My Dress-Up Darling (2020)

[その 着せ替え人形 （ ビスク・ドール ） は恋をする]

Volume 5

Author/Artist: Shinichi Fukuda
Publisher: Young Gangan Comics

Synopsis:
Kitagawa shows up well-tanned and ready to do the Veronica cosplay.

Story/Characters:
We open to discover that Kitagawa's tan is makeup. Apparently she doesn't actually tan easily. As she borrows Gojou's bath to rinse off the sweat she's worked up, we see just how thorough a job she did. Remembering the incident with Juju, Gojou is particularly cautious and nothing untoward happens. They go over some of the details for the Veronica costume, such as the teeth (using the neat solution of press-on nails that have been cut to shape), but things fall apart when Kitagawa wants Gojou's help putting the makeup back on. We then take some time off to go clothes shopping. This gave me some flashbacks of a time my then-girlfriend played dress-up with me, making a number of dubious fashion choices. We learn that Gojou doesn't want to see Kitagawa in the Veronica costume because he's too embarrassed. If you were hoping to see the finished product, the cover of the previous volume and the OP of the TV series are the best you're going to get.

Gojou and Kitagawa go to a manga cafe and we pick up our new project, the succubus lead of a 4-koma manga. We get a new challenge with Gojou having to design a costume based on SD art. This requires him to do more creative interpretation. We don't really spend much time focusing on the design phase but rather cut to the photo shoot. The key sticking point is the venue Kitagawa chooses: a love hotel. As you can imagine, Gojou is wildly more embarrassed about the situation than Kitagawa, but once Kitagawa is in costume and photography begins, Gojou gets so into it that he seems to completely forget that he's in a love hotel with an attractive, scantily-clad girl dressed as a succubus mounting him to get the angle he wants for a particular shot... until he remembers. The noises from the next-door neighbors don't help. They get through it.

We take a break from cosplay for a bit with Kitagawa's father cracking down because her grades have been slipping. Gojou learns of her career as a model and is surprised how casually she treats it. We then have a fairly standard summer festival chapter, hitting almost all the cliches, but it's just so cute having Gojou and Kitagawa go through those paces. Next is Gojou and Kitagawa watching horror movies at her place, then her getting scared and Gojou having to keep her company over the phone until she can fall asleep.

Art:
We get a lot of good reactions here. The Rizu-kyun photo shoot has plenty of great scenes. The two-page spread of the money shot is particularly nice. Unsurprisingly, Kitagawa looks very nice in a yukata. Chapter 39 also has a nice two-page spread for the big moment, matching the two locations as if they're one, even overlapping Gojou and Kitagawa's phones to serve as the bridge. It's a neat composition.

Other:
As you can't subtract much from the Rizu-kyun cosplay, the color illustration is just the costume as it is. We have an afterword illustration of Kitagawa enjoying some soumen, a one-page comic of Fukuda doing research at a love hotel (alone, of course, heh...), and the thanks page (with no mention of the love hotel, strangely).

Conclusion:
You may feel a little disappointed that we don't get a proper payoff for the Veronica costume, but the Rizu-kyun one more than makes up for it. The last three chapters make for a nice breather, showing that Gojou and Kitagawa's relationship doesn't require cosplay to work. Good times all around. Go ahead and add this one to your collection.

Rating:
Own It