Hey do you know that expression Dont judge a book by its cover? Have you ever thought to yourself Naahhhh Im not a little kid I think that any book with any cover can be good if just the contents are well done and then found yourself learning that lesson again when a book shatters all of the expectations you had of it because of its cover? I think that first happened to me with Kaguyasama when I thought to myself that Naaaah theres no way that a RomCom could actually be that good. Cause you know Ive only seen western RomComs and never a good one. Welp it was that good. After witnessing the beauty and glory of Kaguyasama I swore that never again would I judge a book by its cover or its genre for that matter. Thanks to that I ended up discovering all kinds of stories that I loved and probably would have skipped over if not telling myself just give it a try who knows what it might have cause their cover definitely didnt look like it would bring anything meaningful into my life. It was thanks to Bloom into you that I started loving yuri manga food wars showed me that Ecchi series can be really great with some thought put into them and I would have never watched a single sliceoflife anime if it werent for that mantra. But a few weeks ago I found myself again in shock from a manga that I judged by its cover. A manga that I went into thinking it wont have anything special to offer me except some fanservice and maybe comedy if I was lucky Oh how were my expectations blown. It managed to tell a beautiful emotional story with characters that I related to on a deeper level than almost any other manga ever with enough funzies and laughs that made the read enjoyable from beginning to end. And it managed to do all that while belonging to the Ecchiharem genre. Yup. That wasnt a typo. I am now going to spend whoknowshowmany hours writing whoknowshowmany words about a manga that belongs to the third most lookeddownupon genre in the anime world just above incest and yaoi. And I dont mean that its just good for an ecchi series like your Food Wars or Monster Musume no this series can hold its head high among the ranks of masterpieces such as Kaguyasama and bloom into you. So let us all leave our shame and selfawareness in a place where we will never find them again and talk about the masterpiece of the ecchiharem genre 2.5 dimensional seduction or just 2.5DS for the rest of this review cause manga names since 2015 are really annoying. 2.5DS is the story of Icantbebotheredtorememberhisfirstname Okumura president of his high schools manga club as well as the only member. He is an antisocial outcast who is satisfied with his every living moment as a sworn otaku and doesnt give two shits about what anybody else may think. He feels zero need to integrate in society zero need to touch grass and zero interest in threedimensional girls. He is truly the very model of a master otaku. So when a threedimensional girl Lilysa asks to join his club he is of course inclined to turn her away. After all there is no way that a pretty threedimensional girl will find anything to enjoy in a forgotten wasted place like the manga club and he cant let an outsider like that take up space in his anime haven. However he then discovers that said threedimensional girl is an otaku of the first caliber just like him. Just like him she gives zero shits about what other people think of her and her hobbies and most importantly she worships the same skimpilydressed waifu as him Other than that she also has another hobby that even Okumura never delved into and that is cosplay. Specifically erotic cosplay of her and his favorite waifu that she puts so much love effort and detail into that she looks just like a 3D version of the girl of his dreams something between 3D and 2D like 2.5D? Okumura might just start falling in love That summarizes chapter 1. After that a few more 3D girls find their way into joining Okumuras club doing erotic cosplay with him hes learning photography in the meanwhile and for a change it takes them more than the first chapter they appear in to fall in love with him. Even in its early volumes 2.5DS managed to keep me hooked by developing a wonderful dynamic between its characters already differing it from 95 of ecchi series in existence. Admittedly every girl in the series is based on a specific trope such as the Otaku the childhood friend the quiet shy girl and the gyaru but instead of just having them act out those tropes the series put a lot of effort into expanding on their personalities so that those tropes are not the summaries of their entire personality. Each pair of characters develops their own unique dynamic from constant yelling at each other to yuri bait and the other characters develop dynamics responding to those. No character stays forgotten in the corner for too long so their interactions always feel fun and refreshing throughout the whole manga and it doesnt need to rely just on tiddies to keep you engaged not that it doesnt do that either. There is plenty of fanservice to be found here and thankfully its very well done. It isnt too cringy and doesnt rely too much on cliched ecchi tropes rather doing its own unique thing using the tools it has skimpy cosplay outfits. All of this makes it into a wonderful ecchi manga that while not being anything groundbreaking achieves the rare feat of being incredibly enjoyable to read. Or so was the case in the first two volumes. Most of the early manga is comprised of the members of the manga club cosplaying or finding creative ways to find themselves halfnaked while Okumura tries to hold on to his no interest in 3D philosophy which ends up as an overall pretty cute running joke. I sort of thought of it as My dressup darling but just the ecchi parts but around volume 3 things begin to change when the girls and the guy go cosplay at a convention. At that point the series starts delving really deep into what it means to be a cosplayer. Unlike dressup darling it barely talks about the process of making cosplay and more about the experience of wearing it what differentiates between a good cosplayer and a casual one even if they both have outfits of the same quality? How does a cosplayer in a con pull in the photographers and make them stay there long for them to become popular? And how does it even feel