Darkrai gijinka preview test!

Good day everyone!

A few days ago I posted my Cosvision plans and, because both of my chosen characters are new cosplays, I felt like I needed to do some quick test runs before the con, to see if they even look presentable! Actually both Hatori and Darkrai are, in a way, "closet cosplays", because both of their outfits I could put together from stuff I already own. Sssch, I'm cheap. Darkrai mainly consists of parts from other cosplays but I still have to admit that I am surprisingly satisfied with how it turned out.

But enough blabbering, now I'll treat you guys to a couple test run photos! ~

Photographer: Sacchan

I'm sorry about the overexposed white wig but
there was no saving it.

I most likely won't change anything on the outfit itself (unless I can find longer gloves) but the makeup was just a test and it's not the final look that I'm going for. I actually had no idea what to do and the preview shooting was kinda sudden so I just threw something together quickly, in terms of eye makeup, and prayed that it would look decent at least. I have some ideas now, after brainstorming with Sacchan, on what I want the makeup to look like and I hope it'll work out at the con. If anyone's curious the real eye makeup look is hopefully gonna be something along the lines of Jack Sparrow style. Fuck yeah!

Oh and yeah, the long ponytail will be tied in some way at the con because seriously, I can't stand having such a long thing hanging free – it feels like it tangles if I just look at it. It's gonna be in some kind of braid or something because that's just a lot easier and more convenient. I seriously don't have the patience to detangle long wigs and keep them neat, although I wish I had because there's several characters that I want to cosplay who has long hair...

Just a close-up selfie.

I plan to use different contact lenses too. The ones I'm wearing on these pics are the EOS Bubble Blue's and, while they'd be great for Darkrai's eye(s), they have dropped in comfort since I opened them back in October last year. I think it's better I open another bright blue pair because yeah, I can't stand wearing lenses at a con if they dry out my eyes already on the first hours; I need something comfy for a full day event.

Just a Darkrai reference for those that don't
know what it looks like.

I just hope that I'll be somewhat recognizable as Darkrai, even though Pokémon gijinkas (aka humanized versions) are not always that easy to tell apart from some random Original Character, a-character-I-don't-know or whatnot. Oh well, whatever the case I won't be gijinka-ing alone because Sacchan will do a shiny Umbreon gijinka to accompany me – we'll be edgy af together! :'D Dark types ftw!

That's about it for this time. A Hatori test run post is coming up before Cosvision too!

Shiro Samurai says bye.

Cosvision 2016 cosplans – Be black and cover your eye!

Well, guess what guys?

My next convention will be Cosvision in Hämeenlinna, Finland, on 23-24 April. I'm not sure if I've revealed it anywhere but there ya go – I'm coming after all!

The con is less than two weeks away now and yeah, I thought it would be about time to finally decide on what I'm going to cosplay there since, honestly, I've had a lot of problems with my cosplay plans changing every other day. ^^" I'm still not 100% sure that this is the final line-up but it should be – assuming that no sudden cosplay malfunction happens or such.

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Regarding the con itself I need to say that at first I was unsure if I would even attend Cosvision. I was on the very first one in 2014 and now that the second one is coming up I felt very conflicted about attending; one part of me remembered how much I enjoyed the first Cosvision and the other part reminded me of how uncomfortable I've felt at bigger conventions lately. In one way I had been waiting for the return of Cosvision very eagerly and, on the other hand, my anxieties were telling me that it's gonna be a waste of money because I might not even feel okay there. I felt so torn and it was horrible to try to decide on what to do.
One thing was sure though – I refused to go without a group of friends. And thus I quickly learned that my brother, Frozen Angel, really really really wanted to go. I didn't really want to let him down because he's been hyped about the con ever since I went to the first one and told him what a blast it was; I guess he regretted not going back then and now he wanted to make up for it. I also managed to get Sacchan interested and that made me feel safe and understood because now I had someone else who knew what I was feeling; we both were really uncertain about attending because we've both been feeling bad at cons lately, for various reasons, but then we just decided to gamble and went all "I'll go if you go and if we feel shit at the con then we'll just withdraw to a corner and play Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate together." – yaassss!
Originally Ronya was supposed to come with us too but she had to jump out a few weeks before the con would roll in because of health reasons. I still hope we'll get to go to a con together soon. :'(

Sorry about all the gloom but yeah, I'm really just hoping that Cosvision will be fun and that I won't feel shit there because, honestly, who wants to feel bad somewhere where you're supposed to feel safe and happy? I'm hoping it will have the same relaxed atmosphere as it had back when it was in Turku – I really want this to be a successful trip and not another Desucon Frostbite 2015.

But here comes the cosplay plans!

