Waifus. Waifus. Who doesn’t love waifus?
I don’t love waifus, but I do understand the appeal of them. There’s a bunch of female video game characters I have some fictional crushes on, and manga-wise I do like Kana and Akane from Oshi no Ko, Chisame Hasegawa from Negima, and Si-Won from Between Us. That last one is from a pornhwa, but my point is that I do understand liking anime girls. Hell, I think Marin from My Dress-Up Darling is cute and cool as well. Not exactly what I’d call a waifu, but she comes close.
And that’s what frustrates me the most about My Dress-Up Darling. Yes the main audience for the show is those who like to see cute moments between their waifu and this shy boy while my tastes lean more towards romances with more character-driven narratives that preferably use the romance as a jumping-off point. But as someone who has seen both sides done well in the past, I don’t understand why this show couldn’t have done it (beyond because that’s not how it is in the manga logic), especially since the main thing that makes the show stand out is supposed to be the cosplay stuff. Marin’s personal journey into someone more experienced in cosplay and falling in love with Gojo is nice, but it’s a little basic for my tastes based on what the anime has covered so far, and I think she deserved better.
Meanwhile, Gojo is just disappointing in that the show is going for the slow-burn development with him to the point that it feels like his character stalled after Marin fell in love with him. He’s now become a nice boy who wants to help cute girls in cosplay while being shy around the fanservice surrounding him to the point that they give him boners, which is not exactly what I consider substantial growth for a dude who was afraid to interact with people because of an incident surrounding a former friend who didn’t understand his hobbies. I honestly can’t think of anything that makes him stand out compared to other shy boys in terms of his personality. The only thing that stands out about him is how he insists on wearing the same clothes when he’s not in his school uniform and his interest in dolls.
My issue with waifu shows are honestly not too different from my issue with Korean pornhwas with the obvious difference being that the latter has 18+ scenes to fall back on when the narrative isn’t being satisfying. There was a pornhwa I read recently called Should I Study at Noryangjin? that had some really sexy art and scenes, and the actual chemistry between the main lead and his two love interests was good with all three going through some growth over the course of the webtoon’s run. But the main problem with that webtoon was that the male lead’s growth was so mediocre in that the webtoon tried to make him an everyman to the point that it felt like he got women to fall in love with him because the writer said so. And on top of that, he kept having sex with multiple women without them ever knowing to the point that he came off as a cheating jackass.
That webtoon wasn’t the only one of those kinds of stories to have that sort of problem. There are multiple just like it where the girl starts getting interested in the dude because she sees his big dick due to porn logic. And that’s fine, but a lot of webtoons are lazy in that they don’t give the main dude anything distinct besides a big dick. They don’t make him constantly try to grow in order to meet the girls’ expectations like in Between Us - a somewhat vanillia pornhwa that I’d love to talk about one day because I’m really enjoying it. When they make the main character into a jackass, they still try to play him off like he’s supposed to be sympathetic when he shoudn’t be. It may be porn, but it’s still a story, and I want to see some good characterization when I read a story.
Given my expectations for fucking Korean porn, hopefully you at least understand that I have similar expectations for waifu shows, even if you personally don’t. Because it’s just not fun for me to watch them if they settle for being sex memes. Character chemistry is nice, but it can only get you so far, especially when you’re not going to make the couple actually get together until the very end of the story. I don’t think it’s asking too much to have something like Nodame Cantabile in which the chemistry between the two main leads was a big draw, but it was the main dude’s growth as a conductor that fueled a lot of the momentum (the female lead had growth too, but she acted like a comedy character for a good chunk of the runtime).
Yes there is Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, but Kaguya-sama has the benefit of being an Aka Akasaka manga. It’s written by a guy who can get away with certain things because he knows how to bend the rules to his advantage. The point is that you’re not going to be Kaguya-sama in the same vein that if you were born in the world of Attack on Titan, you’re not going to be Levi. It just doesn’t work like that.
Basically, if the main draw of your show is that it has a great waifu, then that’s basically admitting to me that your recommendation is piss-poor. It was basically why I hated all the Rent-A-Girlfriend recommendations back when people liked that series. All the Chizuru simps who loved how she was “relatable”, which is a fucking low bar if that’s all you can sell me on, and never bringing up any sort of interesting character growth she goes through throughout either the anime or the manga (spoiler: she has none) were the worst. And then of course there are the Holo simps. The Nagatoro simps. The Komi simps. I understanding liking their character, but if you don’t give them anything to do, their actual show isn’t going to be fun to watch.
When My Dress-Up Darling inevitably comes back once the manga has enough material for another season, I really hope Marin goes through something major. Because right now, I don’t see Gojo going through anything exemplary anytime soon, especially when he trended on Twitter last night (granted, you might have missed that given the huge number of Will Smith hashtags shortly afterwards) and a bunch of people rushed to his defense by posting a picture of him having a serious face while doing something doll/cosplay-related (not linking it in case of spoilers). I fail to see how that’s any different from how he’s grown in the series proper, plus that’s a defense of the manga instead of the anime. Not to say you can’t like him, but I don’t see anyone cosplaying the dude unless they’ve got a female companion to cosplay Marin walking around with them.
As for the next waifu show that’s coming out soon, Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie, apparently the appeal of that series is that the pink-haired girl is the girlfriend of the main dude and she has a tough personality underneath the cute surface, but their interactions are mostly cute fluff with very little actual physical activity like kissing and such. I might have been misinformed on that, but if it is true, that sounds as far removed from what I expect from waifu shows as you could possibly get.
