My Dress-Up Darling Season 2

Episode 23

After how dramatic last week got, I'm a little surprised that the show more or less took a complete break from all the romantic tension that it had built up. Normally, I'm not a fan of that, especially when there isn't really a good narrative reason for it, but this episode won me back with it being dramatic in a different way. This was an episode that focused almost exclusively on the cosplay side of things, but instead of going over something incredibly technical or more fun facts, it chose to focus on the idea of community. I didn't think the show would do anything with Juju after bringing her back because it didn't seem like she was the type that needed to go through an arc. I know that her whole thing is about cosplaying for the sake of accuracy and not disrespecting the characters. I know that is a mentality that is a lot more common in the eastern cosplay world compared to the west. The show never really presented it as a problem, and I always figured it was just going to leave it at that, but this episode surprised me.

In a lot of ways, this episode gave us a glimpse into the futures of our characters by having them bounce off of cosplayers who are in their adult years. There's Gojo building props with Akira and bonding with her. The show gives us a little insight into her backstory, and in a lot of ways, she's very similar to Gojo. She was forced to give up her interests for the sake of appearing more adult. Yet the irony is that when she finally became an adult, she was given the freedom to indulge in the “childish” anime things that she always wanted to. The friends that she ended up making in college saved her from a life of detachment, and her friends brought her into the creative world of cosplay the same way that Marin did for Gojo.

This episode really highlights that you never really need to stop cosplaying. There are definitely some people out there who feel like you can't cosplay certain characters because of your height, your age, your skin tone, etc. Juju is the type of character who feels steadfast about this idea, refusing to cosplay certain characters because she feels like her petite figure would disrespect their presence, but since a lot of characters aren't designed with her body type, she inadvertently ends up limiting herself. This episode highlights that such a limitation ended up creating her own prison. She ended up being her own worst critic despite cosplaying for the sake of love, almost like a weird double-edged sword. She thought about quitting cosplay because there has to be a point where you have to grow out of this, but I wonder if some of this was her being tired of only being able to love this hobby in such a specifically limiting way, especially when that logic doesn't apply to her sister or the other people she interacts with.

I loved Miyako's story about how she tried on a cosplay of a character that she really respected, yet knew she was nothing like. It's daunting because you think that you'll never be able to truly pay respect to the character that might've done so much for you. But Miyako went the opposite of Juju, using those differences as a drive to get even better, experiment, and hone her craft to find ways to close that gap. Worried that you're too short? Play around with camera angles to emphasize height! Worried about your baby face? Use makeup or tape to accentuate other features! Worried about your flat chest? That's what pads are for! This episode is interesting because it went into an aspect of cosplay culture that I genuinely didn't think it had the maturity or open-mindedness to tackle with a character that I didn't think was going to do anything anymore. I have never been happier to be wrong. The warm feeling that this episode left me with genuinely makes it one of my top episodes of the entire franchise.

P.S. I'm calling it now, Akira is actually a super mega Marin fan and just feels too scared to speak when she's around

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My Dress-Up Darling Season 2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.