My Dress-Up Darling ep11 - Click - I drink and watch anime

Well, this is kind of a predicament. I watched Vanitas yesterday and I liked the episode but I had so many things to say I didn’t know how to stat. Today I watched My Dress-Up Darling and I liked the episode but I don’t know where to start because I don’t really have anything to say about it. Let’s see if I can stretch that out into a full post.

I want to stress that I enjoyed this episode of My Dress-Up Darling. and I actually think I like it more thinking back on it than while I was watching it That happens to me a lot. I have insta nostalgia or something. However, if I had to say something negative is that for the first time, I felt like this episode was a bit redundant.

It’s actually amazing that My Dress-Up Darling managed to go all the way to episode 11 without me thinking that it feels a bit like the episodes blend in together. After all, there are not that many characters and even the extras that are there don’t show up much. Most of the time it’s Marin and Gojo just doing a two-man show. And the premise of having them put cosplay costumes together has a lot f repetitive elements to it. Yet it always felt like every episode was introducing something brand new to me.

Whereas this episode very much felt like an episode of My Dress-Up Darling. It had all the charm and cuteness and cheeky fanservice we have come to expect from the show. But maybe that’s just not what I was craving for the penultimate episode.

Then again, even as I write this, I remember the episode more and more fondly. I will say, that even while watching it I thought that the almost-kiss moment was fantastic. Sure it was the standard getting interrupted at the last minute by the phone ringing cliché. But everything leading up to that moment was great. The tension was palpable and the atmosphere was wonderful. Just a few seconds before they were both laughing their hearts out and having a great time so there was this nice comfortable safe feeling despite the tension and anticipation. I was shouting kiss kiss kiss at my TV.

We’ve seen the almost kiss a million times so I have gotten to the point where it doesn’t even really register anymore. This time, it was good. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. It got me invested at the moment, vicariously excited and rooting for the next time to be successful.

Oh and the other cool thing was that I realize we had been seeing a poster for the succubus series on Marin’s wall the whole time. That’s some nice continuity. I remember it specifically because I was thinking that it looked a bit out of place It was so cutsey with the chibi characters that it caught my eye among Marin’s other way more explicit posters. I love the continuity of it. Manga backgrounds are often a lot simpler than anime ones since you can leave them almost entirely bare without it looking odd. So we rarely see the details of Marin’s room. The only picture I could find is this one and as you can see, no succubus poster:

To me that says that the production crew of the anime added that in. They had this picture to work with, it very obvious that they had the panel available, then they moved the posters around and added the succubus one in a spot where we would see it often. From there on, whenever we see Marin sitting on her pink sofa chair, it’s right there above her shoulder. Which means they knew it was going to be relevant later on. That is a really cool adaptation change that enhances the world-building of the series. And I love details like that. It shows that the production team cared.

Well, it looks like I had more to say than I thought. Also great episode. I hope they kiss next week. Or that Gojo cosplays. Both are equally good!