Animecon 2012 – THIS IS SPARTA!!

 Hello!

First of all, this Animecon 'commercial' video has been stuck in my head for months and, after having seen it for the first time a bit before Chibicon in Oulu, it sure subconsciously dug it's way into my brain and did what it was supposed to do.. namely making me want to go to Animecon. Yeah, now the con trip to Animecon has been done and I'm back scratching my ass at home. So yeah, here is my summary of the con in Kuopio ~

On Friday around maybe 11:00 something (I dunno, later than we had originally planned at least xD) me, mom and my twin Jäätynyt Enkeli started the car journey from Tornio to Kuopio. It went smooth until around mid-way when it started to rain a lot. Oh well, the rain just made us drive slower but we got to the hotel safely - Rauhalahti spa hotel. We booked the hotel pretty late because originally me and my twin had planned to go together to Kuopio by train, but err, it fucked up because when mom had decided to order the train tickets the super cheap campaign price had disappeared (around 140 € for both of us, two-way ticket) and it would have now cost 280 €. Fuck that robbery price I say.
So yeah, mom figured she could go with us and drive there because it would be cheaper and well, Kuopio luckily isn't that far away. Also mom would get some spa vacation at the hotel while me and Jäätynyt Enkeli derped at the con, a win-win situation. Oh well, when we got our hotel room (112 lol) we dumped our stuff there and soon went to eat dinner buffet at the hotel and after that back into the hotel room and chill and sleep. Oh and they showed the movie 300 on the night..

THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAA!!!1!!!11

Saturday

Saturday morning, me and my twin woke up 07:00. Well, I actually woke around 05:00 because mom was snoring like a lumber mill. -.- We quickly dressed in normal clothes and went to eat hotel breakfast. After that we went back to the hotel room and changed into our Saturday cosplays; I cosplayed kimono!Masamune Date for the first time and my twin cosplayed Kratos Aurion from Tales of Symphonia, his signature cosplay. When we were done the clock was just past 09:00 and after having gone to the reception and learned that the busses to the square/centrum leave 08:00, 09:00, 10:00 etc  fuck.. missed it by mere minutes we stood outside the hotel and looked for some people my twin knew. We didn't see them but a random English speaking tourist came up to me in front of the hotel and asked what was going on with the weirdly dressed people. I explained and he seemed interested. Oh, and one thing, it felt like many hotel visitors stared at me, mostly because I had an eyepatch. xD
   When the clock was close to 10:00 a wild mom appeared and she was walking towards the car. Seemed like mom had already had breakfast and decided to drive us to the con after all. Sweet. When we were sitting in the car and I was derping with the Kuopio city map a random lady from the car in front of us came up to mom and asked if we were going to Animecon, obviously we were. lol So she said she already knew where it was and that we could just drive after her. Yay!
   Soon we were at the con and I immediately found Jäärä standing with some other people. After a while of standing there I noticed someone with a FBI vest walking towards us - Ri-kun.
The rest of the con day was random walking around with friends, looking at the merchandise, buying Japanese candy and some mangas and having a Sengoku Basara photoshoot. I didn't attend any panels because I'm lazy. derp
   Back at the hotel later we went to eat, again at the hotel's restaurant. This time we were too late for the buffet so we ate pizza instead. I was still in Masamune cosplay (my twin had changed to normal clothes) and when we walked to an eating table we passed by some people eating there and I heard them say something "Masamune", trololo~
Later Ri-kun came visiting at our hotel and we talked and they got to eat the other half of my pizza. xD

Sunday

We woke up 07:30 I think and this time mom ate hotel breakfast at the same time as we did. After we got back to the hotel room it was time to put on Sunday's cosplays. I cosplayed Hajime Saitou from Hakuouki: Shinsengumi Kitan and my twin cosplayed Keisuke Sannan from the same series. I had to help my twin dress in kimono, tie kaku obi and hakama and do the make-up for him too before I could start putting my own cosplay on. -.- Oh well, we were done a bit before 10:00 (con opening time) and we had also packed our luggage because we wouldn't be coming back to the hotel anymore after the con. We took with us some bags and left them at the car and mom drove us again to the con. As soon as we arrived to the con Chizuru (Jäärä) appeared and soon my double Saitou (Ri-kun) did too. We Saitous brofisted each other as promised and went on to find the others of our Hakuouki group. I must say Sunday was the better day of the con for me because I really enjoyed hanging around with all the Hakuouki peeps and the photoshoot was so hilarious and funny. XD I hope I get to see all those (drunk) gay pairing photos, Chizuru more-or-less romantic park bench photos and everything. So much fun!! :'DDD

Here's one of the photos I took during the Hakuouki photoshoot:

Because it's fun to pretend to be drunk and gay XD
(Jozo-dono as Hijikata, Ri-kun as Saitou, Chooichi as Okita and Zkitsune as Harada)

Ighjdgskgsgdksagk, I want to see the photos everyone else took! Gief them nooow! ~~
Needless to say I had a crapload of fun during the Sunday and I hope we will have Hakuouki groups a lot in the future too! <3

Oh well, everything fun ends and mom decided to be a joykiller and call me one hour before the con ended. "I'm there in 10 minutes, get ready to leave ololol". At least it didn't bother me that much this time because a lot of my friends had already left. I figured there wasn't much to do because mom didn't want to drive all night so yeah, tried to enjoy the last minutes of the con (at least my earlier lung derps had eased..) and then it was time to say goodbye to Kuopio, Mira-kun and Ri-kun and step into the car.. in cosplay. Yes. I figured half-way at the con that neither me nor my twin would be able to change back into normal clothes (as we had planned in the morning) because we both were wearing vintage silk kimonos as part of our cosplays and well, idiot me had forgotten my tatoshi (kimono wrapping paper) in the bottom of our luggage that was in mom's car's tailgate. Fail. Oh, and it wouldn't have worked anyway because I cringe of the thought of having to fold a kimono on the (toilet) floor... So yeah, needless to say the 5-7 car trip back home was in cosplay. At least Saitou cosplay is comfortable so I didn't really mind... until we had to stop at an ABC gas station/restaurant to eat and.. well, there was always someone staring at us, even when we sat down eating everytime I would look up I saw a pair of eyes looking at me. lol

Oh, and one last thing.. on the car trip back home we drove by this one small parking/resting place in the road that well... had the same name as my surname LOL. We had to stop and then Saitou (me) ran out and crossed the car road, with a camera in hand, and took some photos of the road sign and went back inside the car. XD Wonder what the people driving past thought when they saw a random kimono weirdo taking photos of a road sign...

