Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: My Dress-Up Darling
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Kitsu Kyouno
 Posts: 170 |
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the second episodie dropped all pretenses of being wholesome or innocent in any way and did a full striptease scene that was more animated than the entire third season of Nanatsu and not at all gratuitous or gross in any way, shape or form.
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 615 |
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I fully agree, to the point that I hesitate to really call a lot of the episode fan service. The term "fan service," to me, connotes something that doesn't really contribute to the plot or character development, but is there just for the fans. This comes partially from how the meaning of the English loanword サービス in Japanese is closer to "freebie" or "bonus," rather than "service." Fan service tends to take me out of things. But this episode all felt like natural human interaction. The shots of Marin's body tended to be from Gojo's perspective as he struggled to get through a situation he knew wasn't meant to be sexual but also he's not used to being around girls and his hormones are surging. Marin's prancing around in a bikini because she's comfortable with her own body and, as a model, is so used to running around in various states of undress that she doesn't even think about it. My friends who are serious cosplayers and/or models have said that this situation is actually extremely typical, including Marin's cluelessness about Gojo's discomfort. There were a lot of important character dynamics introduced into that episode, including a degree of mutual sexual tension. Also, big ups to the writers for not having Gojo say, "Are you sure this is okay? After all, I'm still a guy..." or something to the effect of him having to hold back from assaulting her. It's a low bar that too many series fail to reach. It helps that shiny boobs notwithstanding, Marin looks and moves like a person with bones and musculature and flesh. Her proportions are realistic for someone who is overall slender but with a big chest, and when she moves you can see the structures under her skin. She moves around the room with purpose rather than bouncing around solely for the sake of jiggle. Most women I know who are watching the show LOVE Marin and the episode; the only people I hear complaining much are mostly men, often men who watch a lot of fan service series. That says a lot to me.
Taking off your clothes and doing a striptease are not the same thing jfc Last edited by all-tsun-and-no-dere on Tue Jan 18, 2022 11:58 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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vampiyan
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I think the uncomfortable thing can be explained with that's the appeal of the show. A shy, nerdy guy gets a hot cosplayer girl and is intimidated by her. A guy would surely get flustered at a very attractive girl in a tiny bikini shoving her body up in his face. It may not mean much to her, but it means a lot to him. It's part of a common trope you see in anime. The appeal is the characters thinks she's not being sexy, but she actually is. If you've ever seen a scene where a girl lifts her skirt and then laughs at the guy who expected to see panties but she's wearing spats underneath, it's usually aimed at guys who are into spats so it's just as titillating, if not more so even if she thinks she's denying someone the pleasure of seeing her underwear. Same with scenes like a girl flings open her robe and a guy thinks he's being flashed but she's in a swimsuit and not naked. He still gets to see her in a sexy swimsuit. It's still teasing, only with the kink of the girl not thinking anything of it. |
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TasteyCookie
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Hell no, keep both. That's what makes the manga so great. Plus, this was probably the single best animated ecchi episode I have ever seen. And as others have stated, it's not even strictly "fan service" as it is plot and character relevant. Us ecchi fans are already picked on by the anime community at large and get the blandest, most piss-poorly animated shows each season (like World's End Harem), let us enjoy something good for once. If we could have even a single show that looks this good every year, we'd die happy. The only downside about this show looking so good is that it will inevitably be popular, which means dealing with even more of the same usual suspects talking about how fanservice ruins all anime and how sexualizing Marin is wrong blah-blah-blah (there's already someone who does this in just about every Marin screencap I've seen on Twitter.) At least with niche ecchi series we don't have to worry about such people after the first episode. But with a story/production this good, I'm extremely excited to watch this every week, even if it means more haters. |
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AmpersandsUnited
Posts: 633 |
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A lot of people got upset with Quiet's design in Metal Gear Solid 5 even after Kojima explained she breaths through her skin, citing it as a lazy excuse to put the character in a bikini. Plot relevant or no, fanservice is fanservice. An anime where the characters fight a tentacle monster at the beach may make their swimsuits plot-relevant and justified but we know why the situation is happening in the first place. I do agree the animation and camera angles in episode 2 was superb, though. More of that, please. Seen a lot of high quality caps and gifs being posted everywhere from that episode. |
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RandomUser1471
Posts: 6 |
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Great technical work on the fanservice. Some people truly poured their hearts into that one.
