I try very hard to avoid hard spoilers, but there are some super soft spoilers in here about the general attitude of characters, the types of content that appear in the show, or some introductory information that we get in the first episode. This is also quite a long review. Consider the final paragraph a TL;DR, and skip to it if this bothers you.
When you find a show that's super popular with a great score, but the top reviews are all "not recommended" you have to ask yourself what's going on. After watching the series, and reading some reviews, I've found my answer: most people think the show is well made and enjoyable to watch, but they object to some particular aspect. This is usually a complaint that the show is overrated, or an objection to Marin's character being waifu bait. So I'll start my review with this: the show is really well made overall. I find it kind of disingenuous and bandwagony that there are so many negative reviews; if you're rating something a 2 but suggesting you had a good time watching it, you're struggling to be honest with yourself somewhere in there. I don't necessarily disagree with the complaints, but I would say they're a bit tunnel-visioned.
Though I dislike the name of the show--it's a bit on the nose for the male fantasy angle--Dress Up Darling's focus on cosplay is great. I really enjoy the different angles of exploring beginner costume creation problems, but also researching the anime or game itself, and then the different perspectives of dressing up publicly vs privately… I don't think she show is wildly educational, but it's enough to be quite interesting. The characters have their own reasons to care about cosplay, and we get some great moments based around their insecurities and accomplishments. When we get to see the characters working hard for a goal or opening up about what drives them, Dress-Up Darling can be pretty compelling. This is the first core pillar of the show and IMO the thing that makes it worth watching.
I'll admit, the show looks great. Marin's character design in particular is strong; she has a lot of detail but it's still very clear and distinct. There's occasionally a tender, thin-lined airbrushed-ness to the characters that almost looks like they came out of a shoujo or josei anime. I also really loved the different styles they used when showing us the shows and movies within the universe. It was a joy to watch the more expressive and lifelike animated sequences, but the animation is also kind of weird sometimes. Sure, a lazily drawn hand here or there, but what bothers me most is that some of the gestures look distinctively like they were referenced from a robotically animated 3D model. A lot of anime has taken to 3D shortcuts for background characters, and occasionally for strange or super detailed versions of the main cast--MAPPA is the main studio that comes to mind for this. But Dress-Up Darling is different, and perhaps it's just an evolution of the technology; they'll still look like a 2D character, but they'll move like a wonky 3D character. It's a little too noticeable for my tastes. The fanservice is fanservice in a high school setting; it looks good, but I'm mentally scaling up their ages to account for cultural differences. Other than that, it has a modern dub and none of the characters come off as super fake. The translation has Marin using a lot of "hip phrases" that get the point across with minimal squinting, so I consider that a win.
Dress-Up Darling's romantic shtick is obviously nothing new: awkward loner guy is thrust into a friendship of coincidence with a beautiful and popular girl. I hear a LOT of complaints about Marin, and she provides a good framing to talk about the overarching issues with the show, so here goes…
I'm going to start off quite bold here: I really liked how Marin is first presented. The show is pretty transparent about the main characters' relationship from the first episode; they are both extremely dense in their own ways. Gojou has zero self-esteem, and Marin takes advantage of that in a self-absorbed way. She's not a great person. The show doesn't spell it out or point a finger mind you, but it doesn't hide it. If someone *else* is taking advantage of kindness, Marin is brave and says you shouldn't let people do that to you. When it's *her* requests that are presumptuous and invasive, she conveniently doesn't seem to notice. When Gojou is visibly uncomfortable by her behavior, so much so that onlookers are aware and uncomfortable as well? Either she doesn't notice, or it's his fault. From the very first scene Marin was on camera, I recognized her from my own high school: she's the kind of girl that will just strut up and touch you without asking. She's the kind of girl that will (intentionally or not) leverage her sexuality against a socially awkward guy for favors. She will barge into your house and open all the doors, exploring all the rooms uninvited, like some kind of manic pixie dream asshole. The world exists for her and her alone. And I think that's great. I want to see that character grow. To the show's credit, Marin *does* experience some character development based on that angle. Some, but not much.
But let's talk about convenience. Even nonfiction is curated so that you're reading about the interesting parts of someone's life, rather than the mundane. When you have full control over a story as you do with fiction, it is totally reasonable that your narrative elements will conveniently work in harmony. So lets see an example from Dress Up Darling: Marin is the prettiest/most popular girl in the school, but somehow she's also a huge otaku and openly into erotic games. I don't think this situation is inherently unworkable, just unstable. The problem in Dress Up Darling it that there's no support to counteract that instability. *Is* Marin open about her passion of erotic games? This is speculation from my part, but it's only speculation because we don't ever really see her exist outside the context of Gojou. If she's willing to spill her guts about eroge the second time she encounters this random guy, why would she keep it from her friends and acquaintances?
