Confessions of an Overage otaku

If you watch My Dress-up Darling carefully, one of the things you should notice pretty quickly is that while Marin Kitagawa is enormously likable, apart from dressing up and dressing down and getting frustrated because Wakana Gojo isn’t picking up what she’s putting down, she doesn’t do a lot.

Quick: What is Marin going to do when she grows up? Don’t know? That’s because she’s not really a deep character. She’s a pretty prize for Wakana Gojo.

Yeah, flip side: Wakana Gojo is a very well-constructed character. That’s because, despite the fact that we’re supposed to keep our eyes on Marin, the story is really about him.

Quick: What is Wakana going to do when he grows up? Well, he’ll get married, take over the hina doll company, probably expand the product line to include doll (and adult) costumes and otherwise do pretty well. You know that because he’s REAL.

There are two reasons for this, two choices the writers made to make him into a real person.

One: While he’s a bundle of tropes jammed together, the tropes they built him out of fit together to make a complete character.

Okay, that begs the question: What tropes? Oh, man, don’t get me started …

He’s a Broken Child (I haven’t talked about this one yet). He lost his parents young and was traumatized just as he was recoveringHe’s been Raised by Wolves, away from society by his grandfatherHe’s a gender-bent He Can’t Love Me Woman

In a way he reminds me of Taiga Aisaka from Toradora. She, too, is a bundle of tropes scotch-taped together, but in her case it was to build her into something that Ryuji could grow up to mother. That’s it. She’s loud, aggressive, violent, funny … but it’s really about him, not her. She doesn’t change at all: In the first episode she kicks him in the head and in the last she head-butts him, still the same semi-homicidal maniac she was all through the series.

But unlike Taiga Wakana’s been put together to be himself, not an object for someone else to respond to.

Here, watch this: Because he’s a Broken Child he’s introverted, right? His childhood trauma makes him wary of personal interactions. That makes sense. It follows, right?

Because he was Raised by Wolves, away from society, he’s naive, right? He’s not familiar with the world outside Gojo Dolls, or how Kids These Days dress or act. That makes sense, too, right?

Those two together make it very reasonable that he’s a He Can’t Love Me Woman. He’s not picking up what Marin is putting down because he doesn’t speak the language. For instance, when she wants him to take a picture with her in a photo booth, he doesn’t understand that to their social group that has meaning, that it shows they are special to one another. How could he know? He was Raised by Wolves!

At the same time, those tropes allow him lots of room for growth. Oh, right, it’s that thing, character development. Yeah, that. Don’t leave home without it.

For instance, as Marin drags him into new activities and new situations, he starts to recognize there is more out there in the world. He starts to open up to it and respond to it. You see his development happening first when he starts to work with Shinju Inui, Juju’s “little” sister. At that point already (episode nine) he’s developed from a person who is dragged around by Marin to a person that takes the initiative to help other people. Wakana is growing out of his tropes, leaving his introversion (especially; the naive part takes longer) behind.

Two: (Yeah, I remembered that I said there’d be two reasons.) His responses to Marin are human.

In particular, his physical responses to Marin are human.

Oh, yeah. Those.

Some people find it kind of creepy that Wakana responds physically to Marin’s physicality, and in one sense it really is uncomfortable. After all it’s a) a cartoon, and b) not something you typically see in anime, let alone cartoons generally. (Fritz the Cat excepted.) If we go back to Toradora, the only indication that the characters relate to each other on a physical level is when Taiga sees Ami in the shower and is intimidated by her figure. They boys don’t respond physically to the girls at all

But Wakana Gojo isn’t just a cartoon character. Marin is not just really cute; she’s got a great figure and has very little shame about showing it off. Let’s be honest: She’s a fashion model, right? She’s used to putting her body on display.

But he’s a what? Sixteen-year-old? boy. So his body responds to hers. When they are close to each other physically he gets an … I’m going to say it. Avert your eyes … erection. And he responds like a shy, introverted boy should: He’s humiliated and embarrassed.

And, to her credit, when she realizes, Marin is embarrassed, too. She’s not deliberately teasing him, not trying to seduce him. She’s just an extrovert realizing that not everyone is an extrovert.

Similarly, although Marin doesn’t know this, he has a wet dream about her, to which I say THANK GOD! There are enough kids in anime who are focused only on comic book characters (Okamura from 2.5 Dimensional Seduction; Yamazaki from Welcome to the NHK) or zombies (Furuya from Sankarea). Wakana is a real boy and he’s interested in real girls, and unlike a lot of anime boys who try everything to protect their virginity, he’s interested in girls THAT way.

That’s what there is to like about Wakana Gojo as a character. He may be in a cartoon, but he’s not just a cartoon character.

I always look at comments and feedback, and I’m sure I’m not the first to see what I’ve seen, so have at it. Just keep it clean and keep it on target…no personal attacks, okay? Thanks.