Haven't read the manga, so I will judge this from a couple episodes: by the Gods, what an example of clumsy writing even for RomCom standards. When even a passing watch can pinpoint that the female protagonist is not even meant to be a character but a unholy union of male need fantasies upped to the max ( manic pixie dream girl, virginal sl*t, "just wait bro the perfect girl will fall from the sky and rescue you from your boring life"). What do we know of her from two episodes? That she's very passionate about porn? The feeling of watching a waifu by committee custom built to appeal is insanely strong. Let us make a thought exercise: switch genders. Now you have a shy female that likes doll costumes that gets an insanely attractive man to dump on her how much he loves porn and how porn characters are such an important part of his life, before getting himself into her room, getting half-naked and half-forcing her to take measurements ignoring obvious distress. Also, remember to watch the porn I like for research girl, it's important. We're getting Taxi Driver levels here, boys. Maybe this will improve, because the artistry from the animators is here and hope springs eternal: but I can't but agree with those that think that our female protagonist is just a pound of flesh, a perfect yet approachable pound of flesh that we need to get the hots for, because this is exactly what the clusmy writing intended. |
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Shay Guy
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I've been fascinated for a while by the question of just how that etymological development went, in its E2J2E loanword path. Like, some of the oldest uses of "fan service" I've found in English writing are references to... baseball teams? And those famous Eva episode previews promising サービス don't have "fan" at all, making me wonder if that was added back in by English-speakers. I'd love to see some linguist do a deep dive beyond just a one-liner about the term being popularized by anime fandom or whatever. |
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Dayraven
Posts: 178 |
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Oldest instances of ‘service’ used as a fannish term I’ve seen in anime: the 1980-1 version of Ashita no Joe using the term ‘fan service’ in a non-sexual sense (it’s a comment about how announcing how many rounds you’ll beat your opponent in is just fan service), and a use of ‘service’ in the sense of titillation in Lupin III Part 2, so about the same time. |
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njprogfan
 Collector Extraordinaire Posts: 1181 Location: A River Named Toms |
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Well, if I were you I'd drop this show pretty soon. It's not going to be a vanilla rom/com, there's going to be more of what you're complaining about to come, especially after watching episode 2 which animated so faithfully chapter 3 of the first volume of the manga I did a double take; spoiler[things are only going to be ratcheted further with more girls.] There's a reason why the manga is rated: Mature |
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Penrhos
Posts: 168 |
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What's made clear in the Manga is that Marin is 100% body positive. She's confident about her looks and attitude, she loves Cosplay and as will become more apparent, she will do what she has to to get the outfit she wants.
What the Anime didn't convey or I missed it - was that it's inferred that she earns the money she's spending doing modeling, hence the ability to flaunt herself in a swimsuit without being embarrassed. This also explains her almost reckless attitude to turning up at Gojo's and stripping off in front of him and it's only when he measures her instep and touches her that she suddenly realizes what position she's put herself into, but by that point Gojo is in the zone and is oblivious to why she's blushing.... The adaptation so far has been spot-on so I've no complains so far, and I can't wait until Marin's cosplay idol turns up at Gojo's spoiler[ loli cosplayer that's older than Gojo/Marin who blackmails Gojo into making an outfit for her after an incident ] However I do think the series should have been tagged ecchi, harem. |
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Piglet the Grate
 Posts: 651 Location: North America |
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This is actually a lot more attractive than the ridiculous character designs found in shows such as Mother of the Goddess' Dormitory which had me wishing that Serene Hozumi would start talking about Honda Super Cubs.
