2.5 JIGEN NO RIRISA

DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA Comedy2.5 Jigen no Ririsa
ANIME Comedy2.5-jigen no Ririsa 2nd Season

REVIEWS

• 

  Ionliosite2

  60/100
  A very fun and endearing cosplay series brought down a little by the censorship

  Like many, I learned about the existence of this show in conversations about Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru, that this one was an “spicier” or more ecchi version of it, and I thought that, just like the series it was being compared to, this would be a light trashy lecture to see hot girls, and I wouldn’t say I disagree with people who called it an even ecchier version, you are immediately bombarded with everything you were expecting, even if by now I disagree with the comparisons since both series are very different despite the cosplay theme as they go in pretty different directions. As the author of the series would put it, the real series started after it stopped being a series where a guy gets himself in lewd situations with a couple of girls and turned into a cosplay manga, it’s not like it stops being ecchi, but it definitely puts a stop to only being that to actually have a focus on the actual characters and storyline, focusing more on otaku culture and even being some kind of hot blooded sports manga but with very hot girls.

  This show starts with our dear otaku Okumura in his manga club at school when suddenly one day this very cute and hot girl Ririsa enters the room, wants to join the club, starts undressing to change into her cosplay and as the MC’s waifu, and then you just know the kind of series you are getting into, it’s a fun ecchi series for the first couple of episodes. However, I think the series actually gets real by the time Mayuri appears, because that’s the point where the manga evolves, the scene where they have to submit a report to keep the club’s room but they don’t want to lie about it because it is not true to their ideals, that it would be admitting that they are embarrassed about what they enjoy, where we’re given the counterpoint about people thinking that something like cosplay is just for some girls to get attention on their social media, and that people won’t take seriously that kind of hobby even if you’re serious about it because it would still look “shameful”, as these people will see you liking anime and say that those are “merely cartoons” and you have no reason keep watching it past childhood age, Ririsa’s response to it is powerful, and it cements an important part of the theme of the series, that doing your hobbies is not something you should be ashamed of just because some other people may not approve of it. That’s pretty much the moment where the anime and series in general start taking a change into something that actually stands up for something, and that something is probably very relatable for anyone who has watching anime, reading manga or even reading comics or playing video games for being very real issues that fans face.

  From there on you have actually genuine arcs that follows similar themes to that, and it was very easy to care about it as these characters are very endearing, because they very clearly have some attitudes that you have seen or experienced before, for example, I immediately loved Nagomi’s character because of the way that she talked to Ririsa as if Ririsa didn’t even know in which floor she is standing on since she was just a beginner, then proceeds to tell her all the criticism she has gotten and how she doesn’t care about that, to then say that she loves cosplay more than anyone else, and I know people will see her as mean for that, and well she was but I felt very endeared towards her from that point onwards as I have definitely said some similar things to people multiple times across the internet, of course, her character isn’t only being mean to new people but actually rediscovering her love for cosplay and how fun it is. Noa with her communication problems created one of the most annoying arcs of the series, but once you actually get to know her as a character, she clearly become much better as she can actually open her mouth and speak properly things one can easily understand, like complaining about extroverts just doing whatever she tried for so long in a couple of seconds when it comes to communication, or how she doesn’t want to be with people who compare things to the Avengers. Surprisingly, despite being cute, Mikari is probably the one that contributes the less towards the otaku feeling as she is one of the two people in the cast who isn’t an otaku, even if she is there for almost every group cosplay, she is the one that mainly moves the romance side of the things as she is clearly in love with Okumura, and because he don’t see 3DPDs that way, she gets very frustrated over the fact that she basically gets ignored in that aspect. Aria is the other normal person of the group who is barely getting started on cosplay to see her father again, her arc is actually one of the emotional highs of the series and has one of the best Okumura scenes. One line that has been lingering in my mind ever since I saw it was Mayuri saying that her watch list has been getting bigger and that she haven’t even catch up with previous seasonal anime, and I just know I’ll possibly end up like that one day.

