Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru

High school student Wakana Gojou spends his days perfecting the art of making hina dolls, hoping to eventually reach his grandfather's level of expertise. While his fellow teenagers busy themselves with pop culture, Gojou finds bliss in sewing clothes for his dolls. Nonetheless, he goes to great lengths to keep his unique hobby a secret, as he believes that he would be ridiculed were it revealed.

Enter Marin Kitagawa, an extraordinarily pretty girl whose confidence and poise are in stark contrast to Gojou's meekness. It would defy common sense for the friendless Gojou to mix with the likes of Kitagawa, who is always surrounded by her peers. However, the unimaginable happens when Kitagawa discovers Gojou's prowess with a sewing machine and brightly confesses to him about her own hobby: cosplay. Because her sewing skills are pitiable, she decides to enlist his help.

As Gojou and Kitagawa work together on one cosplay outfit after another, they cannot help but grow close—even though their lives are worlds apart.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kitagawa, Marin Main

Suguta, Hina Japanese

Gojou, Wakana Main

Ishige, Shouya Japanese

Inui, Sajuna Supporting

Tanezaki, Atsumi Japanese

Inui, Shinju Supporting

Youmiya, Hina Japanese

Sugaya, Nowa Supporting

Takeda Tago, Larissa Japanese

Gojou, Kaoru Supporting

Ono, Atsushi Japanese

Liz Supporting

Kuno, Misaki Japanese

Tengeji, Mirai Supporting

Tange, Sakura Japanese

Rune Supporting

Sekine, Akira Japanese

Kaname Supporting

Shirai, Yuusuke Japanese

Oowada, Tomoyuki Producer

Umehara, Shouta Producer

Nakayama, Nobuhiro Producer

Hasegawa, Yoshinori Producer

Reviews

May 30, 2024

lycoping

Recommended

There are no outright spoilers in this review, but I will be telling some things about the backstories of some of the characters. Nothing that you won't find out very quickly in the first or second episode, so I'm comfortable.

"My Dress Up Darling" or "Sono bisque doll wa koi wo suru" (I love that bisque doll) isn't a horrible anime by any means. It's very well drawn (and given the nature of the plot, it pretty darn well *has* to be), the plot is somewhat sweet, and, well, anyone who wants to see a relatively decent and mildly ecchi anime won't go wrong ... with this. There's lots of fanservice (by necessity of its very nature), lots of pretty outfits, a few questionable scenes, and, well, about what you'd expect in that regard.

It is a mixed bag, though, and it's so *subtly* a mixed bag that I haven't seen many reviews that address the actual underlying issues with the plot. And, well, that's understandable in some ways. The plot very deliberately brushes off these issues.

Put bluntly, these are two teenage characters with a great deal of unresolved emotional trauma bumbling through a first relationship.

First you have Gojou, his traumas should be pretty obvious. His parents are absent (as seems to be the case with nearly all anime of this genre for some reason), he lives with his grandfather, and he likes Japanese dolls. There's a lot of trauma extant in this, and his personality, what there is of it, seems to be related to "Keep Kitagawa-san happy at all costs".

Kitagawa is a girl who also seems to have no parental figures around - one died, the other is overseas or something. She is a big fan of eroge games, and wants to become one of the characters of her favorite eroge games - a very, very, shall we say, "sexually liberated" character, let's put it nicely. I mean, literally, *become* that character.

Red flags, anyone? That would be a major one right there, for me, anyway.

Well, Kitagawa meets Gojou, and the whole rest of the anime consists of her roping him into making cosplay costumes for her, with very little interest in how he feels about the situation, and him doing whatever he can to make her happy.

These are two characters who are so codependent on each other that they have no idea what they're getting themselves into. That becomes very clear in Ep. 11 in a VERY FAMOUS SCENE which I shall not even hint at a description, except to say that I wonder how anyone could see that as anything but two teenagers getting into a situation, of which they have no clue *whatsoever* how to handle it, and no parental figures at all to help them through it.

So I actually found this anime profoundly sad.

Now, that being said... it's as popular as it is for a reason. Most people don't give a toss about whether the characters are mentally healthy. This has been made abundantly clear over and over again by the popularity of anime that treat mental illness as cute, treat the parents not being around as a good thing, gloss over mental illness and unresolved trauma as a sweet romantic comedy, and folks just eat that kind of thing up. So I'm marking this as recommended. You'll probably like it. It's a feel good romantic comedy about two teenagers learning about love for the first time by bumbling through a codependent relationship, and let's not kid ourselves, that's about 80 percent of the most popular anime out there. Heck, I even didn't hate it - once I managed to push all that to the background and not worry too much about it, I even found it a little sweet and was cheering on their relationship. That's why I rated it so highly.

But, at the end of the day... I won't be watching any season two. And that about encapsulates how I, personally, feel about it. Season one was alright. It stops there. And I'm not buying the manga.

But you'll probably like it.

So, enjoy, I suppose. Recommended from me because you'll probably like it. Not because I'd, personally, recommend it to anyone.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Mar 14, 2024

MyNameIsMike

Mixed Feelings

After watching a lot of anime with large unraveling stories, fantastical worlds, and crazy powers, My Dress Up Darling was a nice breather from all of that.

