Adventures in cosplay (no.5)

And here we are with the final installment of this series. As the month of November ends so does this series on cosplaying video game characters. This has been a fun serial to bash out and a slight change of pace from the nonsense I've bashed out so far.

So, what more do I have to say about cosplay? Well we started with a Final Fantasy cosplay so we may as well end with a Final Fantasy cosplay. And which character? One Zidane Tribal.



This came about last year: I played my way through Final Fantasy 9 and Kathleen watched me do so every step of the way. Prior to doing so, my understanding of FF9 is that it was underrated and never reached the levels of popularity achieved by 7, 8 and 10. Well being a champion of the underdog, I played it, loved it and was impressed enough with the lead character. Kathleen too loved Zidane that she needed little persuasion into cosplaying as Garnet (although her liking Garnet as already good enough reason).

In a way, perhaps this represents the accumulation of things I've mentioned before: I cosplayed as a character who came from a little known game because I loved the game and the character and wanted to express it. I've seen some cosplays of the character done before and thought "I can do that too". And yes, it was another excuse to create an impression as a couple in both life and cosplay.



Now this was a variation of the Zidane design: This was actually for Amaranth, an anime ball run in conjunction with Manifest. Whilst Kathleen looked all set to go with the Garnet princess dress, we decided to go with a slight alteration with Zidane so he'd look the part. Thus whereas Zidane in the game had bare arms, I wore a white shirt.

As for the rest of the cosplay, the pants were purchased, the vest was made (through a friend of ours), the gloves were purchased before being attached to the cuffs, the caveat was rescued from a previous cosplay and the wig was salvaged from my Link cosplay. I wasn't able to get a tail due to money and time limitations.

All in all this was heaps of fun to do and the 'formal' variation worked a treat. It was great to go around Amaranth dressed as such and it made an excellent counterpart to Kathleen's (already ballroom) cosplay.
Looking back on it I think this cosplay would have to rank as one my favorites. For me it's one to be proud of and for good reason: I look at it now and there's not one damn thing I'd change about it. Ask any cosplayer: If such a feeling ever arises about a cosplay then something must've worked.
And it is the greatest feeling.



And this concludes this series on Adventures in cosplay. Note that this series has just been on characters from video games and thus a representation of a much greater whole. If I were to include the anime characters I've cosplayed as this series would've gone on for much longer. Mind you for the curious, go check out the link to my (joint) cosplay.com account in the side bar to the right of this page.
Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed reading this series and from here? Well I enjoy cosplay and get a lot of fun out of it so who knows? I may just sit down and bash out another Adventure in cosplay sometime in the future. Until then....