  The worst part of the adaptation is extremely obvious, that is, the censorship. Believe me when I tell you this is one of the worst cases of censorship I have seen in the last couple of years, to the point that thanks to it and another popular show like Ranma getting censored, people have gotten so paranoid about censorship that every single ecchi adaptation announced has been getting immediately jumped to the conclusion that it will be stupidly censored. Those people are exaggerating, of course, however, the censorship in this show isn’t normal at all, for example, say that they won’t add nipples, I have seen anime where the original manga showed nipples but the anime didn’t, not even in the blu-rays, and taking into account that JC Staff hasn’t made an anime with nipples in like 5 years then I was expecting the nipple censorship, but it doesn’t stop there, you just have to take a small look at how Liliel’s outfit looks in the manga, that was the first sign of this seen in the KV of the anime, as you can tell there’s far less underboob and the outfit is zipped, but the censorship level doesn’t stop at nipples, as it also includes pantyshots, underboob, boob grabs, ass shots, altered outfits to show less skin, and even entire scenes. The censorship in the cosplays is one of the worst offenders here, after all, this is a cosplay anime, censoring the cosplays is simply a ridiculous idea and I have no idea how it got into anyone’s head that they should do that, and it’s quite funny as there is an scene in episode 3 where Ririsa explains exactly that while trying to make a cosplay, showing how the outfit of the character in the manga always shows the nipples through the top and that the anime changes it to not do that so fans of the manga will notice the change and care about that part of the design, so it’s hilarious how the anime seems to lack this much self-awareness when that scene is exactly what is happening to the series saying it.

  Of course, that is not the only problem with how the anime shows the girls, because in the manga, they have more distinguishable body types, there’s even a scene where Ririsa, Noa and Aria are changing and they start talking about how they look different, yet in the anime there is basically no difference between Ririsa and Aria’s bodies despite one saying she and the other is more muscular, when in the manga there is an obvious difference, as Ririsa actually looks soft while Aria looks more muscular and even Noa looks more slim to the point you can see her ribs, but this isn’t reflected in the anime at any point. This is the kind of little details that add to the erotic aesthetics of the show, which the manga is full of yet the anime very clearly lacks. I can’t get why they decided to take this manga and censor so much of it, I have heard people saying that it is for the gacha or to make it more accessible to other people which aren’t fond of ecchi, but at that point they are devaluating part of the message of the show about not being ashamed of your hobby even if others call it unfitting.

  Of course, I love the show and the pretty poor job that JC Staff did won’t change that, it is very obviously a very inferior product compared to the manga, but it still is good enough to watch and enjoy, after all, the characters are as lovable as in the source material and there are many scenes that one could relate to in according to their experience with watching anime.

  Thank you for reading.

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• 

  GoldenPrism15

  55/100
  A great adaptation, one that I wish wasn't so ashamed of it's source material

  "No otaku worth their salt would ever shame someone for the things they love"

  This quote, which i'm probably mangling together from a handful of different translations due to poor memory, is one of my favorite quotes of all time by now. It's source, as you should know, comes from episode one of the show that you'll see me ramble about, and the topic of this review; 2.5 Dimentional Seduction.

  The story, as you'd figure from that quote, is one about otaku. it's about people who are passionate about things they love and engage with those things with their entire heart and soul, unapologetically so. However, by virtue of being a story about otaku, it also addresses the main problem that anyone willing to assign that label to themselves has to bear: being judged for the things you like.
  This is more notable in the manga, which features some of the more otaku-centric arcs within the whole story, but you can also see it within this adaptation in the characters of Kisaki-sensei, Nagomi, and particularly Nonoa.

  To many of us in the english-speaking side of things, the term 'otaku' mostly just refers to those who watch anime and read manga. If you are a bit more informed about the otaku culture of japan however, you probably know that the term extends far outside the realms of anime and manga. The term, while often being self-assigned by otaku themselves, can be taken to be a pejorative term, mostly equivalent to calling someone "obsessed". Being an Otaku, of any kind, is to devote yourself to something to a point most people would deem unreasonable. You will only ever be obsessed with something to this degree if you love it, and 2.5 Dimensional Seduction is a story about expressing this love, and enjoying it as much as humanly possible.

