FANeXpo 2012: it's my cosplay!

When one cosplays people ask for one of these three things:

- I want it to be fast
- I want it to be cheap
- I want it to be good

At most, you can only achieve two out of the three requests when it comes to cosplaying.

As I generally am a perfectionist and expect my costumes to be passably accurate and well made, my costumes are almost never cheap. I can easily sink over $100 dollars on the fabric of my costumes alone, and that's just because I am incredibly picky about colour, weight and feel.

I therefore usually stick to a "one costume a year" approach. That is, if I make a costume for myself, I make only one to therefore save on the costs of having to worry about having to create another.

(Plus there is also the time involved as well in sewing every costume) 

Therefore, when it came to cosplaying at FANeXpo on Saturday and Sunday, as part of my costume rule, I simply reused the costume I had created for Anime North of this year.

It was a two-person cosplay with a friend. He was the ressurected Zabuza and I was the ressurected Haku from the Anime/Manga series Naruto: Shippuden.

I couldn't begin to tell you the work and the effort put into making both of these costumes. Yes, I made both because I had the sewing machine and knew how to use it.

It was a hardcore week of sewing to assemble everything while working and going to school, but before that, it was several weeks of purchasing parts from all over the place. The greenish-blue fabric for my jacket ultimately was found at a specialty fabric store on Queen Street West (and cost a tidy penny too) while the purple leggings and armbands was a lucky find at a Fabricland... but also required me to sew black lines down it as part of the detail.

Basically, it was a lot of work.

The decision to make these costumes was actually funny. We had originally planned to go as the actual characters from the first season (and Naruto's first opponents) but as Anime North got closer, we began to worry about the construction of the sword.

The idea then was to create the half-sword that dead-Zabuza had in one of the mangas to save on weight.

Long story short, he made the whole sword in the end, but the resurrected idea stuck and we kept with it.

And I won't lie, it turned out to be a pretty sick idea.

Now at the time, the anime episode that coincided with their resurrection wasn't out yet. But by the time  FANeXpo came out, it was. So I watched it.

And that confirmed my happiness with the decision to stick with their undead versions.

Seriously, their characters were and still are sick, and I really loved the way that their story came full circle with how much Kakashi and Naruto ultimately cared for these particular opponents, how they ultimately defined how Naruto viewed the world and those around him. It also highlighted how they were far from inherently bad people, just individuals that were down on their luck and forced on opposite sides by outside forces.

It's a great episode and a great story.

Anyway, the fun part was on Saturday, while walking around the Dealer's room I overheard more than once that "I saw them at Anime North!" Hey, we were memorable!

And finally, people seemed to have really enjoyed the costumes. Despite the fact the $30 dollar crazy eye contacts dried our eyes out, and our costume became quite restrictive, it was fun.

And that's the point. 

Cheers!