to stand in front of hundreds of people in the costume of a character you love? Beyond that it dissects the cosplay community as a whole showing us how cosplayers interact with each other in cons as well as how people see different cosplayers. Because it delves so deeply into those topics I started finding enough interest in it to keep reading even without the jokes and fanservice something that I cant really say about any other ecchi series I know of and at this point it also tones down the ecchi to make room for the really interesting themes it discusses. And then. Volume 4. My first thought after finishing it was Okay this is beautiful. This is the point when the series really started speaking to me on a personal level and this is where it started giving proper development to its characters. All the girls in the club have one fact in common they like cosplay but they all have different reasons and driving forces that brought them into the medium. Some do it because of their love of anime some just love wearing the cute and cool costumes some were just kinda dragged into it and ended up liking it and some do it just as a means to achieve something else. For every single character in the series including every minor side character it made sure to develop the unique relationship they have with the medium of cosplay and intertwine that with their actual development and growth as a person by having various developments in their relationship to cosplay affect their personal growth and vice versa. None of these characters have lofty ambitions or hidden traumas. Theyre all just people people who love to cosplay. They all have their hardships and fears and cosplay is just what helps them deal with it. This relationship they have to the medium is presented to us in its finest details and we see them get moment of pure joy catharsis and also heartbreak and we find ourselves relating to everything they feel because on a certain level a lot of it is things that we feel as well. And through this lens of cosplay we see the true theme that this series discusses our love for certain things. Our passions. 2.5DS is a love letter to anybody who has ever found a hobby theyre passionate about. The series itself might me more focused on cosplay and maybe also on otakus in a more general level but the way that this series discusses our relationship with the things we love can be true of any passion and in my case I really am an otaku so maybe that was what made me relate to it so much. As you might have noticed I love fictional stories. I love them so much that I spend hours writing pages upon pages about why exactly I love them so much. So reading a series that talks about this love a love just like mine a love that is not for any person or object but for a certain activity that I spend all of my free time enjoying how can I not relate to it? All of the characters in this series are people who love what they do for all sorts of reasons and what unites them all is the pure real joy that they feel at doing what they do. They give zero shits about any person who might judge them or their hobby because if they love it who the hell cares what other people think? For them cosplay is a way to make their dreams come true to express their love for the fictional characters that were with them for their whole lives and sometimes even to express something that they kept hidden deep down or overcome some sort of mental hardship they suffered from due to the conditions they lived and grew up in. Every possible side of our relationship with our passions is explored in this series to some I related more to some I related less but they were all presented through wellwritten compelling characters that underwent some beautiful development throughout the story. I think everybody could find some feeling to connect with in this series we all have things that we love to do we all have passions so we can all relate to the vast and beautiful way that this series presents this love especially if its a niche or even lookeddownupon hobby such as cosplay or otakuness. It sends the message that if you have something you love doing just go for it put as much of your free time into it as you wish because if its something that brings you joy then its perfectly legitimate to do it and to hell with anybody who doesnt get you. You can truly feel the authors passion for the things he talks about throughout the whole series and well he wrote an entire manga to express his love for cosplay and this is really one of the things that I love the most about anime and manga. Stories created out of pure love for the medium out of the desire to create something that would resonate with people because thats what the writers want to do Because they love stories and they love telling them. Seeing the different ways in which people express their love for this medium is something that leaves me amazed every single time and 2.5DS is a manga about this love my love that was written by a person who shares that love. I love anime and manga. They can be weird and wonky with funny cartoonish faces or overthetop reactions. They can casually draw a pair of tits and pass it off as a plot. And they can also tell meaningful beautiful stories that give us joy throughout our boring lives that help us in our moments of struggle and hardship. And 2.5 Dimensional Seduction is a manga that managed to capture everything that makes anime so beautiful with everything that makes it so weird. It stands proud in its weirdness while telling a story full of so much love and passion that I can only call that in itself beautiful. It is well and truly everything that I love about its medium. Bold unapologetic creative and passionate A craft made with the care of a person who truly loves what they are doing It is in every sense of the phrase a work of art. One that I think that any person with any kind of passion for the medium should experience. Or maybe Im the only weirdoe who related to this series on a personal level and got overly emotional while reading it. Who knows. But god dammit I love it so much and to hell with anybody who would judge me for that. This is the last time I will ever judge a series by its cover. Wait with baited breath for me to recommend an incest or yaoi series. Looking forward to the anime