Fanime Costumes (Days 242-246)

I'm still working on getting photos, so bear with me here. My full review is here, on my convention blog, this is not a full review.

On Day Zero of Fanime (Thursday), I cosplayed my original human-form/gijinka of Pikachu, and my boyfriend wore a fleece Magikarp hat that I made for him a few weeks ago. Pikachu is one of my fly-under-the-radar costumes, as I call them. I wear it when I want to cosplay, but don't want to attract too much attention. I got a great reaction overall, and on girl even said I had the cutest Pikachu outfit she'd ever seen, so I was really flattered. Surprisingly, my boyfriend's hat got more attention than I did. Apparently people still do very much love Magikarp. "Splash Attack!" I do regret wearing heels to stand in line for two hours but, eh, live and learn.

Day One (Friday) I was my original human-form of Amaterasu from Okami. As usual, I was pleasantly surprised with the response to it. I was extremely flattered when the masquerade winners from last Fanime, Chief Pikachu and Charlie the Charmander, geeked out over my costume and asked for pictures and hugs. The response is always big to Amaterasu because it's a really detailed, in-depth, and eye-catching costume, but at Fanime, people actually knew who I was (though I was mistaken for Princess Mononoke again..). My Amaterasu is not officially retired. I may remake parts to make it more accurate (in my opinion) and comfortable, but other than that, I'm done with it, it's too uncomfortable.

On Day Two (Saturday) I was Clyde (the orange ghost from Pacman) and my boyfriend was Pacman. We expected a huge response and lots of love toward these costumes, of course that's not why we did them, but it was a nice perk. However, we didn't expect just how much attention we got. We were stopped literally every ten steps, and every time there were at least three photographers. Good thing we weren't really rushing to go anywhere. People really liked the pants, which was surprising but pleasing, because they were a lot of work.

Day Three (Sunday) I cosplayed Chi and my boyfriend was Hideki (Chobits). I thought that this was going to be another fly-under-the-radar costume, but I was pleasantly surprised at the amount of attention it attracted.Everyone geeked out over me again, this time because my ears were open with AV cables hanging out. People kept saying that it was a brilliant idea and that they'd never seen it before, but i know I've seen it somewhere before, there's no way I came up with that idea all by myself. I actually want to re-make the ears, but more on that later. We went to the CLAMP gathering, which started late because the Tsubasa gathering ran over. It was alright, though, because I ended up talking to another Chi cosplayer and we got swarmed by photographers, probably because we were the same height and our dresses almost looked opposite, so that was pretty cool. When the gathering finally came around, there were five Chi's, and everyone started calling out for a Hideki. It took a while for it to click in my boyfriend's head, but he finally ran out to the cheers and screams of onlooking fangirls. After that, four of us Chi's had a mini photoshoot with Chronoclix, a relatively new cosplay photography site. I'm very happy to help them get off the ground. I also wore Chi the Fanime's Black & White Ball and even had a picture of me taken there.

Day Four (Monday) was very short, and my "costume" fell apart pretty quickly. I pretty much looked like I had run through the dealer's room and grabbed every super popular stereotypical item I could find, haha. I had a short blue wig, steampunk-ish aviator goggles, cat ears & tail, and fingerless black ruffly gloves. However, instead of seeing it as a super-stereotypical "uncool" thing for me to do, for some reason, I thought (and still think) of it was a satirical portrayal of the general anime fandom. Maybe I' just too full of myself. But it amused me, and I will probably wear it again. Unfortunately, in my rush to get ready, I didn't put my ears on right, and they fell off later, so I took of the tail and ended up looking very wannabe steampunk-ish, which just amused me even more. [Pictured left is me with the wig and gloves, but no goggles or ears.]