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recentanimenews · 2 years

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FEATURE: My Dress-Up Darling And The Amazing Relief Of Sharing Your Passion

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST EPISODE OF MY DRESS-UP DARLING AHEAD

From the ages of 12-17, I ran my own professional wrestling organization. And by that, I mean that I filled copious notebooks with the results of matches that I'd hold by myself on WWF WrestleMania 2000 for the Game Boy Color. I'd create championships for the limited roster of the game to battle for, time each match with a stopwatch, and write down everything that went on during each near-daily "event." And for five years, I told no one. It was something I did with more frequency than literally any other hobby I had and until one of my friends randomly found a notebook and flipped through it, it was a secret. My friend's response by the way? "Oh, that's kinda neat."

I don't tell you this story to create a 1:1 comparison between the main character of My Dress-Up Darling, Wakana Gojo, and I. Gojo's fascination with crafting traditional kashirashi dolls has a much more complicated relationship with societal expectations regarding gender than a white dude in North Carolina enjoying "video games" and "wrasslin'" in 2001. In elementary school, getting excited about "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was essentially a required course. I do tell you it though for the reaction: "Oh, that's kinda neat" and how stunningly relieving it was to hear that.

For most of the first episode of My Dress-Up Darling, Gojo spends his life on the outskirts. Aside from his kindly grandfather with whom he shares a drive for doll-making, the closest he has to contact with another person is a classmate mistaking him for someone else. It's not that his interests prevent him from making friends in totality, but his insecurity regarding them and himself. In his eyes, he's just a guy who spends most of his waking moments thinking about constructing these elaborate, beautiful dolls. How would other people make space for someone like that? Why would they even want to?

I don't think I'm alone in this feeling of kinship. Having such a deep-rooted passion for something can often manifest itself in feelings of isolation, whether latent or openly inherent. Again, mine was whispering "OH! ANOTHER WIN FOR KEN SHAMROCK!" and scribbling down whether it was a pinfall or countout victory while my parents thought I was doing my homework for most of public school. I had one friend who made puppets for years. He didn't put on shows with them — he just liked making puppets. And y'all, they were dope puppets. I discovered them arranged in a tiny cabinet under his futon while I was looking for an errant beer pong ball. He told me when he made them, why he designed certain ones certain ways, and why he'd gotten into them in the first place.

Like Wakana Gojo apologizing to Marin Kitagawa for his outpour of notes about her nascent cosplay, my pal said he was sorry for talking so much about these puppets. Every few sentences were marked by an apology — unnecessary, of course, because he was my friend and also was making puppets at, like, an Advanced Placement level — because he'd never figured that something that played such a huge role in his life would be a fit for any sized role in anyone else's. I imagine some of you might have felt like this as well.

Of course, in My Dress-Up Darling, Marin is able to chain react her own reveal, showing her new acquaintance that she desperately wants to create better outfits for her cosplay dreams. I never did this with my friend, shouting "WE'RE NOT SO DIFFERENT, YOU AND I," as I blanketed his carefully conceived puppets with my build-up to a completely fictional Kane and The Undertaker vs D-Generation X match at WrestleMania III: Sadder Daniel Edition. But it was amazing to watch, to see someone speak so effortlessly, eagerly, and expertly about their hobbies. It's this uplifting moment that further cemented My Dress-Up Darling as one of my favorite debuts of the winter 2022 season.

There's something instantaneously comfortable about watching community form around shared, pleasant interests, whether it's two people in a friendship or a larger group. It's one of the reasons I miss going to conventions more regularly. You not only meet like-minded people but you get to watch it happen in real-time. All it takes is someone pointing out that they recognize someone else's fairly obscure cosplay and the spark of connection is lit. For a second, you and your hard-fought hobbies feel safe in the hands of another. For a second, you belong.

Daniel Dockery is a Senior Staff Writer for Crunchyroll. Follow him on Twitter!

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By: Daniel Dockery

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recentanimenews · 4 years

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Bookshelf Briefs 9/2/20

Yay! Sean’s back!

