#1emon posts

2023 was basically the year I finally sat myself down to watch Jujutsu Kaisen. Everyone was talking about it and at first, I was a little reluctant. Up until then, I had not watched any recent animes for years - there just weren't a lot that caught my attention. But when I kept seeing fan contents of Gojo, I started to become a little curious myself. I mean, how could I not?! He just looked so stunning! And upon catching up to the end of Season 1, I needed to cosplay him.

The wig was purchased from Epic Cosplay Wigs while the jacket was purchased from Taobao. I remember having to keep the jacket unzipped a little bit at the collar because it was so tall on me. I couldn't tell if the collar was made too tall or if my neck was just on the shorter side...

I think at this point, I have restyled that wig a total of three times, too. The last time I cosplayed Gojo was for the Gojo Satoru Birthday Event I hosted last year at the local dessert cafe in Brookline, MA, Oasit's Sweet. I was most satisfied with the way I had restyled it third time around, so it's been sitting on one of my wig heads nicely since. Unfortunately once I get to packing more of my belongings for my upcoming move in a couple months here, I will be forced to stuff it in the bag...

Cosplaying Gojo, though, I always have a lot of fun with. It's one of those very few cosplays where I get to be more silly. I recall doing some really silly poses for photos as him at ConnectiCon 2023, haha! Not sure when I'll bring him back again, but I do miss cosplaying him. I also have his Lost in Paradise version, which I wore to FanimeCon 2024! Perhaps I'll try to schedule a proper photoshoot of that version some time this summer - Seaport would be a neat area to give a similar vibe of Shibuya.

In general, I would simply love to do more casual cosplays of Gojo. Casual cosplays, for me, is a fun way to further express one's love for the character and bringing the said character to life. It's almost quite like playing a little dress-up game of your favorite character!

And for those wondering if I'll ever cosplay Gojo with the blindfold, I'm not sure... I've always been a bit self-conscious about my face with how round it is, so I figured I will look really silly in that version. But really, I shouldn't care about that when cosplay is about having fun. Perhaps I'll work on that little dysphoria of mine and get to cosplaying Gojo with the blindfold. For now, I do enjoy cosplaying the above versions a lot! It's the only time I get to use the white eyeliner while wearing bright blue color contacts!

Anywho, where is my Gojo nation?! If you came across this post, please tell me your favorite version of Gojo!

Below are the parts I made to transform the boots: a pair of grey layered ruffles, blue gems, front panels, back panels, belts, and six belt loops. The gray ruffles are made out of cotton/polyester fabric, the black pieces are made out of faux leather, and the blue gems are leftovers from my Yue cosplay from Card Captor Sakura.

Once I finished making all the parts shown above, I held them into place using sewing clips to position them. I thought about being proper and sewing them in place, but this is four layers of faux leather I was working with. Including the folded seams along the edges, it would be a total of eight layers. Afraid of breaking my needle, I decided to just glue them together using super glue - I did not quite care for functionality for these parts, anyways!

Once the parts were glued altogether, I then glued them onto the boots and realized... I made the ruffles way too long. I'm not sure why I didn't bother measuring the length of it, but I had no choice but to remake it. As you can see in the reference photo at the top, the ruffles only come half way down to her shin. Mine were coming down all the way to the ankle!

I basically halved the measurements from the first ruffles for the second ones and while I had doubts that they were gonna look far too small, I decided to continue going forth and trust the process. In the end, it turned out quite perfect!

I'm aware Gaia's boots have high heels and while I definitely could have made mine more accurate, I recalled having nerve damage on my feet from wearing high heels for my Yue cosplay (I know he doesn't wear shoes, but I will never be comfortable having my dogs out in public)... And that injury lasted about 2~3 weeks. It was quite scary since I thought it wasn't going to make full recovery. Ever since, I decided I'll never wear high heels. Remember, cosplay is for fun and while I can understand others wanting to be as accurate as possible, make sure to prioritize your health and safety no matter what!

The wig is trimmed from the same lace-front wig I purchased from Amazon for my Yamagishi Yukako cosplay from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Part 4, and the schoolgirl uniform was also purchased from Amazon - the ribbon was altered by me.

Summer of 2023 was when I first began watching Tokyo Revengers and I was hooked. As soon as I was caught up with Season 1, I immediately went to read the manga. And by the time I was also caught up with the manga, I saw that a Tokyo Revengers Cosplay Gathering was being hosted at ConnectiCon that year. I think I saw that announcement only couple weeks prior to the convention. So, it was a very last minute decision I made to bring this version of Baji, haha!

Even though only some of the cosplayers recognized the cosplay at the gathering, I was still super happy and had a lot of fun in it. The next version of Baji cosplayed was the Valhalla version. I actually did this version of him for a photoshoot and then I brought it to a convention with me for the first time last year for FanimeCon 2024. At this time, I was waiting to be able to financially afford to buy the Toman uniform.

