Tsukiyono Omi (月夜野 臣)
About the character : Tsukiyono Omi (月夜野 臣) is one fourth of an assassin team named Weiß Kreuz (ヴァイスクロイツ), or White Cross in English. He's the youngest of the four in the group, and is normally portrayed as a cheerful student who is a whiz at computers and wields various trajectory weapons, such as a crossbow and darts/daggers. He also has a past and some mysteries in his background, but is generally seen to be smiling and kind, especially to girls~
Why him? : To be perfectly honest I only watched the anime after I had cosplayed Omi. I was asked rather last minute to fill in as Omi for a Weiß team, their previous Omi being unavailable for the cosplay day. This team was made up of friends I had only just met in the cosplay the year-end before, and they had previously cosplayed Weiß Kreuz two years back, but had wanted to reprise it for the upcoming street cosplay. All I was told was that Omi was a cheerful kid, and apparently had quite a following. It was only after cosplaying him that I finally sat down to watch the anime, and really unfortunately I didn't like his character... Oops. *wry grin*
About the costume : Without watching the anime, the only real source I had for reference were artbook pictures on the net. Omi wears a black V-neck T-shirt with black knee-length bermudas and hanging suspenders. Above that he wears a white hooded sweater (With darts on the inside!) and another black/navy collared short jacket over the white. On his head is his black bandanna/hat with goggles, and he wears white loose mid-calf socks with red sneakers.
Because this was such a rushed and last minute cosplay, I didn't have enough time to source for anything, so I borrowed most of the costume. Not to mention I still didn't know how to sew yet. Actually, most of the costume was a tad off, but the overall look seemed to work. The V-neck top, blue bandanna, gloves and bermudas was borrowed from my ex-boyfriend (the Farfello cosplayer), and the white shirt, suspenders and hooded navy jacket were from Mel (the Aya cosplayer). I brought the goggles and socks, and most importantly, the red sneakers were mine. Those were the only things I did myself for the costume, they were an old pair of white canvas school shoes that I had painted red with acrylic paint.
First Appearance
Event : Heeren Cosplay, early 2002.
About the cosplay : Since I never watched the anime, and was with such an impressive Weiß Kreuz team, I actually had a lot more fun cosplaying than if I had to worry about really portraying my character right (not to mention the current cosplayer me would have cringed the whole day from the inaccuracy of my costume). All I had to do was bounce around looking cute and smile a lot, and suddenly all these girls I didn't know would be screaming "Oh my god it's Omi!" and rush forward and ask for a picture. O_O. This is the most popular character I have ever cosplayed, notwithstanding Esther, and Esther was only "popular" because her costume was impressive, not that people actually recognised the character. It helped tons that our Youji, Aya and Ken cosplayers were all pretty amazing too (I still remember the screams when Aya and Youji came down the escalator and the numerous amounts of photo-taking requests we were then flooded with after) and our Farfello was distinctively creepy. It was my first experience cosplaying in a team, and it was in a way, an exhilarating experience.
Reprisal
(No photos yet because I have yet to find them... these are old photos back in the days when digital was unknown and since I was cosplaying, I didn't take the photos myself and now have to look around for other people's film or physical photographs to scan in...)
Event : Kochikame Cosplay, middle 2002.
About the reprisal : Kochikame cosplay was a cosplay event held at a movie cinema area in conjunction with the launch of one of the Kochikame movies back in 2002. My friends and I decided to do random cosplays when we were invited to show up as cosplayers. I redid my Omi cosplay, since I had always been a little displeased with it (with the colours wrong and everything), but on hindsight my initial version was a lot better! ^_^
Picture credits : Reference pictures taken from Anime Galleries dot net and photo credits go to Mel.