  There is a weakness to this enjoyment, however. One which you probably know just as much as I do. When you love something that much, and when you try to share that love with the world, you will get mocked by those that don't understand it.
  That mockery, that shame, has driven many of us to hide the things we love. After all, It's only natural that you'd rather shut up than be laughed at. And so you shut up. You stop bringing up your hobbies for fear of ridicule. you stop expressing your love because it makes you vulnerable.

  Thus, "No otaku worth their salt would ever shame someone for the things they love" becomes my mantra, because the last thing i want is to deprive someone of a chance to express their love. It does not matter what things you like, whether they are good or bad, whether I myself like them, or whether you watch it for the intriguing story or the sexy anime women. What matters to me is the sparkles in people's eyes when they talk about the things they enjoy most, and that's all that should matter to them too. Thus, in my eyes, 2.5 Dimensional Seduction presents an ideal of the otaku pride. If you love this thing, then you won't ever care about what other people say about it. Yes, people will look at you weird, they will mock you and you probably won't have as many people to talk about it as you'd hope, but you should never feel ashamed for the things you love.
  This is why 2.5D Seduction is a manga that I hold in such high regard, and one which I dare say I love.

  But I don't just love it's themes of being an Otaku, which I hope i've proven here. I also love it's portrayal of cosplaying and how it affected the way I look at the people that partake in it, gaining a new perspective on a hobby I never thought much about. I love it's romance plotline about learning to trust people again, and how i saw myself reflected on those themes. I love how so many of it's characters speak to me personally about the experiences I've had when being an otaku and being a teenager.
  But before I loved any of those things, before the manga turned into the cosplay-as-a-sport romcom narrative that it did, and before I realized just how much I related to these characters, I had also loved to read what once was a generic ecchi manga about a girl wearing a sexy costume. And those ecchi elements, while not as heavily present as they once were, are still there even 150+ chapters later. 2.5 Dimensional Seduction's manga is, among a myriad of other things, an ecchi manga.

  It is in this, despite it's great work at portraying every other part of the story, that this anime adaptation fails to fully encapsulate all of what I loved about it's source material. No matter how you want to look at it, the show is ashamed of the fact that it's source material is ecchi. You can see it in the changes to the outfits, you can see it in the scenes that are cut, the ones that change angles to avoid showing much skin, and the ones where the camera looks away. To take those elements, which are a part of the original material, and remove them to this degree, feels like nothing short of an insult to those of us who liked them. It's telling me that those elements were not good, that I shouldn't have liked them in the first place. It's telling me that the show is better without them, as if they have no worth.

  And the worst part of all this? I am here, complaining to you, instead of talking about the many things I love about the show. Its unfortunate, because the show is great adaptation. I loved watching every episode week after week, getting to see the early arcs of the manga getting animated. I loved hearing the voice actors perform their roles, especially Mikarin's seiyuu. I loved seeing the opening and ending themes, my favorite being the first ED theme. I particularly loved seeing the in-universe anime of Ashford Wars, which was barely ever seen in the manga, getting animated scenes which were clearly crafted with love for the medium (the 4:3 ratio!!). I loved reading the author's own commentary as he spoke about the experience of first writing the manga every week on twitter. In general, I just really really loved seeing the adaptation of a manga which i had deeply enjoyed before.
  But in all of this, I could never truly get rid of the awful feeling that came with seeing the scenes altered to tone down the original material. I couldn't get rid of the idea that the show would have been more popular and enjoyed by more people if it had dared to keep the pantyshots. And I very much couldn't get rid of all the people talking about how the ecchi was removed, which really ruined my enjoyment of the show when it came to discussing it online, and pretty much forcing me to enjoy it on my own rather than have people to share my passion with.

  Ultimately, if I were to give it a score without taking this whole thing into account, I'd probably give it a 7. It's not a particularly stellar adaptation, but it does have it's moments of beauty, and it's a really fun thing to watch for anyone who likes the source material. I'd argue the manga is more visually stimulating and the pacing works better in that format, but that's probably up to you.