Photo credit: yuri_psd

After this photoshoot, I was quite fed up with that lace-front wig - it was a pain in the butt to maintain it each time I needed to wear it. So, I purchased a non-lace-front wig from HOLOUN Cosplay and made glued hairlines to make it look more natural. This was also around the time I had also finally ordered my Toman uniform Doki Doki Cosplay, too! I was very excited. Oh, and the boots were purchased from Amazon as well, but it is unfortunately no longer available.

I specifically ordered the version without the Manji symbol and since I had an embroidery machine, I created my own patch of the live-action version of the "Manji" symbol to censor it. If you would also like to censor the Manji symbol on your Toman uniform, I'm currently selling the patches as a set on my Etsy store.

The first time I debuted the Toman version of Baji was at Anime Boston 2024! My friend cosplayed Matsuno Chifuyu with me and we did a fun photoshoot of the two that weekend! All of the photos came out amazing and you can check them out on my Instagram!

Matsuno Chifuyu: @honey_yuzu Photo credit: @seelomiguenphotos

Then for FanimeCon 2024, a different friend and I also cosplayed Chifuyu and Baji in their middle school uniform. It does not end there, though! On Halloween last year, I dressed Baji as a cowboy and went for a day trip to Salem, too! But that's the last version of Baji cosplay I've done so far.

And of course, I do plan or at least hope to cosplay many other versions of him in the near future. He has so many beautiful outfits not only in the official arts, but also in the mobile game, Puzz Reve! It is my dream to just have a closet of all the different costumes for Baji... I'm very normal about him...

As a bonus, please enjoy my absolute favorite photos from the BajiFuyu photoshoot my friend and I did at Anime Boston last year!

Matsuno Chifuyu: @honey_yuzu Photo credit: @seelomiguenphotos

This cosplay was definitely more of a closet cosplay. The only thing I made by hand were the magazine pouches on her arms and I believe the wig is from Epic Cosplay Wigs. When I was styling her wig for the first time, I wasn't so sure how to go about it. Since I didn't own a crimper at the time either, I was struggling to create those fluffy bangs you'd often see in older animes. When I attempted to try and tease the wefts for the bangs, it just... Did not turn out great. So, I just did what I could.

I think Black Lagoon is one of those niche animes that not many people know of. That or Revy just tends to be the most recognizable character from the series. In which, of course, is not a bad thing at all! I absolutely adore Revy (and many other characters from Black Lagoon). While it was just a little unfortunate that my Roberta cosplay went unrecognized at ConnectiCon, I still had a lot of fun cosplaying her. Just wearing her cosplay made feel so confident and badass!

When 2024 came around, my friend, Sonia and I mutually expressed on wanting to do a Black Lagoon cosplay at Otakon. That was when we got to cosplay Revy and Roberta together! We got few photos taken by attendees and even had a photoshoot together which was a lot of fun! With the amount of fun we had in our Black Lagoon cosplays, we talked about doing another Black Lagoon photoshoot at a bar. We would love to find someone to be Balalaika and Shenhua for it, too! Now, that's a dream cosplay group I'd love to be part of and make happen!

Rebecca 'Revy' Lee: @sonni.cos Photo credit: @SeeLomiguenPhotos

Again, the modifications I made tonight are on the pants. As you can see in the reference photo below, the waistband and the bands on the cuffs are flat, unlike mine which were scrunched up with the elastic bands tucked inside the fabric.

Having the biggest brain rot for Jamie ever since I got into fighting games last year, I wanted to be as accurate as possible. So, I started off by taking the waistband and the cuffs apart with a seam ripper. I measured the circumference of my waist, calf, and ankle and cut the 3-inch wide elastic wide I bought from my local fabric store accordingly.

Having to un-stitch things with a seam ripper is always a huge pain in the butt (and neck), but watching Apothecary Diaries throughout the process helped me stay motivated and focused - I'm really enjoying the series. It's so cute and interesting! Couple things to note, I'm still an amateur at sewing, so I made it one of my new year resolutions to improve on it and make more cosplays from scratch. This was also my first time working with an elastic band this large... I was quite literally wrestling with it to sew it properly with the fabric of the pants.

First attempt turned out okay, but there was some minor errors on the measurements for the waist and the calf. So, I had to go back to un-stitching those two parts, and cut off few inches of the elastic bands.

Second attempt, where I sewed the fixed elastic bands back on turned out much better and I'm quite satisfied! It feels nice on the skin, too. Side note, I've been working out to lose weight and get fit. So, I'm sure in the next couple months, I'll most likely have to alter at least the waist band. But since I now have experience on it, it should be easy when the time comes to alter it!

The next thing modification/improvement I need to make on this cosplay is figure out a way to keep the rope belt on the waist without letting the weight of the gourd weighing it down and causing it to become loose. The gourd is 3D printed and while it's an empty shell, it still weighs the belt down quite bit and it becomes loose over time. Obviously, I'll need to go with a method where I put some kind of attachment on the waistband of the pants to keep the belt up, but I'm wanting the attachment to be as unnoticeable as possible while also preventing the waistband from being flipped outward from the weight.

I'll brainstorm some ideas, reach out to my seamstress friends for their insight, and see what I can do. I'm also open to receiving tips from everyone here, too!