Shinryaku! Ika Musume excepted, of course.
The "sexualizing" complaints come about due to the ridiculous notion commonly held in the USA that up to 17 years and 364 days of age, all females are infantile beings who need to be protected from "nasty" boys (and heaven forbid anything happen between a 18-year old male and 17-year old female, even if the actual age difference is only a couple of months and they are in the same grade at school). |
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scowler
 Posts: 93 |
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I'm not sure if even Kill la Kill generated this many fan service complaints...
At the very least, you have to admire the pacing involved. In a more typical harem series, the nose bleed scenes would be dragged into episode 8 at a minimum, with plenty of irrelevant beach / hot springs scenes thrown in, with obvious plot contrivances everywhere. My Dress-Up Darling has largely dispensed with all of that at the end of the second episode, and can now focus on the real shonen aspects for the bulk of the show going forwards. Now, I'm not suggesting that there won't be further fan service scenes, just that Gojo has already moved past the virgin / 8th grader syndrome stage of this, and that all of the fan service fits the story thematically and organically. |
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KitKat1721
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I actually thought about this when they first talked about jotting down measurements but yeah - it makes so more sense for her to wear a swimsuit not only because of what's already been said (she thought wearing underwear would fluster Gojo), but also we've seen Marin isn't the best at actually executing the technicalities of cosplay. So it's not surprising she wouldn't think "oh I probably should wear whatever bra I plan to wear under my outfit since it could slightly affect the numbers." I'm really surprised people are confused about her actions here haha I only just watched the first two episodes last night and I'm equally surprised by people calling Marin a "manic pixie dream girl" or whatever. I actually find her so much more relatable and true to my own experiences with friends who cosplay than I expected when watching the PV. Hard to put my finger on it, maybe its just that excitable passion when talking about her favorite VNs or not feeling that uncomfortable in her own skin? Even just acting somewhat interested in Gojo's hobby. I think a lot of cosplayers (or artists/crafters) naturally take interest in other people's artistic hobbies, even if they know nothing about it. The passion and struggle of making something cool out of nothing is always a shared experience between anyone who likes to make stuff. Anyways, I wouldn't call myself part of the cosplay community necessarily but I have cosplayed a few times (both making my own outfit and just combining closet pieces for a more casual character) and I'm glad we actually got a show focusing on it rather than just using it to quickly show off that a character's a nerd/otaku. The fan-service doesn't even really bother me (if anything the only moment I rolled my eyes was the random panty shot in Ep 1, not anything in Ep 2) and I'm usually a lot more put off by it generally. Last edited by KitKat1721 on Wed Jan 19, 2022 4:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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tomdean
Posts: 125 |
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instead of complimenting on how detailed the cosplaying goes into, once again many reviews and forums are dominated by fanservice discussion. It seems a very vocal minority who hates fanservices just HAS to watch every show with fanservice in it, and that talk about how much they hate it
Given how well received this (and many) fanservice show is, fanservice is clearly very popular and not going away anytime soon, |
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all-tsun-and-no-dere
ANN Reviewer
Posts: 615 |
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Actually, I've noticed something interesting. A lot of the people complaining that the fan service was too dominant, or that Marin is a manic pixie dream girl, are people who normally defend fan service shows. Meanwhile, I and a lot of other viewers who find fan service alienating loved it, especially women with experience cosplaying. I'm not saying that's the universal reaction on either side of the issue, but I think it speaks a lot to how naturalistic the approach to writing Marin actually . OH WAIT I already said that. I'll say something else too. People keep describing Marin as a "manic pixie dream girl" but that's really not the case here. MPDG's are by definition empty inside, existing only to pull the male protagonist out of his sad, boring life. While Gojo is the perspective character, Marin clearly has her own life, interiority, and motivations driving her. They have a relationship of mutual aid, where they are uplifting each other. Last edited by all-tsun-and-no-dere on Wed Jan 19, 2022 3:53 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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