My Dress-Up Darling Season 2 Updates

"My Dress-Up Darling" was perhaps one of the more surprising anime hits of 2022. At the start, the introverted Wakana Gojo — whose primary hobby is crafting hina ningyo dolls — forms an unlikely bond with Marin Kitagawa, a popular girl at his school. As it turns out, Marin is interested in cosplaying some of her favorite characters, and Gojo ends up using his sewing expertise to help her design new costumes.

Viewers highly praised "My Dress-Up Darling" during its first season, to the extent that at least one "Attack on Titan" fan became angry with "My Dress-Up Darling" due to the popularity of the latter series approaching the height of the former. Fans have been hoping for news of a second season of "My Dress-Up Darling" ever since the conclusion of Season 1 in March 2022. The good news is that it's definitely happening, but when will it be released and what will it be about? Here's everything you need to know about "My Dress-Up Darling" Season 2.

In September 2022, around six months after the first season of "My Dress-Up Darling" came to a close, the show's official website revealed that a follow-up was in the pipeline. Something that wasn't shared, however, was the proposed release date.

The first season of the show was announced in April 2021 and it debuted as part of the Winter 2022 Season, running from January to March. If the upcoming sequel had followed the same production schedule then it would have been due for release before the end of 2023, but that always seemed unlikely. In a tweet about the renewal, producer Shota Umehara seemed to indicate that other projects were in front of the sequel in the production pipeline. "It's not the 2nd season that was planned at all, it's the power of support from everyone who watched the anime and bought various things," Umehara said. "It's a crazy job because it's not in my schedule, but I'll do my best as long as there are people who are happy to see it!"

Some fans expressed concern for Umehara after the announcement, noting that the producer is known to push himself when working on a project — he was reportedly hospitalized twice during the making of "Wonder Egg Priority" with apparent exhaustion. Even if the team works flat out, other engagements mean that we probably won't see "My Dress-Up Darling" Season 2 until 2025 at the earliest.

Like a lot of popular anime, "My Dress-Up Darling" is based on an ongoing manga series. This means that the upcoming second season will pull from existing material just as its first season did, and fans have a pretty good idea of just which storylines the new season will adapt.

First, it's worth noting, as Redditor u/Ver3232 specified in a thread about Season 2's announcement, that Season 1 adapts Chapters 1-39 of the "My Dress-Up Darling" manga. A number of users, like u/Steeldj22, have therefore proposed that Season 2 will start with Chapter 40. Meanwhile, u/TierRune pointed to the fact that the show's intro sequence includes footage of a costume from Chapter 40 of the manga, suggesting that Season 2, Episode 1 will introduce viewers to this look for the first time in the series proper.

Of course, "My Dress-Up Darling" fans interested in learning more about the plot of Season 2 can simply start reading its manga source material, beginning with Chapter 40. If it's faithful to the books, "My Dress-Up Darling" Season 2 will explore the developing and blossoming romance between Wakana Gojo and Marin Kitagawa, and how the characters become further entrenched in the world of cosplay.

As is customary with most major anime productions originally presented in Japanese, the U.S. release of "My Dress-Up Darling" is available in two versions, with the original language track intact and English subtitles added, and dubbed into English by an additional cast of actors. It's highly likely that the main cast members of both editions of Season 1 should return for "My Dress-Up Darling" Season 2, given its popularity and the fact that they'll all still working.

In the Japanese version, Shoya Ishige portrayed lonely doll crafter and costume tailor Wakana Gojo, with Paul Dateh handling the character on the English dub. Popular cosplayer Marin Kitagawa was played by Hina Suguta in Japanese, and Amanda Lee in English. Another high school-age cosplayer, Sajuna Inui, was portrayed by Atsumi Tanezaki and Risa Mei in the Japanese and English cuts, respectively, while Hina Yomiya and Jad Saxton played the character's sister, Shinju Inui. Misako Tomioka, who voiced Wakana's cousin Miori Gojo and also acted as narrator, is also expected to return for "My Dress-Up Darling" Season 2.

While the official Japanese-language Twitter account for "My Dress-Up Darling" shared that a sequel is indeed on its way, virtually no other information about its production is available outside of this initial confirmation. The Tweet announcing the sequel does happen to include a link to a trailer on the Japanese-language YouTube channel of the Sony-owned anime distributor Aniplex. That said, this teaser consists entirely of existing footage, so rather than hint at what's coming next, it's more of a celebration of everything that fans liked about Season 1.

It's also worth noting that the trailer's title includes the words 続編制作決定, or zokuhen seisaku kettei, meaning something akin to a decision to continue the series. Nowhere does this video explicitly mention that the sequel will take the form of a second season, as opposed to, say, a movie. However, in his own Tweet about the news, producer Shota Umehara referred to the sequel as 2期, or niki, indicating that this is indeed a second season, adding some additional context to what is otherwise a sparse initial trailer-of-sorts.

