Today I want to talk about another Final Fantasy cosplay. The Final Fantasy series truly is popular among cosplayers - and, through my experience, this popularity can be attributed to two factors: a) due to the major success of the Final Fantasy series many of the characters are immediately recognizable and b) the sheer crazy designs that go into some of the characters may strike some cosplayers as a challenge worth rising up to.
As a result, it's not unusual to go to a con and see numerous people cosplaying as one of the many Final Fantasy characters. Even some of the lesser known FF's still get a look in: I've seen one guy cosplaying as the Red Mage from FF1 and even he showed an incredible amount of detail that went above and beyond the original 8-bit sprite.
But I digress. Whilst I've done numerous Final fantasy cosplays in the past this was the very first one: Tidus from Final Fantasy X.
I mentioned in the last post in this series that the best cosplays are those which have a story attached to it - and this is certainly the case here. Around early 2008, I met a woman called Kathleen. We were heading to the same anime convention, AI-Con, and she wanted to cosplay. This was to be her first but it there was the problem of what to do, having two options. One such option was Yuna from FFX and, recognizing the character, I convinced her to do so. Then, somehow, I ended up doing Tidus to match. And thus the wheels were sent into motion - this was the foundation stones of something that eventually blossomed into a relationship.
So yes, cosplay got us together.
Still, I suppose relationships have started in weirder places....
But no matter - I'm not the biggest fan of Tidus so cosplaying as him was a bit of a stretch on my part. But I like Yuna a lot so, believe you me, it was worth it to have someone cosplay as Yuna hanging around me :D
Mind you, this is one cosplay that has gone through numerous incarnations: The first one, as displayed in the above photo, was the first but it faced problems with the shorts being wrong, the arm armor being hopeless and some other minor details were somewhat lacking. A second Tidus cosplay has since been acquired which was better but recently has been facing problems in the form of a disintegrating arm armor.
Yes I seem to have some trouble with the arm armor - could it be some sort of karmic justice for my contempt for this character? Maybe...
But one interesting point is the hair: The first photo in this post is my natural hair - at the time, it was in dire need of a trim but somehow it ended up working in my favor for the cosplay. The second photo is again my natural hair - this time it was in a much more reasonable haircut but in cosplay terms it doesn't seem to work. And since then I finally got a wig going:
The hair's still wrong but at least the colour's right. Sort of. Oh well....
Well there's not really much else I can say about this. Whilst not the first cosplay I did, it was however a step in the right direction. It has been dusted off and worn again numerous times and I've never once gotten tired of it. And, most important of all, it was the foundation of something special. Indeed, it's been great to wander around cons and to be recognized both as a character and a couple.
So whatever contempt I may for Tidus, at least in this time, he did inspire a cosplay that turned out one of my widely-used. Indeed it's strange to think that character I don't like made for a cosplay that turned out right - so whatever it was that worked I'm grateful for.
And to have someone willing to match it is ever the more sweeter.
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