Summer 2025 Impressions: My Dress-Up Darling S2, With You and the Rain, Nyaight of the Living Cat

My Dress-Up Darling S2

Short Synopsis: Season 2 of Dress Up Darling, where a cosplay babe and an introverted tailor work together to make cute outfits and flirt with each other.

Lenlo: I have such a complicated relationship with Dress Up Darling. Normally I hate such overtly ecchi, pandering, fanservice focused shows. And don’t get me wrong, Dress Up Darling is exactly that, slapping Marin into a bunny suit and flashing her ass right away. It’s the way the show does it that makes it work for me though, with the leads introducing each other to their interests, using cosplay and tailoring as the vehicle for their mutual interest in each other. Not to mention how they find this place of belonging after being spurned for said interests in the wider world, I love that Gojo’s past regarding makeup/dolls is making a return. It also helps that Dress Up Darling is beautifully, expressively animated. In fact it’s easily the best animated thing I’ve watched so far, which admittedly isn’t a huge number since I’ve been out, but it’s still true. CloverWorks is knocking it out of the park, and I really hope they’re able to keep it up for the full season. So yeah, Dress Up Darling has plenty of ecchi fanservice, and if that’s a deal breaker then you should avoid it like the plague. But if you’re looking for a cute romance and are ok with some skin, especially when she’s doing it on purpose to tease/entice her love interest, Dress Up Darling should be perfect for you. I know I had fun. Plus we even got a cute couples cosplay! Sort of.
Potential: 60%

With You and the Rain

Short Synopsis: A reserved novelist bonds with an intelligent tanuki after adopting it off the street.

Wooper: The best thing about this show so far is its OP, which boasts both a toe-tapping bossa nova groove and attractive pop art color design. Its simplicity might not blow anyone away, but its assured direction is admirable – a sentiment that could apply to the rest of the show, as well. With You and the Rain (Ame to Kimi to) has modest ambitions, but its atmosphere is soothing, and what little animation it requires for its slice of life story looks nice. The main human character, a quietly beautiful novelist, has a little bit of intrigue surrounding her, too. Near the beginning of the episode, she gives her umbrella to a stranger in the middle of a rain shower, claiming that she “won’t be needing it now” (a reaction to a personal setback, perhaps), and at one point she accidentally calls her father, then ignores his cheerful greeting and hangs up without an explanation. Far more mysterious is her new pet tanuki, which frequently pulls a notebook out of thin air and writes in Japanese, allowing it to flawlessly communicate with anyone it meets. It knows enough about human society to inquire after its new owner’s occupation, so I’m wondering whether we’ll ever see it shapeshift into humanoid form (as tanuki are wont to do). Whether or not the show plans to make that transformation, its easy interspecies partnership is off to a good start.
Potential: 50%

Nyaight of the Living Cat

Short Synopsis: A pair of former cat cafe employees try to outlast a pandemic that turns humans into cats.

Wooper: It seems I overestimated Nyaight of the Living Cat based on the strength of its trailers, which had the luxury of rapidly cutting between all the show’s weirdest moments. It’s a parody, sure, but the genre it’s parodying is horror, which means that when you sit down to watch a full episode, there’s still a requirement that it slowly build tension to a moment where its human protagonists seem doomed to transform into cats. Unfortunately, Nyaight isn’t adept at generating that sort of suspense. Its environments are unimaginative, and the characters don’t look great while navigating them, acting out run cycles that hardly indicate their fear. That might not be an issue for some viewers (it might even be a plus if their favorite horror films are the shlocky B-movie kind), but it was for me. The second half of the episode explores the backstory of its main character, a hulking mystery box of a man whose brain has been drained of everything except cat facts. Despite its stupidity, the script plays this concept straight, which I think was the right call – I just wish that the siblings who took him hadn’t been so normal, since it was hard to relate to Mr. Amnesia by comparison. I might take a look at Nyaight’s second episode, but if I do, it’ll just be my way of coping for having misread the show so thoroughly.
Potential: 15%