To tell you the truth there isn’t much to write about this show just due to how simple it is. It has enough drama and character moments to carry it along but it’s not anything you haven’t seen before. It follows very similar tropes to almost any other romance story… but still, I can’t deny, I had a good time watching this from beginning to end and unfortunately I am a sucker for romance stories.

To an extent I think ... the show is aware of this, it follows the proper beats and it works just as well as it did here as did the other stories (not better but good enough) and it doesn’t really waste its time getting into the plot.

This is just such a wholesome show. The relationship between Gojo and Marin was genuinely cute, really showcases that romanticized idea of young love. Throughout 90% of the show I was grinning ear to ear and I’m sure there will be moments I’ll remember from this show. It was genuinely sweet every time the characters would go into long rants about their passions, it was heartwarming to see a story be about and passion, not only for people but for yourself and your own interests and hobbies. This show is the embodiment of wholesome, it really gives you those warm mushy-gushy feelings not only from the themes and characters but from the animation to soundtrack too.

Though as an 18 year old going on 19 I did feel uncomfortable from a lot of the fan service. A lot of unnecessary shots sexualizing the women, and fan service can be done right but here, to me, it felt like it was just there to be there and not to mention these characters are canonically 15 years old making it feel super creepy. Like when Gojo looks at Marin that’s understandable the sexual details would stand out and those scenes make sense for Gojo’s character. I’m more so just talking about a lot of the random ass shots of Marin and zooming in on a 13 year old girl’s chest is commenting on how big it is.

This is definitely a comfort show and I think if you go into it expecting that than you’ll enjoy it though I do understand the criticisms thrown its way, like I said I’m just a sucker for the romance genre.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Feb 2, 2024

DarkSpaceVRP

Not Recommended

Funny

For some time now, I've wanted to write a review about this anime. I think it's good to express my opinion on this work since in addition to practicing my writing a little, I can also express some points about this anime. From now on, this review will be extremely negative so feel free to disagree with my opinion.
I was at the beginning of 2022 (my god how fast time passes) and I came across a new anime from CloverWorks, a producer that despite some disasters like The Promissed Neverland and Darling In The Fraxx, knows how to make good anime like Spy x Family, ... Horimiya and Wonder Egg Priority. Since at that time I didn't have anything better to do other than go to school and sleep, I watched any anime that came out during the season and Dress-Up Darling was no exception. I had very high expectations about this anime but in the end I ended up being disappointed.
The anime's proposal isn't interesting at all, but it can still captivate those niche otakus, simply a hot girl and a doll maker in a silly relationship etc etc... It can't be that bad, can it?
Yes! It's horrible!
The execution is a disaster, the anime fails to convey any message in a subtle way or convey any feeling to the viewer, the anime fails in all aspects of the script. When they tried to convey a message in the first few episodes to viewers like, "Don't give up! Try hard!" They simply passed in the most ridiculous way possible, making the protagonist sleepless because of a promise he made to a girl he had just met. What kind of message do you want to send to the viewer? (Deprive yourself of sleep for women you disgusting otaku) or something like that. So far so good, it's still an anime despite being scripturally weak and people have a lot of hype, it should be good. I think that continuing to watch this anime was one of the worst decisions I could have made, this anime is a degradation for the anime industry, it uses such cheap humor and just focuses the production on Ecchi scenes, which embarrasses anyone with the minimal sense. The backstory is completely uninteresting and the protagonists' relationships are completely superficial. And it can even get worse! To get some drama or anything even remotely interesting, they put a second girl in the anime, at this point the script borders on insanity, bringing one of the worst scenes I've ever seen in my life. What's the fun in making jokes about a girl the protagonist doesn't even know naked in front of him?
Maybe I'm getting old or my sense of humor is completely outdated, but even if I tried, I couldn't entertain myself watching this anime. It has nothing good except the Ecchi scenes, and if the anime were to focus on Ecchi they would have had to make a Hentai that would have been much more logical. In fact, if this anime were a Hentai it would be much better, it would reach the target audience more easily and no one would be able to complain about how bad its backstory is, being able to spend money without worrying on degenerate scenes, made only to make otakus excited.
For me, nothing will ever explain how high this average score is. Even the song by The Smiths called Still Ill manages to convey a better message about the feelings of romance in 3 minutes of music, than this anime that depends on 12 episodes with 24 minutes each to fail to deliver anything to the viewer. And to finish, I'm going to write an excerpt from the song that expresses my opinion about current romance animes: "It just wasn't like, the old days anymore, no it wasn't like those days... am I still ill?".

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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	Poll: Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru Episode 12 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ... Last Page ) Homura24 - Mar 26, 2022	485 replies	by Lord_sag4 »» May 8, 12:50 PM
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My Dress-Up Darling: An Interview with the Director, Part 1

*My Dress-Up Darling* has sold over 8million copies, with a hit anime in Winter 2022 and a sequel in the way. It's about cosplay-loving Marin and Wakana, an aspiring doll craftsman. Fans were captivated by the slow-burning love and the realistic cosplay. We got the details from the director.

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