Saturday

Series: Pokémon

Character: Darkrai (gijinka)

This is the result of my "holy shit, I need to come up with a Saturday cosplay that I can pull from my closet!"-panic when I realized I had less than two weeks to go. Then again, I don't really mind because Darkrai is pretty cool and come on, he's like the Freddy Krueger of Pokémon, lol. Darkrai might not be one of my favorites (he's more Frozen Angel's type of Pokémon) because I prefer Cresselia and Arceus more from the same generation's legendaries/mythicals but yeah, I love me some black and spooky shit.

Sunday

Series: Fruits Basket

Character: Hatori Sohma

Hatori was not originally on my cosplay list (I had considered doing him once but that's about it) but then Firith asked me if I was interested in a Furuba pair cosplay –with him as Ayame– and I thought "why the hell not?". I mean, I haven't cosplayed from Fruits Basket in a while and Hatori is a very likable guy from the series – actually, he's my third favorite character from it. :) 

I'll go with the random suit version instead of the probably-more-well-known vest and white doctor-ish jacket outfit. Oh and yeah, I'll do the long hair version and the manga portrayal instead of the anime version, which means that I'll have violet eyes instead of those weird dark greenish-gray eyes he has in the anime. Violet looks more fab, period. My reasoning though? The anime sucks and the manga is awesome and, besides, the manga is the original source anyway.

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That's about it for my plans. I hope to meet some friends at the con and I pray that it's gonna be worth it. I can say already now though that, as far as the cons in Finland go, I'm very unlikely to attend any other big con for the whole year; I'll still attend the local small cons but otherwise I'm really trying to save my money and prioritize some other things in life that are coming up this year. I have some Swedish cons in mind *coughnärconcough* that I want to go to but we'll see what my money situation says when the time is closer...

Thanks for reading and stay tuned for cosplay previews! Bye bye ~

Lens review: I.Fairy Star Blue

Welcome ~

Today I will treat you all to a circle lens review! I will be reviewing the super adorable I.Fairy Star Blue lenses! o(･ω･)o These lenses feature a really unique star-shaped design with a thick black limbal ring – perfect for big-eyed cute and magical looks!

Let's roll!

Base curve: 8.6 mm
Diameter: 16.2 mm

Water content: 55%

Life span: 1 year (I recommend 6 months)

As you can see my lenses came in different I.Fairy vials – but that's really nothing to worry about. It just means that the lenses are from different production batches; it happens every now and then and, especially, if you order lenses with different prescriptions. :) As long as you have the I.Fairy authenticity stickers on the vials you can be sure that you've received genuine and safe-to-wear lenses!

I put the lenses to soak the evening before I had planned on wearing them; you should take them out of the bottles at least 8 hours before wearing because the solution used to store them in the bottles is not the same you use.

One lens in. Shows enlargement effect.

Upon insertion the lenses felt very slightly irritating for the first minute, but that went away rather quickly. They are comfortable and don't block my vision in any way but, most of the time, I could tell that I was wearing contacts. They seem to dry out fast for me though; the first punches of dryness came already within the 1,5-2 hour range and after 3 hours had passed I really wanted to take them out. Please note though that I've had especially tired and sensitive eyes lately, which might be part of the reason why I couldn't stand these for very long. 
Another thing is that after taking off the lenses my left eye was really sensitive and stingy for about 30 minutes – it basically felt like there was an eyelash hair in my eye that I couldn't get out. My eye hurt if I put pressure on it, rubbed it or anything like that. Luckily it went away by itself but it was weird since I never experienced anything like it before. I think it might be because the left lens would have expired on June 2016 if I had not opened it. The right lens expired first on 2019 so yeah, might explain why it was only the left one that gave the "afterburn".

Lens photos coming up!
All photos taken by me during an April afternoon with a semi-clear sky. All close-up photos are free from color filters and such and that's so that the colors would be as true to real life as possible.

Facing window in my apartment. (sun side)

Natural apartment room light, facing wall. (lamps off)

Bathroom light.

Flash photo.

Standing in the corridor.

Under white corridor light.

Under yellow corridor light.

Yellow weak staircase light.

Outdoors, sitting under the roof/shadows. Facing sun.

Outdoors, facing sun directly.

Outdoors, back against sun.

Indoors storage room. (natural light)

Facing staircase window.

As you can see these lenses are rather big and they have a really prominent thick black limbal ring that gives you a cute dolly and/or animated look. ^.^ The lenses have a really unique star-shaped design and I think it's really cool! I've never come across other lenses with a similar print so I do like it a lot! What makes it even better is that the blue shade is really beautiful and it shows up well and does, in fact, blend rather nicely with my light blue-gray eyes; I didn't expect them to fit in with my eyes as well as they did, considering how vibrant the color is and how artistic and unnatural the design is!

