Lenalee Lee (リナリー・リー)
About the character : From the manga and now anime series D.Gray-Man (ディーグレイマン), Lenalee Lee (リナリー・リー) is one of the exorcists, a group of people who battle Akuma, which are weapons built from anguished souls and the spirits of their beloved. She's in a sense, a "Mary Jane" character: she's pretty, slender, sweet, even cute at points. Although never directly linked to any of the other characters, there are hints of possible feelings between Allan Walker (アレン・ウォーカー), the main character of the series, and her, as well as with another character Lavi (ラビ). So from the surface Lenalee seems like a very typical female character in a shonen type manga.
But she isn't. Much like Esther, her character is deeper than the stereotype. D.Gray-Man is a wonderful manga, fleshing out characters so that they're more complex than the stereotypes you might identify them with. With Lenalee, she may be female and pretty, but she is strong in that she fights, not just for herself, but for her brother, for her fellow exorcists, for her friends. She isn't as noble as to fight for the whole world, as she mentioned in the manga once, because that simply is too vast a concept for her to grasp. But to her, the "world" is made up of her family and friends, and that is why she fights. She's not infallible either, but although she may not be Wonder Woman and her weapon may not be powerful enough at times, her crucial fight with Eshi and how she eventually managed to defeat him but at the cost of almost everything, was to me, proof of how she was an extremely strong person. Sometimes true strength comes from those who are inherently weak.
Why her? : D.Gray-Man cosplay was suggested almost immediately after the aftermath of Trinity Blood cosplay, and all of us were really tired from complex and overly detailed costumes. I had heard of the series, but never read it before, but my friend who was pushing the idea assured me that the costume would be much simpler and my character was "perfect" for me. Lenalee was described as a cute and sweet girl with long black hair tied up with two ponytails and wears a mini-skirt. That was all I had to go on, and only much later after I had agreed did I start to research her costumes, and finally started to read the manga.
About the costume : Initially when we agreed to form a D.Gray-Man team, the original costumes were the normal (as opposed to battle) uniforms. As time went by (we had planned this cosplay about a year in advance), and the new uniforms appeared in the manga, there was some discussion as to whether we should cosplay the old uniforms or the new uniforms. The new uniforms were more complicated and less people will recognise it, especially since the anime had just started running and people who watched the anime would only be exposed to the old uniforms. But there had already been several cosplayers who had cosplayed the old uniforms, and some of them were good enough that we couldn't really do that much better. I was one of the few who pushed for the new uniforms. In the end we did do the new uniforms, and it all worked out really well.
Lenalee's uniform consisted of a jacket, a tube top, hot pants, long socks, black pumps, pouches at the back, gloves, as well as her characteristic two ponytails and two hair rings given to her by Anita. In the manga, all the new uniforms were drawn in a way that suggested that they were made of some kind of shiny pvc or leather, but as a group we decided to look for a cloth that was easier to handle and wear, and we settled on a version of black shantung silk, which was shiny but also soft. On the whole, in pictures the effect was as good as pvc and it was a lot cheaper and easier to wear.
I made almost the entire costume myself, sewing the jacket, hot pants, pouches and belts half from heavily modified patterns or by trial and error. The tube top was an old white top modified, the pumps I bought cheaply, the long socks were something I owned. The black satin gloves were a last minute addition, part of my Dhita costume that I borrowed because my own experiment to make gloves failed terribly. My hair was long enough to tie into two ponytails but I added extensions on each side to get the long ponytails that Lenalee is so famous for, and finally the hair rings were made from silver-sprayed metal sheets with hot glue detail for me by the ultimate prop-mistress Bern. Let's not forget our wonderful Reiko (cosplaying as Allan) who made the metal badges and cookie clay buttons for the entire team~~
First Appearance
Event : End-Of-Year (EOY) Cosplay, December 2006.
About the cosplay : I really enjoyed cosplaying Lenalee, because I could just run around and be happy and still be in character, something that I couldn't do for a lot of my previous characters. The costume was one of my most mobile yet, especially after the big skirts of Esther and Robin, and I was also a helper for the event, so I ran around the place a lot on that day. Ivoryfox, who has also been doing Lenalee cosplay for a while, showed up in the same costume as me (you can see our group photo above) and had a good D.Gray-Man team too. As a group, our D.Gray-Man team was pretty impressive, if I may say so myself. We didn't compete or go on stage (I did however, perform one song with two fellow schoolmates backing with acoustic guitars, but that is another experience altogether), but we really enjoyed ourselves, and we garnered a fair amount of attention.
Private Photoshoot
Event : Outdoor private photoshoot with photographers Justin, Jane, and Richard, February 2007.
About the photoshoot : Because of clashing schedules, by pure coincidence our private photoshoot was totally devoid of Noahs. So it was kind of like a Exorcists' Day Off at Singapore kind of outing. Heh heh. Cosplaying Lenalee again was pretty fun: her costume was one of the few that really didn't require much work or maintenance, so I did not have to fix up too much of my costume the night before. One of the bigger differences between the actual cosplay and the photoshoot was the hair. During the two months between the cosplay and the photoshoot my hair actually managed to grow to a decent length, and so I did not have to wear my extensions and used my own hair, which was refreshing because I kind of felt more intuned with Lenalee. Not to mention my head didn't hurt after the whole day's running around.
Another interesting point was working with photographers. Justin has been a good friend, a fellow cosplayer and a photographer that we are all very used to, and he understands our group's particular phototaking culture, which is more of an easy-going interaction + much OOC (out of character) action leading to interesting poses. We literally bounce off each other's crazy ideas. With Richard, who was a photographer we met during cosplay, his style of photography was more of putting us in defined poses and asking for us to approximate the image he had in mind, as well as doing lots of IC (in character) solo poses. So there was some form of culture shock there, at least for some of us. It's also rather interesting being both a photographer and a cosplayer, especially when you're doing both at the same time. Obviously my camera did not have pictures of me, but the dynamics of posing and asking people to pose one moment after are quite interesting to grapple.
Picture credits : Reference pictures taken from Timcanpi.org and photo credits go to Thomas, Justin, Jane, Christina and Mel.