My Dress-Up Darling (2019)

[その 着せ替え人形 （ ビスク・ドール ） は恋をする]

Volume 3

Author/Artist: Shinichi Fukuda
Publisher: Young Gangan Comics

Synopsis:
A girl shows up on Gojou's doorstep and misunderstandings ensue.

Story/Characters:
Japan is an amazing country. Where else can an old man find a girl soaked from the rain and invite her in to use his bath without all the alarms in the world going off? I say that, but when Gojou arrives and hears the story, he can only imagine something suspicious is up, leading to the sort of run-in I'm sure everyone could predict. The girl in question happens to be Juju, the cosplayer Kitagawa brought up earlier (and who we got a bit of a glimpse of when Kitagawa uploaded her first pics of the Shizuku-tan costume). She makes a bit of a bad impression at first, trying to blackmail Gojou into working for her and being hostile to Kitagawa, but this seems like a defense mechanism mostly and once she realizes she doesn't have to keep her guard up quite so much, she ends up being alright. You can imagine how Kitagawa fangirls over her idol. Kitagawa wants to do a joint cosplay of the same franchise, but Juju resists at first until she realizes that she can halve her costs by playing along. Later, when Grandpa is reviewing Gojou's work, our boy is surprised to hear that his work has improved. Before, he was focused only on dollmaking, but by broadening his horizons, his skills are improving in ways they wouldn't have otherwise.

When it comes time to do some research on the magical girl anime that's the source for the current project, Gojou visits Kitagawa's place. It's great that when she groggily opens the door, she's embarrassed not by the fact that her rather thin top is about to fall off but that she forgot to put in her color contacts first. ^o^ We then have her try her hand at making omurice for Gojou and it goes about as well as you can imagine. (Actually, the taste ends up being fine, but the presentation...) Later, when reviewing things with Juju, he learns more about taping and photo retouching, leading to the introduction of Juju's kid sister Shinju, who works as her photographer. As you might have guess, if you've got an older girl in a loli body, the natural choice is to have her kid sister be huge... in a number of ways. Shinju explains a bit about photography and Gojou and Kitagawa come to realize how ridiculously expensive quality camera equipment is. We then go location hunting, where we find an abandoned hospital that's suitably atmospheric. The gang splits up, with Gojou paired with a spooky Juju. Juju ends up talking about her motivation for getting into cosplaying, which resonates with Gojou's own passion. It's a nice little bonding moment between them. We close with Kitagawa inviting Gojou to a nearby beach and talking about summer plans.

Art:
Juju is a cute lil' mutt, particularly when she's blushing. Her tsundere nature yields some fun reactions whenever Kitagawa is involved. I like the contrast between her and Shinju. The beach chapter has some rather nice moments to it that are worth mentioning as well.

Other:
The color illustration at the beginning shows us what's underneath the Black Lobelia costume (which we haven't even really started yet) and the afterword illustration has Juju in a school swimsuit. The comic chronicles Fukuda making his own attempts at cosplaying and apparently the abandoned hospital is a real place as they and others get mentioned in the special thanks.

Conclusion:
We probably would've been just fine focusing on Gojou and Kitagawa, but expanding the cast provides a good opportunity for a wider exploration of the cosplaying game and different character types give us interactions that reveal other sides to our main couple. The Inui Sisters make for a good addition. I don't imagine fans of the series so far have any doubt, but this one's every bit as worth a place in the collection.

Rating:
Own It