(Average +) My Dress-Up Darling

Series in one sentence:
Blandest good guy ever is the wet dream of all bisexual cosplayers.

Series in more sentences:
When the popular girl in class finds Wakana sewing clothes at school, he learns she's surprisingly accepting of his hobby as a doll maker and enjoys strange entertainment.
She asks him to create a costume of one of her favourite video game characters, and the two unlikely friends sink deeper into the world of cosplay.

Episode one was a great start, but things became needlessly lewd very fast. It features a character who is fan of a fetish porn game, you could say I should've expected it, but I hoped this detail would remain part of the show's comedy and not develop itself into pointless breast and crotch shots of this teenage girl. Not to mention, this is a short-lived part of the story; Marin likes tons of characters and wants to cosplay as all of them.

 

I think this would've been a better watch if the entirety of the series was about them trying to create this one costume -no crotch shots or other nonsense interrupting the story- and there was a larger focus on the boy. His hobby and emotional struggles were shoved aside rather quickly for these mostly eventless cosplay adventures. The part where this overly shy sister character talks about cameras was real boring. In fact, everything that involved her was.

I also didn't like the selective romantic anxiety Wakana and Marin showed off, it was repetitive and made no sense character-wise. They're both madly in love with each other, but the show is littered with scenes in which one conveniently acts totally chill/oblivious and the other blushy, for no other reason but the writers wanting the scene to transpire this way.

I liked Marin very much and the general story was good, but it could've been better directed. It felt lacklustre at times.