INTERVIEW: My Dress-Up Darling’s Head Writer Yoriko Tomita Talks About Manga Adaptation
Turning a manga into an anime series sounds like an easier proposition than it is — the narratives, characters, world, and emotional arc of the show are already laid out, but adapting it into an entirely new medium is a complicated and careful process. In the case of My Dress-Up Darling, the job was given to Yoriko Tomita, who was in charge of the series composition and scripts. She worked with the staff at CloverWorks studio to take the adorable, growing relationship between Wakana Gojo and Marin Kitagawa and bring it to life.
“I find the script writing process for an anime adaptation of a manga to be very difficult,” Tomita told Crunchyroll in an exclusive interview. “It is especially difficult to decide how to fit the story of the episode that’s been picked up from the manga into the 20-minute TV animation scale and deciding where the most exciting parts of the story should be in those 20 minutes. That was the hardest task in this series, as well. The original work was not created with a 20-minute scale in mind, so turning that story into an anime script sometimes means it ends up too short or too long. But I worked with the director, the assistant director and the producers to decide on where to cut or how to expand the narrative, so the process was smooth overall. It’s all thanks to everyone’s cooperation.”
One of the characteristics of this series is its fine details of the process of procuring materials and dress-making, but Tomita was not exposed to the original manga until she was involved in the anime adaptation. However, it doesn’t mean that she didn’t already have a personal connection to parts of My Dress-Up Darling. “My mother and older sister enjoy making crafts,” Tomita told me, “and I myself used to make clothes for stuffed animals and bags for myself when I was little.” It also didn’t hurt that Tomita knows Chisato Tsumori, a well-regarded Japanese fashion designer whose fabric prints can often be stunningly vibrant. “I’ve known Chisato Tsumori personally and I speak to her often, so I had basic knowledge about cloth and materials. But I’ve never been involved in the actual dress-making like the ones Marin wears, so I learned a lot about the actual tasks involved in making them from listening to the staff in the storyboard meeting who had cosplay experiences. For example, I learned that cutting takes a lot of time and cosplaying can be a tough, sweaty experience on a summer day.” Gojo’s dedication to his craft is faithfully reproduced in the anime as well.
Tomita felt that Gojo was a relatable character, an aspect that she’d work with to make adjustments from the manga. “Since the main theme of this work is not a serious one, I think I was careful to not make it too heavy,” Tomita said. “…Japanese anime fans tend to empathize too much with a passive character and feel pain, so I arranged it so that the negative side of him is not as heavy. I also changed the reactions of the classmates a little from the original work so that they do not seem so cold toward Gojo.” Gojo’s progress in communicating with others was a “supplementary theme,” and Tomita did good work in softening it, keeping Gojo likable and relatable to the viewers.
Tomita’s changes and additions never betrayed Fukuda’s original work, and she’d even ask Fukuda to check and approve the dialogue that she did add. Working closely with the staff in delivering the story, she was surprised by the finished product’s level of perfection. She’d looked forward to seeing Marin’s first cosplay, the culmination of the first story in the series, and she was moved to see the thought and work that went into creating the fluttering lace and thick, heavy fabric along with the Shizuku cosplay’s lavish hair. And Tomita’s greatest surprise came in the final episode. She told me:
“I was also looking forward to the fireworks scene in Episode 12. When I was writing the script, I had Gojo look back on everything that had happened since he first met Marin while watching the fireworks. I did this thinking that it would be difficult to draw fireworks, but when I looked at the script during recording, everything had been cut. After that, I was told by the production staff that they were working as hard as they could on drawing the fireworks, and I was suddenly looking forward to it. Of course, I would have welcomed the animation of the fireworks, so I was very happy. The quality was just like a theatrical release, so I was just bowled over. Also, the insert song was very nice and suited the scene, so I was very happy that it didn’t turn out the way I had originally written it.”
Lastly, I asked Tomita what she would like the fans to enjoy most. “Everything! With that said, I think each person who sees it will notice different things. I think that the characters that people can relate to are also different. As long as each viewer enjoys it according to his or her own sensibilities, that’s what matters. This work also has a message of ‘Everyone has a lot on their plate,’ which makes this series relatable from so many perspectives, and it’s an animation of a wonderful quality. I hope many people watch it and enjoy it repeatedly.” With so many latching onto the My Dress-Up Darling anime, Tomita has achieved her intended results.