  But I can't review this without taking the changes into account.
  Because it's adapting a story that tells you to not be ashamed of who you are, while being ashamed of what it is. And that's probably the greatest sin it could have made as far as I care.

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• 

  CountZero

  85/100
  A more well rounded depiction of cosplay and cosplay culture, in a romantic-comedy-fanservice framework.

  My Dress-Up Darling was a show I enjoyed immensely and watched multiple times, including for the Anime Explorations Podcast (my monthly Anime Book Club podcast). I appreciated how the show got into the work of creating cosplay costumes. However, it felt like something was missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Watching the first season of 2.5 Dimensional Seduction made me realize what those things were because this show filled those gaps remarkably well.

  The show's male lead is Masamune Okumura, an otaku and the only remaining member of his high school’s Manga Club, and who has no interest in 3D girls after an unspecified trauma in his past. When Lilysa Amano (or Ririsa, depending on your localization), a freshman girl with an interest in cosplay and a love for his waifu, Liliel, walks into his club room door looking to join, the club ends up becoming a Cosplay Club. From there, Masamune ends up travelling down the road of cosplay photography, as several more girls join – each with an interest in cosplay – including their faculty advisor, who turns out to be a legendary cosplayer.

  Perhaps one of the really big things that this show has over My Dress-Up Darling is that 2.5 Dimensional Seduction recognizes cosplay isn’t just a hobby, it’s a scene. Darling had a few interactions with characters outside of the main duo. Here, we have a club with a variety of people with different reasons for wanting to do cosplay (though a common enjoyment of a particular series), and they in turn interact loads of people from outside of their circle, and the larger social structure around doing cosplay, from meeting people at cosplay events, to businesses that cater to cosplayers, and so on. We even have a scene in an early episode where Lilysa is talking to a bunch of other cosplayers in the dressing room after an event, most of whom aren’t even named, about all the kinds of things that have gone wrong at events, and how other cosplayers helped them out. We even have scene drama – with a recurring character who is a professional cosplayer who deliberately starts drama with Lilysa because she thinks Lilysa’s a casual.

  Also, the cast beyond Masamune has interiority. All of the supporting characters get plenty of time where we get to see what they’re thinking about, and how that’s motivating their actions, and frequently those things are completely unrelated to Masamune and any romantic interest therein. I even got slightly spoiled by the manga when checking TV Tropes for reminders on character names, where I learned (without giving the details), that the club’s advisor – Mayuri – has an extended character arc later in the manga. The other club members appear to provide support, but Mayuri is the focus, and her arc is related to a character who isn’t in the club, and has no prior connection to Masamune.

  Plus, on top of all that (and it feels weird to say this), but it shows that guys can cosplay too. We’re introduced to a pair of cosplayers later who are a pair of fraternal twins, with the Cosplay names of Lemon and Lime. Additionally, the brother (Lime) is cosplaying as a female character (the two are dressing as We-Have-Rem-And-Ram-At-Home) and it’s not played for a joke. Like, they deliberately, consciously, actively do not play it as a joke almost to the point of calling out that they’re not playing it as a joke. Lemon asks Masamune to bring something for Lime’s costume that she’d accidentally packed in her bag to him, Masa does, and when Lime asks if he thinks this is weird, Masa replies that he doesn’t – and then the scene ends. This is how you normalize something successfully. Additionally, Masa does get to cosplay some later in that arc – though generally for the majority of the series he stays as the photographer.

  

  This is not without necessarily some issues – this anime started its life as a fanservice manga, and there are some lingering traces of that, though some of those aspects have been downplayed for the anime version – which is fine. Additionally, the show isn’t quite sure how to handle characters cosplaying outside of their body types. There’s discussion of how cosplay is for everyone no matter their body type, but there’s also a sense that the characters who tend to thrive in cosplay spaces are fitting in a more conventionally attractive body type, with in a few cases those characters also are described as taking great pains to maintain that body type. I’d like to hope that in later portions of the manga and subsequent seasons, they get into this with a bit more nuance.

  (Note: this review originally appeared on my blog).

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