Ihan voittajafiilis tuli!!

Smell ya later!

PARTY TIME!! (aka Masamune preview)

My eyepatch stopped smelling glue so today when I woke up I decided to put everything on and take some preview photos before the coming debut at Animecon. I also needed to check that everything worked as I wanted it to. Oh well, enough blabbering, here's photos!

Cosplayer: Valkoinen Samurai (obviously, duh :-DD)
Photographer: Jäätynyt Enkeli

Ignore my Uppcon wrist (ticket) band... I don't want to take it off because this year's Uppcon was the last in history and well, Uppcon 2010 was the first (proper) con I attended and cosplayed at so yeah... ;_;

Bonus pic!

"Fuck these mosquitos..."
(one tried to eat my face and I slapped it. lol)

 And some background info why I did kimono!Masamune:

I needed something very simple because I wanted to cosplay from Basara already this year (cosplay group!) but I have had a lack of time making cosplays since Desucon because I've been away from home for almost a month + Uppcon. So yeah, this means that this cosplay is mostly not made by me. White kimono is commissioned by my friend Hasakitsuki's mom and the inner gi is from Kendoshop. The hakama are my kendo hakama.. yay multi-use! Eyepatch made by me. Sword borrowed from my twin.

I noticed a few things while wearing this cosplay: I will need to reinforce the eyepatch with Jesus tape (duct tape) because even Karlssons klister can't seem to hold the elastic in place at the back without the sides starting to peel off.. oh well, I guess it's because the eyepatch bends a bit when worn.. human faces aren't flat. lol I also need to try to keep my covered eye closed because it's annoying to get my eyelashes almost touching my eye when I blink and also moving the eyepatch around... otherwise it's all fine and dandy.

Awaiting Animecoooooooonnnnnnn ~~~~ <3

Chikage's collar and Kondou's kimono

Some time ago I had randomly found out what that particular pattern Kazama has on his haori's collar is called after having seen it on random Asian stuff (including dish cloths in a Thai food store lol) during my life time - sayagata. I had typed it and searched on Google for fabrics but didn't find anything with the right color for Kazama.. until I saw a thumbnail of an Etsy auction selling a vintage kimono collar. It was labelled as 'moss green', but looked darker gold on the photos, so I took the risk and ordered it. Today I found a small package from France in the mailbox and figured it must be it and well... for once luck was on my side when it came to colors, it do indeed look gold!

Oh, I also went and biked with Jäätynyt Enkeli all the way to town to pick up two packages from the post office. One of them was the vintage kimono I will use for my coming Isami Kondou cosplay for Närcon in Linköping. Oh, and yes, it's Kondou from Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan. Yes, I will cosplay him because he is such a bro to Okita (codename: Konbro! xD) and deserves some cosplay love. Especially considering what he did to save all the shinsengumi and yeah, I kinda adore his sense of honor and I loved that scene in the anime where he gave his black haori to sick Okita. ;A;

Kimono (in plastic bag) and collar

Collar close-up

Besides, speaking of Närcon.. a cosplay plan list will appear any day here on my blog so stay tuned if you're going there!

Masamune's eyepatch

I've been away from home, as you might have figured already, but now I'm back and thus this blog is brought back to life again with the most recent cosplay updates. So Animecon (Kuopio, Finland) is soon around the corner and the only thing keeping my cosplays from being 100% ready for the con is Masamune's eyepatch. Well, I was bored today so I decided to make it and get it out of the way ~

First of all I needed a reference. I had already saved myself a good screenshot from the anime so I could start working ASAP.

hurr hurr

But before I could start working I needed to climb to our attic where mom currently stores all her leftover fabric and sewing supplies. I remembered yesterday I had asked about black elastic and she had said there should be lots of it in different sizes visible as soon as you get up there. So yeah, I dragged my ass up there and when I was up I noticed a cardboard box lying on the floor. I opened it and was flooded with lots of zippers. Yeah. But because I didn't see anything else that could hold elastic bands in it I dug deeper into the box and then I saw a whole roll of white elastic. "Cool, but not the right color.." I thought. Dug some more and found a black one... and another... and another... and then I probably looked like this:

I went back inside á la herpy derp and could start working. I took with me two rolls because I wasn't sure which width I preferred. I ended up using the wider one.

Mom I love you. <3 lol

Cut off a fitting length

Now I will just show photos of the rest of the progress because I'm lazy ~ 

and my twin wants to play Mario Party 4 with me lol

I made a (fail) test version first to check size...

... and then started making the real one. (craft foam)

Some trimmings later...

Cut out a second layer of the same size (lol Masamune secretly likes Sweden...)

I started painting 'em black... dries so slow...

FUCK YEAH HAIR DRYER!!1

Three coats of paint, black fingers and some glue later I had made myself this:

I did do a quick try-on.. but soon found myself getting high on glue fumes and my eye twitching. So yeah, need to let it dry completely before I go take preview photos trolololo ~