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Boy, this took a while to get through, which can sometimes mean that I’m not vibing with a story. But this horny mess has a vibe like nothing else I’ve read in a while.

Take the cosplay affinity of My Dress-Up Darling and 2.5 Dimensional Seduction, mix in the general horniness of the two, especially the latter, now make it about two polar opposite college girls and turn it into a yuri. Now that’s a recipe for manga!

Stories like this where nothing should really work, yet somehow most things do, are pretty enjoyable. Shiho is our lead, whose prickly obsession with cosplaying hardcore has scared off her few friends. She’s unapologetically a lot to take and occasionally not the most enjoyable character to be around, but she is very honest about wanting to both make excellent cosplay and have friends who get her passion.

Yotogi, meanwhile, is less about character purity or any kind of purity, and is a much more softcore cosplayer. A chance encounter and some bunny costumes later and a couple of weirdos become fast frenemies who can’t stop hanging out together.

This builds on itself to get really good by the end. After Yotogi and Shiho start bouncing off one another, it becomes clear that the whole book is going to be about them finding a middle ground between their two extremes. And I do love a good story about finding your people.

Yotogi is unflappable and blasé about showing skin, while Shiho won’t unless it makes sense for her character. And the way Yotogi just throws staying in character out the window to accommodate her burgeoning social media account riles Shiho up something fierce.

Of course, they learn as they go that both their styles have merits. Shiho turns out to be easily addicted to fame and wants approval more than she lets on, while Yotogi learns to not just give herself up to anybody unless she really wants it. Role models they aren’t, but they do begin to work well together.

And the manga is having fun with itself anyway. When the second cosplay they do is based on a fictional adults-only yuri title about polar opposites who end up having hot and heavy encounters, you know the mangaka is just leaning way into it.

Oh, yes, and the president of the club they join looks way younger, yet just might be dating Shiho’s older sister (I actually loved this development, it was hilarious). There’s just a lot to this if you’re into these cosplay stories and like playful yuri. It probably dumps on Shiho a little too much at the start, but she does ride in on a pretty high horse.

For you smut aficionados, and I will first say it’s nice that they’re all in college, this is� okay. I think the other two cosplay series I mentioned do the sexy stuff better. This is not the book I’d go to for cosplay titillation, frankly, but I think it has merit beyond that.

Dubious merit, perhaps, but I have rarely read anything with such combative leads that I enjoyed this much. It’s worth wading through an alright start to reach the ending. Shiho might be a bit predictable being the hero, literally, but it suits her. And the last scene between her and Yotogi is very hot with just a word.

3.5 stars - 3 stars at the beginning, heading into 4 by the ending, and then rounded up for making something I wasn’t sure about into something I’m really looking forward to seeing more of.