INTERVIEW: My Dress-up Darling Series Director Keisuke Shinohara Discusses What He’s Learned About Cosplay
Right from the very first episode of My Dress-Up Darling, Marin Kitagawa is instantly likable. She’s cheerful, truthful and honest about her interests. Anyone can grow attached to her mission to pull off the best cosplay possible. For series director Keisuke Shinohara, it isn’t just an attribute of the show, but it’s one of the things that makes it special. As he told us in an interview with Crunchyroll news, “As a character, she is fascinating. Marin Kitagawa is the type of character we’ve never seen before.”
CloverWorks dedicated itself to bringing all of the positive qualities of Shinichi Fukuda’s manga to life and My Dress-Up Darling quickly became a hit of the Winter 2022 Lineup. With a prime focus being on “not disappointing” Fukuda, Shinohara quickly found that additional elements could be minimal for anime adaptation, as Fukuda’s original work was perfect. It had everything from Wakana Gojo’s warm-hearted character to the reality of those cosplay backgrounds. Shinohara was grateful that Fukuda trusted him to make necessary adjustments for the anime adaptation, which made it a smooth process.
Gojo’s role in My Dress-Up Darling, as someone who’s earnest and devotes himself to his doll-making but is slow with the trends of kids his age and not quite fitting in the class, was an interesting reversal to Shinohara. “Mainly in those types of love comic books,” Shinohara explained, “the emotion is usually described from the male role’s point of view, but in this work, it had a new structure where the heroine falls in love with the protagonist first.”
As such, this meant that Marin would be the driving force of the story. The series’ original story arc begins with her desire to cosplay and it’s her feelings for Gojo that become apparent first. Shinohara attributes the massive female fan base of the series to this, saying that “(In terms of the character’s point of view), this series was easy to read and relate for female readers.”
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Shinohara found Marin’s appeal to be that “she has respect to herself, as well as to others, which makes her likable. Marin’s not afraid to speak her mind, yet when it comes to romance, she could be shy, and that’s relatable for anyone who’s been in love. The gap between how she looks on the outside and what’s going on in her inner self makes her adorable. Combined with how she can become so devoted to something when she puts her mind to it, she has ideal qualities we look for in a person.” Marin and Gojo’s relationship being driven by admiration and trust is a great example of this.
The character setting in this work reflects the cosplay techniques and culture in real life, and they are drawn with such details. While Fukuda had already laid much of it out in the original work, it was something that Shinohara had to immerse himself in. “I actually went to stores like Yuzawa-ya and Swallowtail to interview them, as well as visiting them as a customer. I even bought a wig so I could see how it was packaged,” Shinohara recalled. “…with this being during the pandemic, the scale of the cosplay events were not as big, but I did go to them to interview, and visited places that appear in the manga to take photos for reference.”
Luckily, Shinohara had an excellent staff to bring the anime to life. “We got to keep [Costume Designer Erika] Nishihara’s design, and I’m grateful for the animators’ hard work, drawing all of those small, teeny-tiny details that Ms. Nishihara created.”
A show about cosplay would be inherently colorful and Shinohara took great pleasure in seeing it burst into life. “Everyone from the color coordinator, filming director, and myself included worked together, and I was very satisfied with the coloring on the actual screen,” Shinohara said. “Having a hand in the process, especially when I asked something from them and they listened and respected my wish, that’s what I’m most grateful about. I could just do what I liked to do.”
But to Shinohara, it’s more about what cosplay represents that has made My Dress-Up Darling so powerful to its fans. “We use cosplay as a theme, but it’s not limited to that,” Shinohara elaborated. “…as Marin says, the focus is on being able to say ‘I like this.’ This series pays respect to that kind of mindset.”
As such, cosplay is more than just becoming a fictional character that you want to dress up as, but is a reflection of inner spirit and self, a declaration to the world of your commitment to the creation of the world of the character. “…what’s at the base of this work is the mindset to speak out what you love, and turn negative into positive even if others tease you about it. I hope that message is conveyed through the anime.”