The I.Fairy Star series might be better suited for j-fashion styles like decora, pastel goth, fairy kei and such rather than for cosplay. I don't intend to say that they don't fit cosplay purposes but I think that the design of the lenses complements cute fashion looks better and, I think, that the big pupil hole might not make the lenses jump out as much as needed for cosplay photography – especially when the cosplayer is seen from a distance and the eyes need to grab attention from afar.
A big pupil hole means that more of your own eye color shows through in the middle, which I know that some people with naturally light eyes finds doesn't look right and "clashes" with the color of the lens. Personally I'm neutral/indifferent to the look but I do acknowledge that a big pupil hole also means that the lens won't hinder your vision (colored corners when you move gaze etc) and this I really appreciate.

Distance photos!

I tried to go for a cute and timid candy-like look. I wanted to try to bring out a youthful, shy and innocent feeling. (◕ᴗ◕✿) wiee ~

Short summary:

Color: 8/10
Beautiful and vivid blue shade that shows up well and isn't overwhelming.

Design: 9/10

Really pretty and unique star-shaped design with a thick black limbal ring!

Opacity: 8/10

The colored parts of the lens do have good color coverage.

Enlargement: 8/10

These are big and give you a dolly look!

Comfort: 4/10

Comfortable for short-time wear but dries out fast for me (3 hours). Left lens burns my eye after I take it out, likely because of it being close to expiring before I opened the bottle it was in.

Naturalness: 1/10

Pffffft, think again.

 Thanks for reading! If you have any questions just leave them in the comments!

Shiro Samurai out.

Childhood nostalgy & dream cosplays!

Good day everyone! o(^◇^)o

For a while now I've been itching to make some kind of post about characters that I really liked as a kid and that, nowadays, have a sort of "childhood dream/nostalgy cosplay" status to them! Even though I feel like I can't call many of my cosplays 'dream cosplays' I guess some of these child favorites of mine do come rather close to it. :) Many of these served as childhood heroes and as characters that I related to, admired or just simply really loved when growing up. 

Okay so, even though these characters listed below might be more or less vastly different from one another, they all still have something in common and that's that they were dear to me during my childhood – and that also includes early & mid teenage years. Wow, that makes me sound so old.

What are we waiting for, let's gooooo ~ 

Series: Digimon

Character: Angemon

Oh man, good ol' original Digimon Adventure. ♥ As a kid I was one of those few (?) who loved Pokémon and Digimon equally, aka I never really understood the "war of copies" comparisons between them that other kids made and thus picked sides – saying that you could only like one or the other, not both. I always thought that even though both had some similarities they also had a lot of differences too!
 Patamon was always my favorite of the main Digimons because he was just so damn cute! I have at least two different Patamon plush dolls lying around somewhere. I remember watching the show as a kid for the first time and when Patamon finally evolved into Angemon I was so excited – he was so freakin' cool! *o* But yeah, everyone who watched Digimon knows what happens after that and yeah, the feels are real with this one. *gross sobbing*

Angemon seriously stayed as one of my all-time favorite Digital Monsters (Takeru/T.K was my favorite of the original children too!) and now that I'm into cosplay I really want to do him. I can't live with myself if I don't cosplay Angemon one day. It needs to happen, period.
Friendly note: I know that Angemon is quite heavily inspired by Christianity but, honestly, the religious aspects of his character have nothing to do with why I like, nor want to cosplay, him. 

Series: Digimon Adventure 02

Character: Ken Ichijouji

I want to cosplay at least one of the early DigiDestined (aka Chosen Children in the Japanese version) and I remember really liking Ken when I was young; I had some sort of early mancrush on him, lol. I never saw the complete second season but I rewatched it last year and when Ken finally snapped and hugged Wormmon I had a hard time keeping the tears in check – he's so precious. ;A; I hadn't seen that part of the anime before, so I had no idea that he'd actually revert back to being a good guy and, oh boy, did that dig him up from my childhood memories as one of my human favorites from Digimon!
I really want to cosplay him but I'm not 100% sure of which version I'd do; I am currently leaning towards his gray school uniform though. It's pretty dang iconic.

Series: Beyblade

Character: Ray Kon (Rei Kon in Japan)

I don't remember exactly when it was, but I guess around my early teenage years I suddenly got into a Beyblade craze. The original series aired on television and I saw some random episodes during a summer vacation at dad's; I later asked dad for money and went and bought some Beyblades to play with from the local toy store. xD I remember originally liking Kai more than Ray but afterwards I started digging Ray a lot and even more so when, last year, the wonderful Satu and Päivi from Leikkipuisto encouraged me to do him!
I never really told my friends that I used to like Beyblade but several toys, a GBA game and Beyblade bed covers speak for themselves, haha. I should really watch the original series properly one day. #closetfan

Series: Beyblade

Character: Kai Hiwatari

What should I say? xD We share the same name, I can relate to him in some ways and I must admit that I had a tiny mancrush for him too. :'D I just really liked him as a kid, okay? I dig his design surprisingly much too but I think one of his selling points to me was that his Bit-Beast was based on a phoenix and, well, I always had a huge fascination with birds. I also like his color scheme and I'm itching to tackle that wig because holy crud, that's gonna be one heck of a challenge!

