In My Dress-Up Darling, shonen-style hero Gojo Wakana must somehow reconcile his two hobbies of hina doll making and cosplay, and he must also firmly decide what inspires him to pursue each of these hobbies. His new friend Kitagawa Marin is enthusiastically passionate about cosplay, and Gojo must match her passion or risk falling behind.
Gojo knows how to sew doll clothes, and he used those skills to help Marin make her first serious costume. However, it's not enough to simply stitch fabric and add lace -- Gojo must put his heart into it, and in a recent Darling episode, he and Juju both stumble upon the most essential lesson that Yukihira Soma in Food Wars! learned about cooking. This is a game-changer.
What Gojo Wakana And Yukihira Soma Learn About Selfless Passion
On one hand, Gojo Wakana and Yukihira Soma belong to different anime titles that focus on different hobbies, with My Dress-Up Darling being about cosplay and Food Wars!, as per its title, focusing on cooking. Still, Gojo has some remarkable overlap with Soma, including how both boys grew up with a close family member who taught them their favorite hobby. Soma's parents taught him how to cook at their family diner, while Gojo learned to make hina dolls with his doting grandfather, Gojo Kaoru. Gojo Wakana and Soma learned well, but there's more to these hobbies than making a finished product that customers would pay money for. It's about why these heroes pursue their hobbies -- and selfish reasons are out of the question.
The most vital lesson in Food Wars! is that true cooking comes from the heart, and any chef will unlock their true potential when they cook for someone they love. Soma learned that from his parents, and later on, he shared that lesson with Nakiri Erina, who took it to heart as a way to reconcile with her distant mother Mana. Now, in My Dress-Up Darling, both Gojo and his new friend Juju realize that lesson for themselves one rainy day in an abandoned hospital during a cosplay shoot.
Juju explains that she wanted Gojo to make her a costume because she could sense the loving passion Gojo had put into Marin's costume, and sure enough, Gojo had recently admitted his love for Marin during a train ride home. At the same time, Gojo thinks back on a scene with him and his grandfather, where Kaoru was delighted that Wakana wanted so badly to make hina dolls and follow his example. Both Gojos want to make high-quality products to inspire and impress their customers, and that's what matters most. They make hina dolls not for a profit, but rather to make their customers happy. Now, Gojo Wakana is doing the same for cosplay.
When Gojo's & Soma's Lesson Isn't Learned
My Dress-Up Darling may be seinen, but it also has shojo and shonen elements to it, meaning its main characters are bound to learn wholesome life lessons and push themselves to become better than ever before. That's how Gojo emulates Yukihira Soma so well, including the life lesson on creating cosplay or food for other people's sake, but Food Wars! also offers a dire warning about what happens if this lesson isn't learned.
Erina's father, the tyrannical Nakiri Azami, was a cold and calculating student chef who cooked only to show off his skills as the very best, and he put no soul into what he was doing. Then he met Mana and was inspired to cook for her sake, meaning he almost learned the vital lesson. However, he fell short, and he and Mana parted ways years later, with Azami becoming a ruthless chef who aimed to force his perfectionist ways onto others. Similarly, Mana fell into despair because she had nowhere left to go in her culinary career and got lost in "the storm." All that changed when Soma taught Erina the lesson, and mother and daughter resolved to cook for the sake of their loved ones and thus escape the storm.
That's a good cautionary tale about what might happen if characters like Gojo and Soma don't learn this essential shonen lesson. If Gojo had never met Marin and stuck with hina dolls, he would have ended up like Azami or Mana -- that is, he would hit a wall and see no way to break it down. His hobby would have ground to a halt, and he might have given up in despair. But now, he has fresh ideas and newfound motivation with his dress-up darling Marin to lead the way, and he has Juju to inspire him too. These two girls are absolutely worth making cosplay for, and Gojo will pour his heart and soul into it. He'll never get lost in "the storm" at this rate. Soma would approve.
