My Dress Up Darling Episode 9 - Yes It Can Be More Adorable

Last week I asked whether My Dress Up Darling could get any more adorable. Episode 9 answers with a definitive yes. I’ll admit, cute isn’t the be all and end all for me and if that is all an anime has then eventually it is going to run into the problem of holding your interest (platelets and little mummies are an exception to this rule). My Dress Up Darling is so cute and yet a lot of the cuteness comes because these characters are awesome.

However, leaving aside cute and adorable, there were just so many moments this week that made me smile. My Dress Up Darling has managed to build a decent working relationship between Juju and Marin that has enough chemistry even while Juju maintains her distance as a little more stand-offish. I loved it when Marin expressed that she seldom got comments on her photos on social media and Juju pointed out it was because mostly she took pictures of food (and then proceeded to diss Marin’s cooking though she didn’t know it).

Sure My Dress Up Darling is cute but it’s also grounded.

One of the things I really am liking about My Dress Up Darling is that all of these characters feel like real people. They have flaws and concerns and they make mistakes and they get excited over really little things and they are just great to watch.

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I’m also loving that Marin and Gojo are both in a way acting as proxy’s for the audience as they are both new to actually cosplaying (while Marin new a bit about it she’d never tried it properly before meeting Gojo and he knew nothing about it). That means there’s plenty to learn about costumes, make-up and wigs and yet it feels organic and not like a massive info-dump.

If I was to have one complaint this week it would be around Shinju’s character. Now Shinju is a great addition and I loved her chemistry with Marin last week. This week, Gojo realises she actually wants to try cosplay to and decides to help her out which naturally leads to some fan-service and poor comedy moments revolving around the size of her bust given the character she wants to cosplay is actually a guy.

Much like Juju’s initial introduction, My Dress Up Darling seems to just push that little bit too far when first establishing this new character. Hopefully, as we saw with Juju, now that they’ve gotten that out of their system, they might start treating her a little less like a gimmick and just let her be who she is going forward. I mean, Marin still gets plenty of fan-service moments (like lifting her skirt to show off her bathing suit and even flashing her bra) but those moments feel more ingrained with the character and story rather than tacked on extras.

Certainly the smiling, happy photos of the three ready to start their first cosplay photo-session were a welcome close to the episode and honestly it was great seeing how excited they all were to get started. I hope we get to see the actual posed photos from the shoot because those costumes looked amazing.

Minor complaints about character introductions aside, My Dress Up Darling remains the feel-good show of the season and one that really appeals to me as an anime fan. Actually, I’m really hoping covid has settled to the point where my plans to cosplay as Sailor Jupiter might actually happen later this year. Though there’s a lot of maybes around that, watching this has definitely made me keen to go for it and honestly I’m now getting inspired to put a lot more effort into it then I originally intended. We’ll see how that goes.

In the meantime, I’m loving this anime and hopefully it continues to make me smile until the end.

Images from: My Dress Up Darling. Dir. K Shinohara. CloverWorks. 2022