Series: Saikano
Worn to: Acen 2006, Youmacon 2007
Status: Retired

My friend Jordan was always ranting about Saikano so one day I picked up the manga and was totally blown away. Sure it was the typical "fighting + girls = good!" stereotype but it had so much emotion and Chise's quest to be a normal girl was SO SAD. I'm not a huge fan of the anime (weird animation style..) but the manga is absolutely beautiful and I definitely recommend it!

I actually didn't think I'd ever cosplay Chise. Usually when I decide on a costume it's an immediate "OH MAN I WANT TO COSPLAY THEM!" reaction but Chise took a lot of thought. It's definitely a complex costume and I wasn't sure if I would be able to pull it off.

The basic uniform was simple: The blazer is just a comfortable-fitting blazer I picked up at a thrift store, modified, and ripped. The patch was made from leftover fabric, interfacing, and yellow bias tape. The skirt was made using an online pattern and a lot of time and the shoes, wig, and socks I had.

The wings and gun were more difficult but not nearly as complicated as I expected. The wings were made from cardboard packing boxes I shamelessly stole from my Mom's work. I then cut the boxes into random, jagged pieces (I wanted them to look chaotic) and slabbed them together with hot glue. Next I used an especially strong piece of cardboard (a little longer than the size of my hand) as a base and screwed it onto the back of the jagged pieces. I also used two belts as straps. then, to mask the appearance of the cardboard's texture, I outlined all of the edges of the "feathers" in electrical tape and spraypainted them gray + gave them a topcoat of metallic spraypaint as well. Here is a progress shot of the wings.

The gun was made the same way but using cardboard tubes and poserboard. The tubes were simply poster tubes glued and taped together but finding a tube large enough to stick my arm through was much more difficult than I thought it would be. Instead, I used a triangular packing box and covered it in posterboard to give it a more tubular look. I then used masking tape to cover any of the openings of the tubes. I used a plastic bowl to shove over the three bottom-most tubes to make them more stable and just used 2 liter bottle caps for detailing along the side + the tip of the gun. The wing is a styrofoam model airplane wing my brother had sitting around the house and the wires are just old computer wires hot glued on. It was then spraypainted and glossed and I learned my first important lesson that styrofoam and paint DO NOT MIX and the wing sort of melted. Thankfully I liked the effect but still..

Unfortunately, this costume has been retired. I've worn it a couple of times and have gotten some beautiful pictures but there are too many things I'd like to improve on to keep this in rotation.