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We’ve already established that the characters in My Dress-Up Darling find themselves in some pretty adult situations, but just how adult are they meant to be? It might be unclear to fans outside of Japan exactly how old Marin Kitagawa and her hina doll-obsessed love interest, Gojo Wakana, are meant to be in the manga. However, there are enough clues to allow us to make a pretty clear guess at how old Marin is in My Dress-Up Darling.

The manga never explicitly states how old Marin Kitagawa is, but this is a teen romance anime so she is shown to be a high school student. As the manga opens, she and Gojo are both first years. This means that they are both either 15 or 16 years old, which is typical for anime in this genre.

Again, neither the anime nor the manga directly say how old Marin is and she hasn’t had a birthday yet to reveal her official age. However, there are a few other clues that hint that she might be 16 years old. Specifically, she lives alone due to her father working overseas and has a part-time job modeling, both of which are more likely to happen when she is 16 rather than 15. Both would require a significant amount of trust that might be tough for a 15-year-old to come by.

That is just speculation on our part, though; all we really know about Marin Kitagawa’s age is that she is either 15 or 16 years old when the series starts, along with the bulk of the My Dress-Up Darling cast.

Each week, Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• How Jujutsu Kaisen subverted Shonen tropes to become one of the most popular manga of all-time
• A World without Goku: How Akira Toriyama's death could make Dragon Ball Daima the end of Goku's story
• Why the finales of My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen, and One Piece feel like the end of an era in manga
• Why I don't talk about Rurouni Kenshin as an anime journalist
• The anime industry grew 22% in 2023 - here is why we think it happened
• Why is One Piece more popular now that the anime is 25 years old? We asked around and found out
• Dan Da Dan is weird, profoundly inappropriate, and the perfect anime this season