My Dress-Up Darling’s Cosplay Weight Loss Storyline Is a Little Too Real

By Maddy Myers | September 23, 2025 | 3:15pm

Anime Features my dress up darling

My Dress-Up Darling’s Cosplay Weight Loss Storyline Is a Little Too Real

For over a decade—from my teen years to my late 20s—I got way, way into cosplay. It’s why, like many other cosplayers past and present, I’ve become so obsessed with the anime My Dress-Up Darling, which is all about cosplayer and part-time model Marin and her friend Gojo, a hobbyist tailor who makes Marin’s costumes. But there’s one part of season two that’s been particularly hard to watch: Marin going on a crash diet to lose weight she gained unintentionally. The plotline isn’t unrealistic—quite the opposite. It has reminded me of how common this was for the cosplay communities I was in, as well as the disordered eating habits I developed during that time and have since overcome.

The main ongoing storyline for this show is an adorable friends-to-lovers situation between the confident Marin and the shy, anxious Gojo. They both get super into cosplay together, attending conventions while meeting other cosplayers, amateur photographers, and prop makers. In season two, My Dress-Up Darling is still about their will-they-won’t-they, but by this point, several other cosplayer characters are regulars on the show. Through them, the viewer learns more about the details of the hobby and the stresses that tend to come up for cosplayers. Of course, the show is set in Japan, and there are some differences in terms of how the cosplayers describe the hobby as compared to American cosplayers like me, but there are many, many similarities, to a degree that I’m confident many other American cosplayers are easily recognizing parts of themselves and their peer groups in this show.

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For example, season two introduces Amano, a male cosplayer who prefers to dress as female characters only. The episode introducing Amano is incredible in its depth of care towards depicting not only him but also the way that cosplay communities tend to be very welcoming towards this sort of thing. Like the characters on the show, I was cosplaying when I was a very young person; at that time, I also didn’t feel secure about my gender or my sexuality, and cosplay was a huge part of how I grew more comfortable with being a queer person. It helped that many cosplayers I met were extremely open towards engaging in experimentation with gender performance, and I was pleasantly surprised to see My Dress-Up Darling reinforcing that message. The other characters don’t treat Amano as being strange or “other,” and instead, they celebrate him and clearly see him as a confident older person (he’s only 20, but to teenagers, that’s “old”) with a lot of knowledge to share about both cosplay and self-actualization.

That said, in my experience, cosplay was not a universally welcoming space. This is a hobby that is focused on physical appearance. There is no better way to get to know your own body—for better or worse—than to sew an outfit for yourself from start to finish. Even more so if that outfit has tons of complicated pieces and needs to be moveable, breathable, and bearable to wear for many hours at a time. Furthermore, this is a hobby that actively encourages looking at photos of yourself in direct comparison to the character you are playing—and chances are, given beauty norms, that character is pale, thin, and tall. Usually, cosplayers I knew were most critical of themselves as compared to others, but that also meant that being self-critical of one’s appearance and perceived faults was normalized.

Season two of My Dress-Up Darling has included plotlines about this, too, such as one involving short characters who feel sad about not looking much like the tall characters they want to cosplay. These are characters who are critical of themselves and their own appearances, rather than being judgmental about other cosplayers, which again echoes what I’ve experienced in these communities. Through photography tricks, they come to terms with the perceived drawback of their height, and in the end, the storyline is clearly intended to make the viewer feel good about their “solutions.” You can always wear a padded bra, or put on special makeup, or use camera angles to look more like the character you’re hoping to emulate. My Dress-Up Darling goes into hyper-accurate detail about all of the above techniques to a degree that is admittedly very fun to watch as a former cosplayer who’s familiar with them all. And, for better or worse, the way the characters talk about themselves in these scenes is accurate to cosplayers that I’ve known.

But the show has thus far only included thin characters with largely normative body types; their worries are about being too short or too tall, or about their facial features or breast size. To be clear, I have no expectation of ever seeing a fat character on My Dress-Up Darling. In America, fatness is still often assumed to be a personal failing (rather than a genetic proclivity, which a growing body of evidence suggests), and in Japan, fatness is arguably even more stigmatized (including in systemic ways). That’s why I initially assumed the show would not approach the topic of weight at all, even though it’s been extremely faithful otherwise when it comes to including other major worries and anxieties that unfold amongst cosplayers. And unfortunately, weight is a major topic in that community.

My Dress-Up Darling is a lighthearted comedy, so Marin accidentally gaining a few pounds is largely depicted in a comedic way. The most negative interaction she has with anyone about it is with her modeling agent, who tells her that she must lose the weight before swimsuit season; this scene is short but stressful. After this point, the show leans back into the supposed comedy of the situation by making it clear that Marin only gained this weight because she’s such a fan of Gojo’s delicious cooking that she can’t help but eat it past the point of being full. This ties in with the pair’s friends-to-lovers storyline; it’s clearly meant to be cute.

