Second-year high school student Masamune Okumura is a guy who has sworn off the 3D world with regard to women. Having been abandoned by his mom at 8 years old, having his feelings rejected by a girl he liked in grade school, and being labeled a gross otaku by girls in his class, Masamune passes his days as the lone member of the school’s manga club, lusting after Liliel, a character in a popular game and anime franchise. Enter Lilysa Amano, a first-year looking for a club to join. While Masamune is initially against letting a dirty-dirty 3D girl join the club, it soon comes to light that she can match his freakish love of the franchise and in particular his love of Liliel, as she loves to cosplay as her, much to Masamune’s chagrin. She also wants to join the club, as she needs a photographer to take cosplay photos of her. After showing off several of her cosplays (changing in the middle of the room while he’s in there, because of course), he agrees to let her join up, promising that he will never, ever fall for her. Cue the shenanigans…yay.
And here I thought My Wife Has No Emotion was the biggest ripoff of a beloved franchise this season. This show came along and said, “Hold my ecchi figurine.” Guys, this show just is trying to be a rip-off of 2022’s hit My Dress Up Darling, and it’s trying so hard to do so it’s painful to watch it fall flat on its face. Or dear leader TWWK called this “Dress-Up Darling with no love,” and brother, was he right. While that show established its themes of being comfortable in your own skin and embracing the things you love regardless of societal “norms,” Dimensional Seduction, at least in this initial offering, has no such messaging, and most importantly, there’s no love behind it. It’s just this dude who swears off real women in favor of a fictional character and gets all giddy when a girl who can represent that character in the flesh walks into his life. And while it does explain why our female lead wants to join this club (she saw a bunch of Liliel posters on the wall through the window when taking her entrance exams) that doesn’t really explain why she thinks Masamune would be capable of being a photographer for her. She literally just met this dude and has no idea what his skill set is or if he’s even able to work a camera.
Speaking of our male lead, Masamune is about as likable and endearing as a melted dixie cup in the Louisiana heat. He is legit everything that is wrong with a lot of the anime fanbase: self-important, anti-social, and dangerously fixated on a fictional character. Unlike Dress-Up Darling’s Wakana Gojo, who has a very clear backstory and a well-defined skill set that plays into the story, and who is actually a likable guy, Masamune has no real depth to him outside of being an otaku. We get a few lines in passing about how his mom just up and left him for some guy, how he was turned down by a girl in grade school, and how other girls in his class call him a “Gross Otaku.” Well, if the uwabaki fits, dude. Our female lead Lilysa Amano is…well…she’s boring. I don’t get anything from her other than she just so happens to know a lot about the very franchise Masamune is interested in and loves to cosplay. She is far from the complex, bubbly, and fun Marin Kitagawa. She has as much personality as the cardboard box I used to mail my old wireless router in. And the fact that she seems just perfectly fine with changing her clothes in the middle of a room in front of a guy she just met WITH AN OPEN WINDOW RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER FACING OUT INTO THE COURTYARD tells you everything you need to know about what her role is in this show—nothing more and nothing less. I swear, if she says the word “Sempai” one more dawg gone time, I’m gonna put my fist through my new wireless router…and I don’t wanna explain that to AT&T.
From a production standpoint, 2.5 Dimensional Seduction is nothing to write home about at all. J.C. Staff worked on this one, and if I’m being honest, it shows they put minimal effort into this one. Nothing stands out, nothing pops on the screen (except for the clothes off that one Liliel model). The OP, “Shattachansu” (Shutter Chance) by Meichan is okay, but the visuals that accompany it are nothing special at all. The ending theme “Watch Me” by Kaori Maeda and Akari Kito is unmemorable.
So where does that leave us with 2.5 Dimensional Seduction? Simple. If this first episode is what we can expect from the rest of the series, avoid it. I can’t say that enough. Avoid it. This is not worth wasting your bandwidth at all. Please watch My Dress-Up Darling instead. It’s much better with more fleshed-out characters (no pun intended) and while the ecchi can be too much for some, the story that it tells is so, so, so much better than this foolishness here. Try harder next time, J.C. Staff…we know you can do better than this.
2.5 Dimensional Seduction is available for streaming on HiDIVE.
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What an awful article on a show that is nothing like Dress Up apart from the cosplay angle. Yeah there’s no clear cut thing for Okumura yet cause the story is still developing. And Marin being more complex than Ririsa? Did we watch the same show. This genuinely sucks cause there’s 0 need for competition they’re both well loved manga in Japan!!!
Literally why fire shots when I can easily bring up how genuinely off-putting Gojo can’t measure a woman without making a fuss, but also would play eroge with the no ear gear.
Anyways, 2.5 Dimensional Seduction is cool. It’s going for 6 months cause it has a great story to tell with tons of characters we have yet to meet that aren’t even in the OP yet. A real otaku love letter. And still ongoing, 160+ chapters of romcom cosplay battle shounen. Also the show looks pretty idk what you’re on about. Lots of figures being pushed and a mobile game too? Wow this series went from Seven Seas exclusive to heavily backed hit in the span of two years, that’s cool