And speaking of, where are her friends? Example number two: Marin is incredibly popular, and has friends she's playing around with when we meet her, yet it feels like she totally abandons them to start exclusively hanging around this random dude she just met. If I had to guess, maybe she does hang out with her friends and we're only watching the days she hangs out with Gojou. But we never see or hear of her doing it. Every once in a while she'll encounter a friend within the confines of school, but that doesn't really count. On one hand, I like when a show isn't afraid to exclude an unimportant detail. On the other, I wouldn't call it an unimportant detail, she is the super popular hot girl, and Gojou hangs out with his grandpa and makes dolls.
Example three: Marin is canonically model-level gorgeous, and very sociable, but her sexuality takes two mutually exclusive forms. When it's time to tease Gojou, she's a seductress. When it's time to get to business, she's a pure-minded maiden that didn't realize undressing in front of Gojou might make him uncomfortable. In terms of fanservice, the show kind of doubles up: the lucky pervert trope is a way to "innocently" titillate the viewer, and yet Marin *also* disrobes obliviously at a whim. Even as fanservice, it feels like too much; as a character trait, it definitely gives you a bit of whiplash. Not to be presumptuous, but I think the answer here is to fully commit to the tease. For pure fanservice, it would explain why she keeps doing it over and over again, and for her character development, it fits her entitled backstory and gives her chances to have regrets to learn from. I'd eat that up.
All of this is to say that Marin is too many things at once. Without Marin feeling like a real person, we're left with a fantasy day-dreamed up by many a distracted teenager: what if the hottest girl in the school got really close to me because she appreciated my very niche skill that nobody seems to care about? It's okay to want that, and it can be really gratifying to make it work, but it's kind of hollow when it works *inexplicably*.
Now, I do take issue with many of the complaints about Marin, because they refuse to recognize Gojou as a big part of the problem. He is unbelievably dense, and you spend so much time with him as the protagonist that the anime feels like it's slowed to a crawl when he's being stupid about something. He sits there worrying and being insecure while the audience already knows he's being unreasonable, we're just waiting for him to realize it. Marin at least requires some consideration to confirm that she's unrealistic; Gojou is sometimes blindingly impossible. He's a teen boy somehow lost in time, satisfied to paint dolls and sew instead of make friends. He has the exact same eroticism problem as Marin, just reversed: sometimes he's painfully aware of how awkward a sexual situation is from the get go, and sometimes he's oblivious and lets it get way too far. Humans aren't consistent, and Gojou gets lost in his passions, I get that. But he's just as much a "godsend" for Marin as she is for him, it's kind of ridiculous. All that said, they still have desires and personality and things that make me want to know more; these are not unsalvageable characters. They just sometimes get overshadowed by their part in a ludicrous fantasy.
No one should be surprised that the show sexualizes the absolute hell out of Marin. The camera gets into all kinds of naughty positions to catch her entire ass or crotch from under her skirt, or looks up past her bare feet at her bikini'd body. It's usually justified as a way to see what Gojou sees, since he follows the lucky pervert trope--it's weak but I'll let it slide. Then the camera starts showing us the underwear and cleavage of people he can't see. Some shows are just horny, that's cool, it should probably be tagged as ecchi but that's beside the point. My problem is that the eroticism ero-des the strength of the story.
It's weird to say, because so much of the show is centered around that sexualization, but it feels tacked-on because they don't commit to it. The whole being-open-about-liking-eroge thing comes off like just another part of the male fantasy rather than something important to Marin's character. And when you have scenes of people obliviously engaging with pornographic content in front of family members, you have to ask: in what world am I supposed to believe this is happening? I love when an anime has something to say *about* eroticism. But this is just fanservice. Why are we staring at this girl's panties during this phone call? Why is this young girl SPLAYED NUDE in front of us right now? Why are the two main characters so fundamentally dense about sexual tension? To titilate the audience, at the expense of what was already going on. There are many sticky, flushed-red scenes where I consciously thought "this could be skipped and the show would be just as good". If the show were actually about sex, I would be overjoyed. Use the erotic content to tell us something about the characters. But no, it's almost exclusively a tool for engagement here (with like one exception), and that's disappointing.
I wish they would pick a lane. When every possible convenience is taken, we call that greed. I really like when the show has direction and stakes, but it always comes back to this untenable status quo fantasy. As the show progresses, we get more scenes from Marin's perspective that hurt just as much as they help. I want to see even more of her as a person, but the show wants me to to hurry up and root for her already. Marin is so close to a compelling character. I really hope I can look back from future seasons and say that this one was just slow. Because I will watch it, there's enough here that I'm interested. But I'm not without concerns.
If a well-made and somewhat heartwarming show about cosplay sounds up your alley, and you don't mind (or are specifically looking for) fanservice, I recommend it. If you find somewhat weak and convenient characters *absolutely intolerable*, yes, you will want to avoid it. But that's a bit dramatic in my opinion.
