The cosplay friends prepare for their group photoshoot, and Akira reveals her origin story to Gojou.
Episode 23 — “I Didn’t Think Anything Good Would Ever Happen to Me”
My Dress-Up Darling Makes Me Go Hmm.
Akira’s flashbacks to giving up otaku hobbies and taking them back up in this week’s episode of My Dress-Up Darling put two literary devices on your video screen. Metaphor and theme.
Metaphors connect a specific phenomenon (image, action, emotion, etc.) in one medium to other phenomena in the wider world, especially to a reader or viewer’s experiences and memories. My Dress-Up Darling used the capsule toy machine (gachapon) as its metaphor for Akira reembracing her otaku interests as an adult.
The gachapon (or Gashapon) is where the whole random prize feature in gacha games comes from. Gacha is the sound effect word (onomatopoeia) the Japanese use to describe the sound of winding the dial of a gumball machine. It’s more random in real life than the random number generator your sexy boat mobile game uses. But it is like gambling or the lottery — you don’t win if you don’t play.
In Akira’s case, inside My Dress-Up Darling, she managed to avoid her favorite manga and anime title from when her strict mother threw out her collection from when she entered high school until after Akira entered college. But then the anime movie came out, and her mother wasn’t around anymore, so why not try? Gacha! However, Akira won more than the secret character that the movie introduced. She pulled the SSR cards of new friends with whom she could share her hobby. Something “good” happened to Akira after she reached adulthood.
Adult Material in My Dress-Up Darling? Not Like That!
And the gacha pull intersects with the theme of the My Dress-Up Darling episode: putting away childish things to become an adult. Akira’s mother, obviously, thought that manga and anime are childish things one must throw away as one grows up. That’s a lack of imagination because our beloved J-List readers and customers know how “adult” manga and anime can be from the products listed in our store! But there is a more mature (heh) question about otaku hobbies. How do you express them as an adult?
Sajuna struggled with the idea of continuing her cosplay pastime after her high school graduation. Would she have the time? How would she support it without an allowance from her parents? But thanks to one fateful rainy afternoon in My Dress-Up Darling, episode 6, Sajuna connected with Gojou and Marin. Through these high school kids, she met adults who shared her interests. That was the answer Sajuna needed: adults make friends through sharing their hobbies! Like, duh. It’s only simple in hindsight.
Here’s another advantage adults have over childish expressions of hobbies: money. Of course, people can go overboard, spending too much on merchandise, collectibles, and subscription services. And it can feel like adults only work to support the fun things they do outside of their job, as Suzuka mentioned. That’s also called having a life! So, the lesson My Dress-Up Darling teaches using the theme of keeping pastimes from childhood into adulthood is to share them with others and to earn money. I can suggest a place to plunk down your “adult” coins in the gachapon of life!
Heh.
Every cosplay otaku needs an “origin story.” Here’s Akira’s. Her mother threw away all her manga and related merchandise. Akira didn’t regain her otaku hobbies until a fateful gacha pull in college. These three mysterious figures will relate to Marin, I’m sure. Her favorite looks like Black Lobelia. Is that why Akira has such strong feelings about Marin, that the loud gyaru cosplayed as her favorite character? There’s your My Dress-Up Darling prologue.
Marin and Shinju obtain supplies for their next cosplay adventure. That means food before the shoot. Whoa, flashback! We return to the karaoke box where Shinju met the older cosplay girls. Shinju explained how Sajuna cosplays characters who fit her body, but that always meant letting go of tall, busty types. Hoh! Miyako knows how to turn Sajuna into Black Lobelia! They’ll lay a surprise trap to convince the stubborn cosplayer when she’s most vulnerable. Will it be that easy? In My Dress-Up Darling? Doubtful. Marin and Shinju had such happy expectations, but Sajuna hates surprises. Wait! Miyako knows how to make corrections for Sajuna’s flat chest and baby face! Wh-what? That’s not why Sajuna refuses to cosplay adult characters! Convinced!
Meanwhile, Akira is at Gojou’s house. He brought another single girl home while the house was empty. Grandpa Gojou thought a “teacher” would show his grandson how to do “this-and-that.” My Dress-Up Darling crosses all the kink-streams here. Suzuka and Miyako start work on Sajuna’s transformation. They’re playing with a living dress-up doll, too! Bust up her, uh, bust! Aw. Sajuna never had cleavage before. Miyako explains how camera angles and framing can fool the eye through tricks of perspective. And Miyako has ten years of cosplay experience. She has tricks she can show Sajuna.
Gacha Drops and Sketchy Angles Mean We Win!
Oof. This dinner scene for Coffin won’t be the cutesy, sisterly versions Gojou saw at the beginning of the game. Keep your eye on the ball! Or used colored contact lenses, at any rate, for My Dress-Up Darling. Cakes get the glue and dough treatment. Ooh. Akira told Gojou how Miyako and Suzuka dragged her into their cosplay circle in college. She was the one playing the ultra-busty boss of those bunny girl assassins at the casino set! Where does she hide those things under her slim, black turtleneck?
Akira brings us back to her capsule toy flashback and how she met Miyako and Suzuka again as fellow otaku, instead of seminar classmates. Akira pulled super-rare cards that day! There’s the My Dress-Up Darling, episode 23, title. Akira, like Ameno, had issues with accepting herself as she was. She’s a manga, anime, and video game NERD! The stigma is still too much for some traditional families.
How did that gacha pull for Black Lobelia go at the other house? Jackpot! Sajuna impressed the only critic who matters: her little sister, Shinju. Marin liked it, too. Yoshi. Time to take pictures! This is all an impromptu (not really) Flower Princess Blaze cosplay photo shoot. Almost everyone in My Dress-Up Darling plotted to drag Sajuna into this surprise group cosplay event about a week ago.
Miyako issues orders for lens placement to make Sajuna look tall. This is why you should never believe any picture you find on the internet, which was true even before the age of AI. Except all the photographers look like perverted upskirt molesters. I hope Shinju doesn’t bust out of her costume like the last time. How sad that would be (sarcasm detected). Marin cosplays cross-dressing here, too.
My Dress-Up Darling Grows Up into an Adult Otaku
Let’s have a heartfelt discussion about giving up cosplay. Sajuna thought she would have to do that after she graduated from high school. However, Miyako and Suzuka provided perspectives on how to stay true to themselves. Sajuna would have known many older people still cosplaying as middle-aged and senior-aged adults if she had attended conventions and cosplay events. Better yet, adults earn money to pay for this expensive hobby!
Gojou understands how grateful Akira feels toward Miyako and Suzuka because Marin also dragged him into a wider world of content creation and fulfillment. Can My Dress-Up Darling now give us the reason for Akira’s aversion to Marin? Not yet! The prop masters made eyeballs while the “talent” made takoyaki balls! Ah hahaha! Marin is a popular, flashy gyaru, so of course, she picked up on Akira’s mood. Does Akira hate her? For real? All signs point to an overly complicated anime cop-out reason.
My Dress-Up Darling (Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru) streams on Crunchyroll in Japanese with multiple language subtitles.
How fun for Suzuka and Miyako to strong-arm Sajuna into a bonus cosplay session! I would have preferred to see Shinju and Marin in sexier outfits. But at least we saw the sketchy upskirt moments. Are you ready to see sexy nuns for the final episode? Let us pray in the comments below!
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