated into the show was done amazingly well.

The Bad

Now that I’ve talked at length about almost everything I liked about the show, it’s time to get to the ugly stuff. Let me stress again that I really enjoyed Dress-Up Darling. That is all the more reason why the points I’m going to mention bother me so much. Some of them drag down the show as a whole. While the comparison may not fit too well, the experience reminds me a little of Sword Art Online. Both are shows that I enjoyed very much, and that makes their obvious shortcomings all the more painful.

Let’s start with the biggest problem: the ecchi.
Oh boy, the ecchi. Before going deeper into this, let me say that I’m not the biggest fan of ecchi in general. While I can appreciate the horny, in many anime it doesn’t feel too fitting… I guess? In most shows, ecchi is something that I mostly ignore as best as I can. It rarely adds anything, at least for me. That said, it doesn’t usually break the experience for me. I’ll ignore the ecchi and that’s fine for me. It may still leave a bad impression, but that’s usually weak at best. There are even shows where the ecchi is a part of their DNA and it sort of fits, see KonoSuba for example.

Dress-Up Darling is different. The ecchi here hits you like a ton of bricks when you least expect it. It left a strong negative impression and seriously dragged down the whole experience. The ecchi here is overdone, feels out of place, and sometimes wholly distasteful.

Overdone

Episode 2 is easily the biggest offender here. It is only the second episode, yet we get an entire 10 minute sequence of Marin in an overly revealing swimsuit, just to take her measurements. I mean, I get that taking measurements is part of the job, and I’m not expecting them to skip it, but… honestly it’s everything about that sequence. Absolutely everything is wrong with it, so I don’t even know where to start.

Marin strips down to her underwear in front of a guy she’d only talked to twice before. She wears a swimsuit of “the sexy kind”. She eventually sprawls herself on Gojous bed in a way that is obviously supposed to be seductive. The entire scene drags on for 10 minutes. 10 minutes which is basically spent taking measurements and nothing else. I don’t remember anything of relevance happening here, and I’m not going to watch it again to refresh my memory. The scene was simply uncomfortable to watch. It is unnecessarily dragged out to the extreme, it does practically nothing for the plot, it isn’t funny. After a good start in episode 1, the second episode made me feel like I’m watching the intro to a hentai. This is not an exaggeration or a joke.

The scene gets even worse due to how much it dwells on Gojou’s embarassment. I mean, I kind of get it. He’s been a loner for so long, and being asked to suddenly get all up and close with a half-naked beauty maybe a bit much. The show makes it sufficiently obvious he’s both sort of horny but also very uncomfortable. It really makes sense given his background. But I didn’t need a 10 minute montage of him freezing up whenever he comes close to touching Marin. It was clear after the first time. It didn’t need to be dragged out for this long, and it sure as hell doesn’t need to be repeated again every other episode.

Honestly, his reactions kinda crept me out. I get that the situation is uncomfortable, but then you either refuse or just do it goddamit. The task he’s been given isn’t difficult by any means. But freezing up and staring at Marin is fucking creepy.
In fact, the scene as a whole shows an insane lack of consideration of both characters for each other. Marin knows no shame whatsoever, and apparently that means she doesn’t realize what sort of discomfort she’s causing Gojou. Gojou on the other hand is treating her in the most disrespectful way he could in that situation. She’s the one getting half naked in front of him, and it’s his responsibility to get it over with, not drag it out unnecessarily and not make it any weirder than it has to be. There were scenes where he would stand behind her for 20 seconds effectively doing nothing but staring at her and having a mental breakdown. If she did not have zero shame, as mentioned before, the entire situation would have to be unimaginably uncomfortable for her.

It is not only this scene of course, though it is an extreme example of the show dropping an ecchi bomb almost out of nowhere and absolutely overdoing it in every way. Other than that, we’ll regularly get Marin’s panty shots, Marin in her underwear, Marin in all sorts of sexy cosplay and non-cosplay outfits etc. And sure as hell, Gojou is too embarassed to act like a normal person almost every single time. You’d think he’d get at least somewhat used to it over the course of the show, but nope… in episode ELEVEN he still complains about her being too close… when they’re just sitting next to each other. I mean… come on, you two have watched an entire 128 episode anime together from her couch. How is this still bothering you? And again, his behavior as a whole would creep me out. It also gets boring rather quick, it’s not funny either and at some point his characterization is sufficiently well established that there’s no need to show us these reactions time and time and time again.