Barakamon, Vol. 18 + 1 | By Satsuki Yoshino | Yen Press – I had thought this was something like an epilogue to the series, but it ends up being more of a hodgepodge—there’s a number of 4-koma strips, there’s interviews and yes, there is a short “years later” mini-chapter that assiduously avoids showing us Naru looking older, though it teases it. Instead, the majority of the book is an artbook, showing off color illustrations. And that’s the reason to get it as well, as you’re reminded that the art was also a big strength with this series. The pieces are very character oriented, showing Handa and company in a variety of poses and places, and it adds to the overall peaceful feel that we got from this series. I’ll miss it. Also, show us teenage Naru, you cowards. – Sean Gaffney

Goodbye, My Rose Garden, Vol. 2 | By Dr. Pepperco | Seven Seas – I never actually reviewed the first volume of this series—it came out in the height of COVID isolation, and I was bogged down in other things. It’s quite good, though, being a fairly tortured yuri drama without quite tipping over the edge into melodrama, although the reason it reads so well is that it balances on that edge quite nicely. Here we learn the story of Alice and how she became everyone’s favorite suspicious person, as well as the tie that binds her past with Hanako’s. As for the two of them as a couple, we aren’t there yet, and may not ever get there—it’s unclear if there’s a happy ending coming here. Nevertheless, you hope for one—these two need some good things happening to them. – Sean Gaffney

Goodbye, My Rose Garden, Vol. 2 | By Dr. Pepperco | Seven Seas – I really wish I liked this more. I like the setting—England in 1900—and two heroines who love books (and talk about Oscar Wilde and Sherlock Holmes!) and want to thwart society’s expectations of women while still being constrained by them. But everything just moves so fast! I found myself wishing this was a romance novel instead so it could have a little time to just breathe. They love each other, they find out secrets, Alice’s mom and fiancé conspire to get Hanako sent away, Alice finds her, more secrets are revealed. Nothing really lands with any emotional impact because it’s cruising right along and, in fact, comes to an end in the next volume. I will probably see it through to its conclusion but am overall kinda disappointed. – Michelle Smith

Horimiya, Vol. 14 | By Hero and Daisuke Hagiwara | Yen Press – This is the manga that never ends. It goes on and on, my friends. Given that the writer and publisher seem dedicated to avoiding the original ending of the webcomic, there’s not really much that can be done here except ‘everyday high school life’ shenanigans,’ to the point where I was for once reasonably pleased when Hori’s sadist/masochist tendencies come to the fore again, as she spreads a childish nickname for Miyamura just so that he’ll get mad at her. That said, despite the two being a seemingly close couple, at the end of the day Hori is still a horribly flawed character who needs constant validation and can’t trust her own feelings. She’s the most annoying and most interesting part of this. – Sean Gaffney

I Don’t Know How to Give Birth! | By Ayami Kazama| Yen Press – This is an excellent combination of biography, information, and comedy, as the author and her husband take us through the steps they took in order for her to have a child—more steps than you’d expect, as they eventually need in-vitro fertilization—and how she felt as she went through the process, ranging from “why am I doing this? My husband is the one who really wanted kids” to “I am getting in touch with my inner animal!” Scattered throughout are facts about preparing for nursing your child, Japan apparently not teaching expectant mothers how to push, and the lack of meds in their non-Tokyo hospital. All this is done in a fun way, with the author’s self-portrait having an arrow in her head. – Sean Gaffney

An Incurable Case of Love, Vol. 4 | By Maki Enjoji | Viz Media – Should you sacrifice your dream for love? Well, not if you’re in a romance manga, but it’s a question that’s thought about long and hard in this volume, as Nanase discovers that Dr. Tendo is getting an offer to study abroad so he can research a condition that killed someone he knew in his past. He is seemingly fine with abandoning it and staying with Nanase, but another patient with the same condition shows that he’s not as cool and collected as you’d expect. As with previous volumes, this strikes a good equal balance between the medicine and the romance, and there is also some lightness of tone, such as Nanase mistaking her lovesickness for a heart condition after the two spend the night together. – Sean Gaffney

A Man and His Cat, Vol. 2 | By Umi Sakurai | Square Enix – The more we see of Kanda’s late wife, the more we see how much her death has devastated him, and we are grateful for Fukumaru for being there. That said, Fukumaru is a big, awkward, untrained cat, so this inevitably leads to events like the cat breaking precious pictures and the like. The cat is also somewhat jealous of anything that gets in between him and his master. So it’s a nice mix of cute ‘the cat is destroying the house and acting like a cat’ antics and ‘the cat is basically the one thing keeping his owner away from despair.’ Kanda’s utter adoration of Fukumaru’s cuteness (made funnier by the fact that, to most everyone else, Fukumaru’s pretty goofy-looking) may be the best part of this. – Sean Gaffney

