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The end is nigh for My Dress-Up Darling as its final chapter has suddenly been confirmed for March 21, 2025. The announcement came out of nowhere, not just because it has been a remarkably popular romantic comedy manga over the past several years. No, the biggest reason why we’re all shocked that My Dress-Up Darling is going away is because it feels like there are so many more stories left to tell. The final chapter of My Dress-Up Darling is likely to leave a lot of plot threads dangling.

It goes without saying that I’m going to discuss a lot of spoilers about the My Dress-Up Darling manga, some of which are probably going to come into season two of the anime in 2025.

Despite my (valid) complaints about the pacing of the manga, I’ve genuinely enjoyed reading My Dress-Up Darling for the most part. It fumbles the “will they/won’t they” plot at times, creating artificial deadlines for a confession and then not delivering, but the manga has provided plenty of reaction images over the years and made me laugh plenty. Watching Gojo have a breakdown trying to finish a costume on an impossibly tight deadline was a "He's just like me, for real" moment for every cosplayer out there.

Though it never reaches the heights of the love hotel scene in the early volumes, the chapters where Gojo stays over at Marin’s house to play video games are hilarious in their own right, and seeing everyone’s reaction to the pair finally becoming a couple was great. These misunderstandings are what great romcoms are made of and we needed them to elevate an otherwise straightforward plot.

So why am I so upset that the My Dress-Up Darling manga is ending? I enjoyed it and, as I’ve said before in this very column, one of the best things about manga when compared to Western comics is that they end at all. We had the confession we’d been waiting years for, so surely it is time to wrap things up so it doesn’t overstay its welcome, right?

As I’ve reflected on the impending end of the manga, I find myself focusing not on the story that it told but on the missed opportunities within its pages. Plotlines that feel like they’ve been set up only to be quickly dismissed. The tension between Marin and Akira, for example, could have been a fun opportunity to have someone genuinely clash over Marin’s over-the-top personality, but she ended up being just one more person fawning over her.

The excitement following the Mandate of Heaven Arc felt like it was leading to a new story arc where Marin tries to balance her love of cosplay with the demands of doing it professionally, but instead it just… ended. There is a story in how Gojo and Marin function as a couple, with different goals and personalities and vastly different comfort levels with PDA, that could have been fun to read but is not to be.

Even the storyline with Non-chan, which was one of the inciting incidents of the manga and a source of Gojo’s trauma, was resolved so quickly that it feels like there should be more there. It was an opportunity to explore the non-linear nature of growth, having Gojo slip back into his old, timid self briefly and come out the other side, but as quickly as she arrived back in his life, she was gone as we made a speedrun for a happy ending.

There is a sense that the mangaka simply wanted to move past these plotlines as quickly as possible to get to what they pictured as the finale sooner. I’m not saying that they were burned out of writing and drawing the manga, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that is why the next chapter will be the end of My Dress-Up Darling.

Again, it wouldn’t be fair to say I haven’t enjoyed My Dress-Up Darling, but the final chapter feels like it is going to leave a lot on the table. There are just too many abandoned or underdeveloped plotlines mixed in the current 114 chapters for me to believe the ending of the manga is going to feel satisfying. I fear we’re set for a sudden, jarring end to Marin and Gojo’s story that simply won’t deliver the drama I’m craving.

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