Series: InuYasha

Character: Sesshoumaru

My first and original husbando, not gonna lie. I loved him so much and I still do!!

InuYasha was the first manga I started collecting/reading and I own every single manga volume (in Finnish) of it; it has a special place in my heart. ♥ InuYasha is what really hooked me into manga and anime for good and it's one of those series that made me realize that I had been into anime & manga *coughpokémoncough* long before I knew what it was. :D So yeah, aside from being one of my long-term favorite mangas I can say that InuYasha is very likely one of the series that also led me into finding out about cosplay. I honestly plan to cosplay a lot more characters from it but Sesshoumaru is the number one choice, by miles. I just feel like I must do him someday and I'm really relieved that I didn't decide on him as my first cosplay, lol. xD I'll do him when I feel that I can do him justice, haha. He's such a dear character to me, I don't want to mess it up.

Series: Pokémon

Character: Tracey Sketchit

Who remembers this guy?
I've been a hardcore Pokémon fan since the first games and TCG came out (I was around six years old I think) and my whole childhood centered around Pokémon, not gonna lie. x) I was one of those mildly obsessed kids and I'm still going strong about it, even though nowadays I don't require my birthday cake to be a big marzipan Pikachu, lol. Pokémon is what got me into manga and anime to begin with – Pokémon is what made me who I am today. ♥
Okay so, I honestly don't remember all that much about this guy but I remember liking him and that's mainly because he was an artist and so were I! His design is simple, nostalgic and very typical of early Pokémon and so I thought "why not"? :D Besides, he gives me a legit reason to bring along a drawing pad to conventions and actually practice sketching Pokémons... which I haven't done for years, even though as a child that was almost the only thing I drew, lol. Aaaah, memories... ~

Series: Pokémon

Character: James

Well, contrary to Tracey, James hardly needs an introduction! He's from the infamous Team Rocket duo who always tries to steal Ash's Pikachu or do some other mischievous shenanigans to mess up their day. The thing is that whatever they do and no matter how idiot-proof their idea might have been they will always end up... blasting off again.
I remember that even as a kid I thought that Team Rocket were way too predictable and annoying because you knew they'd always fail! But nevertheless I liked their silly tries and even sillier costumes they'd wear to try to fool Ash and his gang; sometimes they went to great lengths just to get that damn Pikachu and it just makes me wonder why they even bother when Pikachu is not even a rare Pokémon to begin with, lol.
But yeah, even though I did find Team Rocket mildly annoying I still always, somehow, liked James. Something about him that I can't put my finger on was interesting – maybe because he could be so goofy and fabulous at the same time. It was hard to dislike him!
So yeah, expect me to cosplay James someday, although probably not in that gorgeous af Moltres suit... xD

Booonuuuuuus!

Series: Rölli
Character: Rölli

In honor because it's my dad's birthday today I have to uncover this secret dream!
My dad got me into Rölli when I was really really young and this funny little troll (although it has been said officially that he's not actually a troll) stayed with me all my life – I still listen to the songs and I own the movies! The movies actually make me cry, no regrets.
Non-Finnish readers probably have no idea what I'm going on about because Rölli is an old Finnish classic television program aimed for children (read more about it here) but it's so quirky and entertaining that even adults love it, including my dad. ♥ The show does teach you a lot about important matters and in a funny way too, so that even kids can understand and relate to more adult problems etc. Dad always called me "rölli" as a kid and he still does it, lol.
The character Rölli himself is just so lovable (even though he'd say 'yuck'!) and I would love to cosplay him someday since he has been a sort of childhood hero and model for me – albeit a quite different one, haha. :') I'm unsure about which costume version I want to do of Rölli since there exists quite a few; I really liked the movie version pictured above because of those big fantasy helmets and all but yeah, the original Rölli has its charms too. Decisions, decisions...

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Please note that this list only includes characters with a humanoid appearance, even though I would have plenty of Digimon and Pokémon gijinkas to list. I'll save those for another time! ;)

Okay so, I think these are plenty enough to give you an idea of what my childhood was like. I am probably forgetting some characters, series or video games *cougharea88cough* but I'll just leave those for another time! Besides, it might be fun to keep some complete secrets, huehuehue ~

Thanks for checking out this post and please leave a comment if any of these characters interested you or anything! I'd love to hear about your childhood characters too and hey, I'm totally up for doing cosplay groups! *hinthint* 

~ Shiro Samurai out.