I personally had trouble perceiving this storyline as cute or funny, even though it did help that when Marin told Gojo about her “problem,” he responded with total nonchalance, saying he’d just let the seams out for any costumes that no longer fit her as well. But Marin rejects his suggestion immediately, instead electing to go on a very restrictive diet. At a group lunch with her cosplay friends, Marin only orders a salad to eat, and all of the other cosplayers nod with understanding when she explains she’s on a diet. Not only that, Marin tells all of them that she can’t cosplay as any character until she’s back to her previous weight. Everyone accepts this statement as normal, even Gojo. (Thankfully, Marin soon decides to reverse this decision, but the cosplay she chooses—a nun’s habit—is one that will easily cover her body and the shame she currently feels about it.)

It’s actually completely normal for teenagers to fluctuate in size, especially as they grow older and their adult metabolisms and hormone levels balance out. Because Marin’s character is also a professional model whose body is under even more scrutiny than the average teenage girl, it makes sense that she would feel obligated to engage in an extreme reduction diet to lose weight quickly; that’s a notable difference between Marin and her cosplay friends. But unfortunately, the show includes no examples of characters pushing back on her dieting techniques (which seem ill-thought-out). On top of this it doesn’t include anyone pointing out that as Marin gets older, it’s possible—even probable—that her body shape is going to change, and that it will in fact be “healthy” and “normal” for that to happen, despite the fact that modeling as a profession tends to place a primacy on the bodies of pre-pubescent teen girls. That said, I have to admit it’s accurate that none of Marin’s friends say anything about this to her, and it would arguably be unrealistic to expect any of these characters to have a more progressive view of body image. I certainly didn’t at their age.

As a teenager, I was very tiny and a late bloomer, and in college, I experienced a belated puberty and accompanying weight gain that I convinced myself was unnatural and something I should reverse. It did not help that this coincided with the time period that I was cosplaying, frequently comparing myself—as so many cosplayers do—to characters that are not only fictional but animated. I was constantly measuring myself to make costumes and was keenly aware of every single change in my body shape. I would print out pictures of video game characters and tape them to my walls to “motivate” myself to eat less; this is called “thinspo,” short for the portmanteau “thinspiration,” and it’s a common practice in disordered eating communities. In my case, I was trying to get my body to look like women who do not even exist. I knew many cosplayers who did the same thing, both in terms of engaging in reductive diets and in obsessively looking at pictures of their would-be cosplay characters as motivation.

I’m glad to say that phase of my life did not last for very long, and that I eventually attained a better relationship with food and with my body. But cosplay didn’t teach me that; I learned it from feminist bloggers instead. Cosplay may have helped me discover my queerness, but it did not necessarily help me love my body. I learned to love my body on my own, and I kept cosplaying through that process; as a result, creating costumes for myself eventually became an act of love for my body. This is part of what’s so romantic about My Dress-Up Darling—the idea of a model and a tailor falling in love is a very understandable concept, because creating clothing for someone involves a high level of closeness. That’s why I wish I could say that cosplaying is what helped me love my body and its shape. But actually, it was hard work to achieve that, and being around cosplayers who were often very critical of their own bodies did not make it easy.

Indeed, My Dress-Up Darling is very accurate on this score, in ways that I almost feel like I have to compliment. The characters do not just cosplay any character they want, no matter how they look. Quite the opposite—instead, they do what many cosplayers do, which is to endeavor in every possible way to look as much like the character as possible, through makeup, prosthetics, camera angles, and yes, even dieting.

My Dress-Up Darling is still one of my favorite shows, even though I was cringing my way through the last chunk of season two, with several episodes in a row featuring Marin vocally refusing to eat certain foods and other characters around her nodding in understanding and support. The teenagers on the show are self-critical in ways that teenagers so often are, including cosplayers.

But I have to admit, I would not have been mad if the show just hadn’t depicted this particular dark side of the cosplay experience, and had instead continued to focus solely on the bright spots. The show’s second season finale just aired this weekend, and the final episode wasn’t about Marin’s diet plan at all, instead returning to its romcom antics. This sudden departure from the weight loss storyline shows how easily it could have been not included at all.

Would it have been less realistic for My Dress-Up Darling to depict a group of cosplayers who never talk about dieting? Unfortunately, yes. But it’s a slice-of-life romcom with feel-good vibes, and I’m just not sure I really want to see a show like that get interrupted with a sad reminder of the intense appearance anxieties and self-criticism that so many cosplayers experience.

Maddy Myers has worked as a video game critic and journalist since 2007; she has previously worked for Polygon, Kotaku, The Mary Sue, Paste Magazine, and the Boston Phoenix. She co-hosts a video game podcast called Triple Click, as well as an X-Men podcast called The Mutant Ages. When she is not writing or podcasting, she composes electro-pop music under the handle MIDI Myers. Her personal website is midimyers.com.