As a whole, the ecchi scenes and whatever is connected to them feel so weirdly…

Out of place

Seventy percent of the time, the show seems to portrait itself as a cute and wholesome romance. And as long as it does that, it works really well. The ending perfectly encapsulates how the show feels at its best. And when you least expect it you get another random panty shot from Marin. Just… why.

Think of that scene on the convention, where she wore her first cosplay made by Gojou. A woman asked her for photos at the end. Gojou watches them, and has a slightly sentimental moment of introspection where he realizes that their time together might come to an end after this. And, boom - a breeze of wind and a panty shot of Marin. Why? Seriously, why? Moments like this make me want to scream with frustration. This is not only cramming ecchi no one needed into a show for some fan service. It is deliberately breaking the tone of the entire show just to give us some horny. Way too often the ecchi clashes with whatever is currently happening. And in general, it breaks with the show’s overall feeling of “cute and wholesome romance” it seems to want to uphold the rest of the time.

Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t have any problem with it if the show seriously treated theirs as a sexual relationship. But it is not. There’s actually loads of sexual tension in the show, but it doesn’t really go beyond that. It’s difficult to describe. Sexual tension, but not really physical attraction behind that? Like both characters are actually too innocent for that? Not sure what I want to say here. But in any case, it often feels like someone took a really good innocent romance and then sprinkled a ton of ecchi over it as an afterthought. It feels so out of place it actually breaks with both every scene it happens in and the show’s tone in general.

There were two separate occassions where the show made me feel like I’m watching the intro to a hentai. How do you even manage to go this wrong?

I feel like the entire problem arises from an inherent contradiction in Marin’s characterization. She’s the genki-gyaru and seems like a bit of an airhead at times, so it isn’t too surprising initially that, apparently, she knows no shame when it comes to showing off her bare skin in front of that guy she only talked to for the first time a couple days ago. That in itself is already rather difficult to believe, but I was quick to accept it while watching. After thinking about it for a bit though, it doesn’t line up. The rest of the show wants to make us think that she’s an innocent young maiden in love. That’s how she’s depicted, outside of the ecchi scenes at least.

But there’s a huge difference between knowing no shame, and being entirely comfortable showing off, or even “using” your body. What we see in episode 2 suggests that she has no problem with that either. She poses on Gojou’s bed in a way that is obviously and intentionally seductive. There are various other moments in the show where her behavior could be described as deliberately seductive, and ultimately it feels… off. She cannot be completely unaware of what kind of effect her being naked in front of Gojou has on him, and at the same time try to seduce (?) him. It feels contradictory.

It becomes the most obvious when at some point down to road she actually does feel embarassment as she’s half-naked in front of Gojou. On the one hand it perfectly fit the scene as a whole and the image of “innocent Marin”, and on the other hand it feels like a completely random contradiction to her characterization that was established over the course of the entire previous half of the show. They chose a single moment in the entire show where she suddenly feels embarassed about showing off her naked skin, when it hasn’t bothered her the least at any point before that, or at any point after that. It’s almost like she has two personalities and she switches to “ecchi Marin” whenever she strips down.

Moving on to the third section on how the ecchi bothered me: Some of it was plain…

Distasteful

This is an overall feeling that accompanied most of the ecchi scenes to some extent, simply due to how they felt badly integrated with the rest of the show. But there were a couple moments that threw me for a loop because they felt so damn wrong.

Easily the worst one is our introduction to Sajuna. The entire scene has exactly zero right to exist. It is distasteful to the extreme. To quote myself from a couple thousand words ago: Absolutely everything is wrong with it, so I don’t even know where to start.

First of all: the bathroom scene. Guy walks in on girl in the bathroom. Why? Why is this a thing? This one might take the crown for the shittiest romance (?) trope out there. The fact that I have to tag this as a romance trope in itself is plain disgusting. Anyway. When I said earlier that I like how the show avoids most of the shitty romance tropes… I take it all back. This scene makes up for everything they’ve avoided so far.

So, Gojou opens the bathroom door and finds naked Sajuna in front of him, who apparently just got ouf of the bath. Part of the classic trope is of course, how he fails to act like any decent person would and instead stands there, staring at Sajuna dumbfounded for… several seconds (?) before eventually closing the door.
It can’t be that hard. Walking in on someone in the bathroom? It can happen, I guess. But if it does… just close the fucking door. Immediately. Gojou really didn’t need any more material to help underline his “creep” image from the ecchi scenes. Not to mention he lowkey walked in on her intentionally.