I will be bringing my Jamie cosplay to PAX East this year in May. Let me know if you're also going and what you're planning to cosplay!

Have this silly photo of me from Super MAGFest as Jamie as a bonus:

The Japan Festival is an event that's held annually at the Boston Commons here. Last year was actually their first time hosting the event after about four years since they were unable to gather the funds to bring it back sooner during and after the pandemic was "over."

While we were blessed with amazing weather last year, we were not so lucky this year unfortunately. Saturday was raining and humid, and while it was sunny on Sunday, it was terribly windy - I'm sure you can tell in the selfie I took above with my friends, haha!

Aside from the weather, the festival itself also felt slightly smaller than last year - I think there were lesser vendors/booths this year. I also felt bad for a lot of the business owners and artists that were tabling at the festival. I fear they may not have made as many sales as expected due to the weather.

Speaking of vendors though, I did make some purchase at the festival to support at least one small business and that was Miki & Co Inc. They're a business from New York, selling Japanese vintage vinyl records! I was quite surprised at the variety of genres they actually brought over for a weekend event. Out of curiosity, I asked them if they happen to have any of my top favorite City Pop artist, Inagaki Junichi. And they did! In fact, they had a few mini vinyl records by him! I was even more surprised at how generously priced they were!

At first, I thought about just buying one or two, especially since I do not own a record player and I wasn't sure if I was ever going to invest in one in the future. So if anything, I would just be buying them more as a collection. But at the same time, the prices were just insanely cheap. For the time being, I decided to think on it while browsing the other booths at the festival. After a couple hours, I came back and decided it would still be an unbeatable deal to just buy all four records they had in stock. So, when I was checking out, the owner noticed I had come back from earlier and asked:

"Are you a fan?" "I'm a big fan, yes! I'm so surprised you guys have his records!"

So, here they are! All four mini vinyl records of Inagaki Junichi they had at the booth. Honestly at this rate, I think I'll be looking into investing in a record player. I've kind of wanted one for awhile, so why not!

I had bought Yukako's cosplay from Taobao for Anime Boston 2023. While I had bought a wig for her initially from Taobao also, it ended up being horribly thin and nothing as advertised on the listing. So, I had to order a different wig last minute on Amazon. I believe that was the first time I had ever ordered any synthetic wigs from Amazon and I was quite pleased! Since then, I've made multiple purchases from that specific seller of their wigs.

Below is also a selfie I took with a Koichi cosplayer, who I befriended that day! With his low popularity, I wasn't expecting anyone to be cosplaying him, so I was super happy to meet one!

After Anime Boston 2023, I brought my Yukako cosplay to ConnectiCon that same year and it was a lot of fun. I remember telling myself that I will take a break from cosplaying Yukako for a little bit and that was right after ConnectiCon. With summer right around the corner, I say it's a good time for me to bring her back!

I should also mention - while I was aware her shoes are actually blue, I went with purple because I was also wearing the same shoes for Abbacchio and I really did not want to spend more money on another pair of shoes - they can be so expensive! Besides, I thought the purple still suited nicely with her school uniform. The shoes were also purchased on Amazon.

P. S.I think it's extra hilarious to be cosplaying Yukako in Boston with the amount of jaywalking people do here.

The above photos are a casual version I did of him one time to play around more with makeup. As much as I love and admire the dramatic, animated style of makeup many JoJo cosplayers do, I wanted to strive for a more natural look for my Abbacchio cosplay and I still want to experiment a bit more with it. I think my biggest challenge when it comes to cosplay makeup (or makeup in general) is contour. Because I have such a round face, it really hard to figure out how to go about what areas I should contour, how I should contour, and how deep I should contour said area(s) especially for hyper-masculine looks.

Other than the makeup, I also desperately need to fix up the wig, specifically the glued hairline part. Abbacchio's wig was the first wig I did glued hairline after being out of practice with it for roughly 6 years. So, I was very rusty with it.

The only convention I had brought Abbacchio to was Anime Boston 2023. I was cosplaying him only for the first half of Saturday that year before changing to Yamagishi Yukako from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure - Part 4 for the rest of that day. If I remember correctly, Anime Boston was in early April that year and despite it still being chilly out, I was sweating quite a bit. When I went to go change, I was apparently sweating through my wig , so the underneath of the purple cap he wears was drenched with sweat... It was pretty gross... It probably did not help that I was wearing my silicone muscle suit and faux leather on top. I was quite relieved to change out into Yukako instead.

Because mask-mandate was still in place that year, I did enjoy having different masks to wear that would match the character I'm cosplaying that day. Below is the photo of the said mask - the beautiful holographic netting on it was just absolutely perfect for Abbacchio!

If I ever do a casual, steampunk cosplay of Abbacchio, I would love to use this mask again for something like that! It's really stunning. Speaking of JJBA - Part 5, though... Fun fact, I had almost skipped this part because one friend of mine said it was just nothing but filler episodes. I am so relieved I didn't listen to that friend and watched it through, because it instantly became one of my favorite parts of the series.

Part 4 is still my top favorite though, unfortunately!