My Dress-Up Darling, Vol. 1 | By Shinichi Fukuda | Square Enix – Wakana has an unusual hobby—he admires and creates traditional Japanese dolls. In part because of this, he’s become a loner, but that changes after his popular high school classmate Marin discovers his talent with a sewing machine and convinces him to help her make a (sexy) cosplay outfit. Marin is passionate but not a skilled seamstress, so she hopes Wakana’s experience making doll clothing will be of some use. My Dress-Up Darling is rated “mature.” The first volume does include some risqué images and topics of conversation; however, it’s not overly explicit. Later volumes might become more so, but right now the story itself is surprisingly wholesome and the characters endearing. I’m really looking forward to reading more of the series and seeing Wakana and Marin’s relationship develop. But perhaps even more, I’m hoping to see Wakana follow Marin’s example and become more confident in himself and his interests. – Ash Brown

My Hero Academia SMASH!!, Vol. 5 | By Hirofumi Neda| Viz Media – The last volume of this series really does not stray from its mandate of ‘gags.’ We see 1-A and 1-B team up for a rescue exercise, the highlight of which is seeing that even the SMASH!! author thinks that Itsuka is a better Momo than Momo is. There’s some of Deku being such a hero fanboy that it’s hilariously creepy, and everyone participating in comedy training. (I was not prepared for Uraraka’s fantastic Aizawa impression.) There’s tanabata festivals, held back by a personality change in Bakugou (this actually comes up TWICE). And we end with a “years in the future” that isn’t really, with only Deku left to be the straight man. I’m happy this is ending now, but it was also a good deal of fun while it lasted. – Sean Gaffney

Snow White with the Red Hair, Vol. 8 | By Sorata Akiduki | Viz Media – As expected, ‘making the relationship public’ gets put on the back burner, mostly as reality is far too complicated for things like that to go smoothly. Instead we spend much of this volume transitioning into a new arc, featuring Shirayuki and Ryu going up north to snow country to study as herbalists there… with the added addition of Izana, who is traveling there incognito to annoy his brother and to study Shirayuki further. In between these things we get a story looking deeper into Obi, who I sometimes get the feeling the author would be more happy making the lead character. It adds up to a good solid volume of the series, though I suspect the next volume will set a better pace. – Sean Gaffney

Teasing Master Takagi-san, Vol. 9 | By Soichiro Yamamoto | Yen Press – The rule of thumb in this series is that Takagi is more readily able to admit her own feelings to herself than Nishitaka is to himself. His embarrassment and wariness of any action that he’s goaded to by Takagi leading to a “ha ha, so you like me!” moment drives whatever he does, and the moment he gets over this the series ends. (Mostly—the unlicensed next-gen series shows he never quite gets over it.) Takagi CAN occasionally be embarrassed—my favorite chapter in this volume, where they’re sending texts to each other, ends with her blushing—but for the most part is content to tease him every day and patiently lead him to a point where they can be a couple. It’s not happening anytime soon. – Sean Gaffney

To Be Next to You, Vol. 8 | By Atsuko Namba | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – On paper, To Be Next to You looks like standard shoujo fare. Nina Uemura is in love with her next-door neighbor, Kyosuke Tachibana, and to try to forget him, she started going out with a classmate. But when Kyosuke collapses with a fever on Christmas Eve, she bails on her boyfriend (Miyake-kun) to take care of him. Miyake-kun realizes that whatever happiness they can achieve together will always be vulnerable to being swept aside in an instant, and breaks off their relationship. What I love is how skillfully Namba-sensei has shown Nina’s maturation process throughout this series—she’s definitely not the same oblivious girl we encountered in volume one—and that we get little moments like Miyake-kun telling his friends what happened and them crying on his behalf. Between this and That Blue Summer, I have become a true Namba fan. I hope we get more from her soon! – Michelle Smith

By: Ash Brown

#Anime #News #Manga Bookshelf

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