But wait, the shitshow isn’t over yet. He doesn’t just walk in on naked Sajuna, no. In her surprise she slips on the wet floor and lands in the most unfavorable position possible, with… no I’m going to spare myself the description. Fuck I’m just trying to watch a cute romcom. Why does it have to make me feel this disgusted?

Oh did you think that’s it? I totally forgot to mention that Sajuna is a loli. I’m running out of words to express my aggravation and frustration, so I’ll stop trying. And honestly, I’m confused. Why is this scene here? Does that one shot of Sajuna only half-covered by her towel actually make people horny? Because otherwise I don’t get it. The scene doesn’t do anything for the show. It adds nothing to the plot, it is not funny, it is just plain repulsive.

Okay, enough of this scene. There’s another one that deserves mentioning though. The show very casually implied that when Marin sent Gojou a picture of her in a swimsuit, he jacked off to that.
… what the fuck. I thought that scene from IMHHW with Ma Boi secretly taking pictures of his (female) friends as they’re playing around in their swimsuits was the peak of plain weird and creepy. Congrats to Dress-Up Darling for beating this with some casual side-remark.

…I feel like writing this section lowkey left some psychological damage, so I’m gonna take a break now and finish this article another day.

Whew, 9 hours later and I feel much better. Moving on.

To get back to Sajuna, after the bath scene she was also trying to blackmail Gojou into making an outfit for her, by threatening to report him for sexual harassment. This is soon forgotten as Marin gets all excited about the prospect of working with Sajuna and Gojou readily agrees. But it still leaves a bitter aftertaste.

The way Sajuna is introduced also made her feel like Harem bait at first, which is completely unnecessary and out of place in this show. While it’s implied that she also falls in love with Gojou later, she was never proactive about it in a way that interferes with our main ship, so at least it didn’t bother me much in the end.

Oh yea, and then there’s that scene a couple episodes later where Marin takes a bath at Gojou’s house. She tells him not to peek and how “if we were in a manga that would definitely happen”. You know, this would be funny if exactly that didn’t happen only four episodes earlier. That way, this scene feels almost insulting by how the series indirectly tells us that they’re “aware” but… apparently don’t care.

Finally, let’s not forget how both girls tracked down Gojou by stalking him either online or in real life. Okaaaaaay…

Marin

I also wanted to take a moment to talk about Marin in a bit more detail. Overall she still has the typical “Poster girl syndrome” which is a bit disappointing. What she has in terms of looks and pure charm, she’s unfortunately lacking in depth and other interesting aspects. That alone doesn’t bother me too much: as I said before, the show works really well the way it is. Where this does become problematic is in the imbalance this creates in her relationship with Gojou. Marin provides the pretty, the sunshine and the model function for Gojou. Gojou provides everything else. Marin’s cosplaying is only possible because Gojou is putting incredible amounts of work into it for her. She helps little to not at all. He doesn’t get paid and doesn’t get anything else out of that except that it allows him to spend time with Marin. If someone asked me “isn’t he just being used by her?”, I’m honestly not sure what I would tell them besides that it doesn’t feel that way.
Unfortunately, the show seems completely unaware of this imbalance. When Marin and Gojou went out shopping for her first costume, he actually offered to pay part of the material. This makes no sense whatsoever. At this point they cannot even be called friends yet and this is all for the satisfaction of Marin’s private interests. Gojou does not only have no obligation to cover some of the costs, it would be plain weird if he did.

There was that one moment after Gojou finished the first outfit, where Marin realized what she’d put him through. Good moment actually, but it had no consequences besides her understanding that these things take time. To be honest I’m not sure what I’m expecting here. I’m not saying she should learn how to make costumes herself, but I can’t help but feel like their relationship is lopsided in a way that isn’t healthy in the long term.

On a side note, Marin is drawn in a way that is supposed to be very pretty, and it mostly works. But sometimes it feels like they’re overdoing it, at which point she looks a bit uncanny. I think it mostly happens due to her mouth being too wide.

In any case, I think that’s all I had to say on the show. As usual, while it may not have sounded like it, I can recommend watching it. When it is good, it really is good. Besides, I might be particularly sensitive to the things that bothered me here.

Anyway, that’s it from me. For the next article, I’ll probably return to where this blog started.