Welcome to my review of the anime of My Dress-Up Darling or Sono Bisuku Dōru wa Koi o Suru
My Dress-Up Darling starts with introducing Wakana Gojo, A first-year high school student, who likes Hina dolls, which are these Japanese dolls that do look kinda creepy, and due to this he has low self-esteem and is reclusive due to a bitter memory of being criticized by his childhood friend, who thought a boy should not be playing with girl dolls, which prompted him to hide his love for Hina dolls and had no friends during this time. This character might seem very cliche, and you’ll be right at first, ‘Normal shy high school boy suddenly has his world turned around by a girl but as the story continues you’ll see why this isn’t like that. Gojo as a character is great here, his actions and what he says is consistent and his panic moments are just funny.
Now the star of the show, Marin Kitagawa. A beautiful girl with the appearance of a gyaru and is in the same class as Gojo. On the complete opposite side of the spectrum, she is very social, being able to talk to almost anyone, and she is an Otaku, and she likes a wide range of media, from Magical Girls to Otome, to even Eroge. Believe it or not, she meets Gojo by falling from the sky… yes, falling. She trips on something and hits her head on Gojo’s desk… She actually meets him formally whenever they meet in the Home-Ed room while she was trying to do cosplay, and failing to do so. So then she acts as if Gojo could sew and make a cosplay, which he’s able to and makes it.
Nowa Sugaya… Who? I’m kidding, she is a friend of Marin that appears only a few times, and is mostly seen at school with Marin whenever she isn’t with Gojo… I will say something though… WHY DOES SHE HAVE SO LITTLE SCREEN TIME, makes me sad. Since most of the anime is set in Summer Vacation, we don’t really see her much apart from the first few EP, and then she’s just never to be seen again, apart from a cameo she makes on the final EP.
Next up are the Inui sisters, Sajuna, loli, Shinju, Milf. Done.
Nah for real, Sajuna, also known as Juju is actually the 2nd year of an All-Girls private HS, and despite being a year older than Gojo and Marin, she has a small figure and could be seen as either a Middle or Elementary schooler, because yes. She is another cosplayer and one that Marin looks up to. At first, it seemed like this unknown person, but one day she got hit with rain, while trying to go somewhere, and ended up at the Gojo Dolls store and residence. Once there the grams invite Sajuna inside, where she decides to take a shower… and knowing this is a fanservice Anime you can see where this is going… And then funny enough she asks after the fact if she could do cosplay for her too, once she saw Marins she wanted one from Gojo, which because of the stuff that happened before wasn’t enough… He accepts.
Shinju is someone we meet a little later, and is the YOUNGER SISTER, what? Yeah, this anime went with the Big girl's small body, and the small girl's big boba because why the fuck not? I mean I’m not hating it but man, this is just… weird. She is the photographer of Sajuna and helps pick locations too for the shoots, but deep inside she wants to be a cosplayer too with her sister, which of course, Gojo helps with.
The story of My Dress-Up Darling is fairly simple, Gojo starts as a shy boy who doesn’t have any friends, which changes once he meets Marin.
The episodes themselves seem to be mostly episodic, which is normal with slice-of-life, there was only one episode that does go back, and that is the 3 episodes with Sajuna and Shinju, the rest is pretty much its own thing within the series. The love story is kept a secret from each other until the very end, which added that nice touch to the relationship and the awkward moments they had, and while Gojo never “had” that love for her, Marin, on the other hand, couldn’t stop thinking about how much she loves Gojo which is an interesting thing to see and makes the relationship seem more wholesome and funny at the same time with subs saying “I wub him”. This is truly a great anime for how it wanted to tell it’s a romantic story, funny, secret, and fanservice. Yeah, another thing this anime has going for it is the fanservice that is in it. While not every Episode had it, it still had it in the vast majority of the season, which doesn't ruin the experience, though it did get criticized along the way, so while it is part of the series, it isn’t terrible. Most of the comedic moments come from the fanservice, although I will admit that I could laugh at almost anything, so I’m not the best person to deem something funny.
The animation for this anime is fantastic, and Cloverworks had no reason to make it this good, they've worked on other good-looking series like Wonder Egg Priority, Horimiya, and Darling in the Franxx, while I haven’t seen two of those, from what I’ve seen it looks pretty good. My Dress-Up Darlings animation just has this feel of realism in it that I haven’t seen from another studio up to this point, the colors, the lighting, and the composition of everything surrounding where we are is just done perfectly for almost every scene. A great example of this is whenever we get to see Marin and Juju taking pictures, it shows that photography moment, and I as a photographer myself was amazed as to how much I could relate to how each image feels and how good it feels whenever you a get a good shot of someone.
Soundwise, it was ok… Now I’m not very picky about music and that goes for anything, when something amazes me it wow’s me, although most of the time I just say meh, and that’s pretty much what I got to say, I don’t really have an opinion of the matter just because nothing really stood out for me. What I can say is that in the final fireworks scene, I genuinely enjoyed that moment, and replayed it a couple of times, it really did wow me with what Cloverworks did in the scene and the sound as well, really well done and it sets that tone of what that scene is supposed to represent.
I have nothing else to say, the anime is easily one of my favorites, and for all the reasons I’ve stated above, it’s great in everything: The story, the characters, the animation, etc. And because of the anime, the Manga sold a lot more with 2 million as of recording, truly something cool if you ask me.
Well, thanks for reading, I apologize for any mistakes made, I do hope it’s good enough to show my two cents on the show, bye.
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