My Dress-Up Darling (or Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru) is one of the most popular anime of the Winter 2022 season, and rightfully so. The story follows Goro Wakana (Ishige Shoya Ishige in the sub/Paul Dateh in the dub), a boy who has a passion for Hina doll making, who is befriended by Kitagawa Marin (Suguta Hina in the sub/Amanda Lee in the dub), a popular fashionista who desperately wants to cosplay. With his sewing prowess and creative passion, and her anime and gaming knowledge, the two team up to create the perfect cosplays to fulfill Marin’s cosplay dreams, and maybe discover romance in the process.
The anime handles cosplay and creative passions with complete reverence, understanding the costume creation process and the culture that surrounds it to such a degree that, as someone who has been cosplaying for many years, I have never felt more understood. My Dress-Up Darling is both a love letter to what cosplay means to the cosplayer partaking, but is also still able to poke fun at the somewhat silly nature of the hobby and the ridiculous scenarios that are born from attempting to recreate a fictional costume in real life.
The first few episodes of the anime focus on Goro learning the craft of cosplay and what it entails, figuring out how to translate a character’s costume to real life in a way that will be worthy of Marin’s love for the character. Marin explains that to her, cosplay is the ultimate way of showing how much she loves a character, something Goro can immediately understand, so once he collects his references from the game itself he pays painstaking attention to every aspect of the costume, including some that wouldn’t be immediately obvious, to be able to replicate it just right. When going out on their cosplay supply shopping trip, Goro chooses fabrics based on the weight of how the fabric appears in the references as well as the story context of the character. He chooses things like a heavier black fabric to suit the upper-class nature of the character’s school uniform instead of the shiny black fabric Marin initially reaches for, and a longer black wig with a purple undertone that can be trimmed down to the correct length instead of the shorter pure black one Marin initially chose. It is this attention to detail that cosplayers will immediately relate to, as going down to your local Joann Fabrics or the fabric district if you’re in the city to pick the fabric for your costume that is just right for what you think suits the character’s story and your personal preferences is one of the most appealing aspects of creating a costume.
My Dress-Up Darling emphasizes that one of the most interesting things about cosplay is how cosplayers can tailor a costume to their own tastes, or how they personally interpret a character. The anime places a large focus on how there are many ways to cosplay that are all valid, and the most fun part of it is doing it in a way that suits you, and then sharing that love for the craft and the character with everyone else. In My Dress-Up Darling, anyone can cosplay anything no matter their gender, size, budget, or appearance because that is what makes cosplay enjoyable, and the fact that this leads to so much creativity is a creative’s greatest strength.
However, it is from here on out that the harsh realities of making and wearing a cosplay set in for Goro and Marin. Because Marin decides she wants to go to a cosplay event that is two weeks away, Goro is forced to enter every cosplayer’s living nightmare: con-crunching. Con crunching is that time leading up to a convention when a cosplayer is doing nothing else but trying to complete a costume as quickly as possible, until that moment when its the night before the event and the cosplayer must decide if they’ll pull an all nighter to finish or pack their sewing machine and bring it to the hotel with them, or in the worst case scenario both. Watching Goro pull all nighters and be in a constant state of exhaustion until he is sitting up at one am questioning if he can actually finish the costume is an experience most cosplayers are all too familiar with.
Goro does manage to power through and Marin’s reaction to the completed costume is what makes the experience worth it to him. The sheer elation she feels at wearing the costume for the first time, of having her love for the character manifested in such a detailed way, makes Goro realize just how much this costume means to her and why he puts so much work into it. Cosplay is Marin’s version of Goro’s love for Hina dolls.
Once they get to the cosplay gathering, Goro immediately notices the variety and range of cosplayers there, and the friendliness and camaraderie that exists between them all. There are cosplayers of every age there, cosplayers dressed as characters who aren’t the same gender as them, and everyone is getting excited over seeing others who share the same love of these characters. Once Marin is wearing her cosplay, she is immediately asked for photos and develops a line of photographers waiting to take her photo, yet the moment is cut short once she begins to develop heatstroke from her costume and wig (if you are a cosplayer who has attended a summer convention, you’ll understand just how sweaty cosplays get!).
Goro meanwhile learns the cause and effect of cosplay choices, with the heavier black fabric he chose to be what causes Marin’s overheating, and also that he needs to better account for mobility problems when adapting costumes as Marin cannot lift her arms properly in the dress. The most important thing is, though, that they both had a ton of fun at the event and the joy of community and meeting people with a shared love is what makes the blood, sweat, and tears worth it at the end of the event.
A few episodes later, Marin and Goro are planning a group cosplay with a famous cosplayer named Inui Sajuna, and her younger sister Shinju who is a photographer. As it turns out, Shinju wants to try cosplaying with her sister but can’t broach the topic out of fear of failure or being judged, so in secret she and Goro plan a cosplay for her to join in with them. She really wants to cosplay one of the male leads from a magical girl anime, but feels that she wouldn’t suit the costume as well as how Sajuna suits the costumes she chooses. Goro and Sajuna navigate how to create a cosplay on a budget, and how to transform Shinju’s curvy body into a teenage anime boy with tricks like binding and shoulder pads, and the transformative power of wigs and makeup. It’s a learning process for the both of them, but the costume ends up working out fantastically and upon the debut to Marin and Sajuna who are absolutely overwhelmed and elated at her transformation. The excitement of having another cosplayer join in on your group is completely electrifying, and the reassurance that Shinju receives for her cosplay only serves to reassure that cosplay is truly a hobby for anybody.
Throughout its runtime My Dress-Up Darling reinforces time and time again that cosplay does not have to be exclusively one thing, it is every cosplayer’s personal way of showing their love of a character. As Marin puts it in episode 11, people making cosplays think hard about making their costumes and go by their own interpretation, so everyone’s is totally different, but that’s what’s awesome about it, it’s that freedom that makes cosplay fun. While the show pokes fun at the realities of cosplay and the various discomforts that result from it, it is the heart of the creativity behind it that keeps the show so relatable. Anybody can cosplay anything so long as they love what they are creating, and at the end of the day the community and shared love with other cosplayers is what makes all the struggling worth it.
This anime simultaneously understands the thought and intention behind every cosplayer’s costume, as well as the harsh realities that creating that costume entailed, but it also understands the heart that lies beneath the stitching and foam armor.