INTERVIEW: My Dress-Up Darling’s Character Designer Kazumasa Ishida Talks Animation

 

One of the most prominent aspects of My Dress-Up Darling is the character design work, which blended strong models with colorful and intricate clothing. In a series so dedicated to expressing yourself through cosplay, it was necessary to have anime designs that reflected the characters’ passion. Luckily, Kazumasa Ishida, My Dress-Up Darling’s character designer and chief animation director, was more than up to the task, delivering a look that was just as vibrant as the dreams of Wakana Gojo and Marin Kitagawa.

 

Ishida spoke with Crunchyroll about what it took to bring the manga to life. Like other members of the crew who worked on My Dress-Up Darling at CloverWorks studio, he found that the art provided by manga creator Shinichi Fukuda was very strong. And luckily, Ishida was able to get detailed input from him: “After consulting with Fukuda-san about the development and directions of each character, we proceeded by having him check the designs we had drawn piece by piece.”

 

 

This attention to the different parts of the composition was crucial, especially when it comes to important bits of the character work that aren’t necessarily stated verbally. For example, Marin’s personality is far more cheerful and extroverted than Gojo’s, a shy lead character who tends to think rather than speak, so body language becomes a priority. “Although Wakana is a rather large man, I was careful not to make him pose in a confident way or with his chest outstretched too much in ordinary scenes,” Ishida told us. “The facial expression is basically the same, with his eyebrows down-slanted in many scenes.”

 

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However, one couldn’t just rely on Fukuda’s art to carry the weight of the design. With so many intricate costumes and pieces of clothing, “the key challenge was to strike a balance between reproducing the beautiful pictures of the original work and the amount of work required to allow them to move as an animation.” Every little touch added to the apparel in the manga had to look good in the anime when it would actually be seen in motion, which meant that “the episodes where the characters were in cosplay were particularly demanding.” The staff “worked very hard to make it happen,” and the results were often outstanding, with the sweeping details matching the passion of those who’d made them.

 

 

The first test for this process was the costume design of Shizuku, a character from the video game that Marin adores, “Slippery Girls 2.” The cosplay for Shizuku is an elaborate one, full of many separate pieces that Gojo has to assemble, to see it pulled off was a delight for Ishida and the crew: “Shizuku was the first cosplay, and it involved a lot of lines from frills, chains, headdresses, etc. So it was nice to see that they animated well without being buried. It was thanks to the detailed color separation and the photography processing.”

 

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Color in My Dress-Up Darling needed constant consideration. Ishida wanted to stay true to the lighter look of Fukuda’s manga but also needed it to stand out so as not to be swallowed up by the background or go unappreciated since there was such an emphasis on dynamic character design. “Erika Nishihara-san was in charge of the costume design, and we borrowed cosplay costumes and checked the material before creating the design. It was a good reference for the design and processing, and I’m extremely happy with Nishihara-san’s work.”

 

Cosplay played a very significant role in this series, as well as a means to a thematic end. The series is about how we form relationships over the things we share. Considering the praise My Dress-Up Darling has received and the way its fans have become so attached to the story and its leading characters, I’d say it’s been successful in that regard. “I wanted to depict people who are connected by their love of something, not just cosplay,” Ishida said, “and the world that expands as a result, in as positive a way as possible.”