My Dress-Up Darling

Episode 9

I must say this episode of My Dress-Up Darling did leave me with a bit of a weird feeling. On the one hand, I think it encapsulates a lot of the major emotional and technical considerations that aspiring cosplayers who are more insecure or trepidatious about entering the world of cosplay have. There have been plenty of people that I've come across in real life who want to dress up as their favorite characters but feel that they can't. Some of that does come down to monetary limitations. Cosplaying is an expensive hobby, and we can't always afford to find a person like Gojo to make super detailed outfits for us to wear. Sometimes you have to make practical concessions, and I love how this episode explores cosplaying on a budget from repurposing everyday clothing to finding solutions to costume malfunctions. In fact, I would go so far as to say that this is probably one of the more technical episodes the series has had so far. However, that's not the part that I'm conflicted about; rather it's the emotional impetus for why the characters were putting together this cosplay in the first place.

After all the setup for the long-anticipated group photoshoot, the show introduces a rather well-foreshadowed curveball: Gojo realizes that Inui's sister actually does want to cosplay but feels as if she can't because she has never done it before and doesn't think that she can do the character she wants to portray justice. Even though we know there's no way that Inui would disavow her sister for not getting a cosplay done perfectly, I can understand why she would think that way, given the already established mindset about cosplay which Inui is far from alone in sharing. In fact, in my experience, the desire for complete and utter accuracy is a pretty dominant mindset and, when taken to an extreme, can lead to situations like gatekeeping or people feeling too intimidated to even start. Overall, I like this twist as it's an emotional beat that a more general audience with no experience cosplaying could empathize with. What I'm not 100% on, however, is where the show lands on the solution for this problem; or rather, I think that it could've gone further in addressing those insecurities.

When Gojo explains that, after going to events and doing research, he began to understand how cosplay is something that anybody can do, I really felt that. I also like the fact that the show used the previous cosplay event that Gojo and Marin attended as a way to establish this, making it clear that people of all different genders and body types were cosplaying characters from a variety of different shows. I know it might sound cliche if you've been in the cosplay community for a while, but the whole idea of “anybody can cosplay” is something that I feel like a lot of people forget. However, I can't help but feel like the show isn't really practicing what it preached; when Inui's sister is specifically concerned that her body type doesn't match the character that she wants to portray, the proposed solution to that is to basically use every resource available to alter her body shape in the name of accuracy. Maybe this just comes down to my personal sensibilities, but I don't really feel like that addresses the body insecurities that she was expressing here. It makes the message feel less like "anybody can cosplay whatever they want" and more like "we have the technology to make you look like anybody that you want". So in a way I can't help but feel like the show sided with that prevailing idea of prioritizing accuracy above all else here, which compromises its more general and relatable message of cosplay being accessible to anyone. It's difficult because I like the resolution and I felt the emotion at the end, but it does make me wonder if the show will keep defaulting to this idea of aspiring towards complete accuracy. For example, I wonder how the episode would've ended if the sister had a body shape or facial features that just couldn't be altered with the standard tricks. I don't think that Kitagawa or Inui would ever shame somebody for cosplaying how they want, but I wonder if they would've been as enthusiastic in the end as they were. It's interesting food for thought, and I get the feeling that this isn't going to be the last time that we talk about it. Overall, my feelings about the episode are positive, but I hope the series will be a bit more open-minded as it delves into different types of cosplayers from different backgrounds.

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My Dress-Up Darling is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and Funimation.