The first season of "My Dress-Up Darling" was animated by the studio CloverWorks, which used to be part of A-1 pictures until it broke away and became its own company in 2018. Since then, the Tokyo-based studio has churned out over 30 anime series and films, some of which have been received very enthusiastically. The original series "Wonder Egg Priority" — the project that reportedly hospitalized producer Shota Umehara — became a big success for the studio, scoring awards nominations in the double figures in 2022. CloverWorks is also behind "Spy x Family," a hit spy show about found family which was named best new series at the Crunchyroll Anime Awards in 2023.

While there's been no official confirmation that "My Dress-Up Darling" will remain at CloverWorks for Season 2, the fact that Shota Umehara has seemingly confirmed his involvement suggests that it will indeed stay with the studio. This will no doubt be music to the ears of fans, who were full of praise for the work that CloverWorks did on Season 1. "They did a great job and stayed true to the characters without ruining them or anything like that," Redditor u/Luf2222 said, while u/RedKings1028 added, "Major props to the studio for doing everything they could to create the illusion of Marin and Gojo sharing the same bed, while staying true to the original manga panel."

In August 2024, fans of "My Dress-Up Darling" got some much needed good news, though not in the form of a Season 2 release date. Seemingly out of nowhere, a live-action adaptation of the hit manga was announced, with an October 2024 debut on the MBS network confirmed. The live-action versions of Marin Kitagawa and Wakana Gojo are played by Riko Nagase and Kota Nomura, two actors who will be better known to fans of Japanese dramas rather than anime.

Nagase is perhaps best known for her roles in the shows "Kurosagi," the tale of a young con man who sets out to play the fraudsters that ruined his family at their own game, and "Given," which chronicles the ups, downs, and romances of a rock band. Like "My Dress-Up Darling," both shows were based on manga. In anime terms, Nagase just has one credit: She voiced Miki in the 2021 film "Child of Kamiari Month." Nomura, meanwhile, has no anime experience, though his live-action resume boasts shows like the crime drama "Shut Up" and the teen romance "My Girlfriend's Child."

Additional cast members include Akana Ikeda as Sajuna Inui, Kokoro Toyoshima as Shinju Inui, Daichi Shoizaki as Chitose Amano, and Meiko Yamada as Wakana's grandfather Karou Gojo. Kōji Shintoku, who has previously handled live-action adaptations of "Honey So Sweet" and "Honey Lemon Soda," directs the series, which was written for the screen by Satoko Okazaki, who penned several episodes of the supernatural shoujo anime "Laughing Under the Clouds." Unfortunately, there's been no confirmation of when the live-action "My Dress-Up Darling" will get an international release.

"My Dress-Up Darling" is the latest manga from writer and illustrator Shinichi Fukuda, who has been active in the industry since the late 2000s. They debuted with the ecchi one-shot "Heavy Mecha Blues," the story of a boy whose father builds a female mecha to help around the house. Fukuda went on to contribute to 2009's "Haruhi Comic Anthology" before releasing the two-part manga "Shibaraku," a far future-set shonen story about a rogue member of a task force set up to deal with the riots that are now commonplace on Earth.

Fukuda's biggest release prior to "My Dress-Up Darling" is the seinen manga "Momoiro Meloik," which ran for 102 chapters between 2012 and 2016. It didn't get a lot of traction outside of Japan, but the mangaka's career took off with the release of "My Dress-Up Darling" two years later. It began serialization in the magazine Young Gangan in January 2018 and it's still going strong to this day. If the anime adaptation keeps gaining fans, there's every chance that the manga will continue for several more years — something that would no doubt make Fukuda extremely happy.

It turns out that Fukuda is a big fan of the "My Dress-Up Darling" anime. In an interview with Comic Natalie (via Anime Hunch), the mangaka revealed that they were reduced to tears watching the first two episodes, such was their excitement. "I received the first and second episodes of the complete packet of the anime and watched them. Everything was so good that I cried with emotion," Fukuda said. "I watched it over and over again for a total of 13 hours, so happy and joyful that I have never been happier in my life as a manga artist."

All 12 episodes of "My Dress-Up Darling" Season 1 are available to watch on anime streaming service Crunchyroll. You can watch the show for free if you don't mind dealing with really long ads. However, if you want to do away with that, then you'll have to pay for one of the premium packages. These range from $7.99 a month to $15.99 a month. 

Meanwhile, those interested in expanding their knowledge of "My Dress-Up Darling" can purchase volumes of the manga through most major booksellers. There are 13 volumes at the time of this writing, with the most recent one released in May 2024 in Japan. Square Enix Books publishes the series in English. So far, 11 volumes have been officially translated. The twelfth one is due before the end of 2024 and the thirteenth one will follow in 2025, with an April 15 release date confirmed. With any luck, we'll have more news about Season 2 of the anime by then.