Sena Robin (瀬名 ロビン)
About the character : From the anime Witch Hunter Robin (ウイッチハンターロビン), Sena Robin (瀬名 ロビン), or Robin for short, is the fifteen year old protagonist of the show. In a world where witches, which are people with special powers, exist, and often wreck havoc on people around them, the organisation that Robin belongs to aims to protect the world from them. Though she herself is in reality also a witch, Robin is never told her heritage; instead she is known as a craft user and is accepted as such.
Robin is first introduced as the replacement sent from headquarters to fill the ranks of the Japan division of the organisation; people in the division are at first wary of her, thinking she might be a spy. The whole show is mysterious, the colour palette moody, and the characters are as such too. Robin is at first reticient, quiet, a little shy, inexperienced and a little untrained even. As events unfold around her, you learn that things are more complicated than they seem, and she plays a much larger role than she thought.
Why her? : Witch Hunter Robin has always been one of my favourite animes. The plot, pacing, animation, story and action are all top-notch, and extremely gripping all the way till the end of the series. Robin's character, the shy, pensive and quiet girl, has always been a character that I admire, since I'm so talkative and brusque by nature. Although she's not a damsel in distress in the show, she's also not completely independent, and I like characters that are real that way.
One of my good friends cosplayed Robin a long time ago, and some of my friends joined in, cosplaying Amon, Harry and Doujima. The Amon cosplayer, my good friend Nicole, has been so busy of late, but she had always expressed interest in cosplaying again. With Cosfest coming up and with no cosplay plans set in stone, I figured I'd try cosplaying Robin, whose costume had always intrigued me, and get her to cosplay Amon with me. Since she had already cosplayed him once she had the costume ready and didn't need to do much other preparations for the cosplay. At least that's what I thought. In the end, she was so enthusiastic she went and made the gun and the Orbo the night before, completely wasting my intention for her to do an easy cosplay~ Heh heh.
About the costume : Robin's costume was an interesting mix of an edwardian/victorian silhouette and modern accessories. She has what looks like a dark grey dress with a large skirt and bustle, with a short black apron over it. Over that she wears her necklace, a brown leather floor-length trenchcoat, matching gloves, and her blonde/brown hair is always up in her characteristic two ribboned ponytails. The moon-shaped glasses were a major plot device; she received them from Amon because her bad eyesight was affecting the accuracy of her Craft.
The most difficult part of this costume was definitely the dress. I had never made anything that was fitted before, and for the dress it either had to be fitted or made from a stretchy material, the latter I resolved was impractical because the skirt and sleeves made it clear that the material was not stretchy. After buying the wrong cloth (too scratchy) and making a top that didn't fit, I was left with only around a week before cosfest to essentially do my entire costume. Finally I was blessed and found the perfect soft dark grey cloth, and made my first fitted top.
The underskirt was made from layers of corded petticoats, flounced petticoats, plain petticoats and net petticoats which made the whole thing less bulky than the hoopskirt I made for Esther since it was made from cloth and could be squished. Because of lack of time, and a last minute realisation that I bought too little cloth, my trenchcoat was not finished in time and so I decided to cosplay the version without the trenchcoat. The necklace pendant was a semi-precious gem that I had painted over with red acrylic paint, embellished with gold puffy paint, and threaded onto my own gold chain. Although I had bought gold hair spray for cosplay, my hair practically eats colour and thus I gave up and went with my natural hair colour. The glasses were donated by Bern and I popped out the glass and bent it into shape.
About a year after my first event I finally managed to finish the leather trenchcoat and gloves. The trench is one of my favourite: it's fitted around the waist and flares out all around after that to accommodate the wide skirt underneath, and made from fake leather which looks just like the real one. In the end I opted for no pockets because the big pockets did not fit the style of the trench (one of the rare times I adapt a costume because I like the piece too much) and for full-length sleeves instead of short and rolled up because short-sleeved trench can't really be used anywhere else... =_=... I also managed to get a golden-blonde long wig to match Robin's real hair colour.
First Appearance
Event : Cosfest, July 2006.
About the cosplay : Although I was quite worried that I could not portray Robin's personality well, in the end it worked out. Because of my long fringe and the green coloured contact lenses, I was perpectually only seeing about half of my normal vision, and as a result I ended up being more silent and pensive than usual. It was really great fun cosplaying with my Amon, particularly because we are really close in real life, and Robin ended up dragging Amon around the entire location. The best thing was most people recognised who I was cosplaying! I had friends come up and tell me that they were glad someone was still cosplaying Witch Hunter Robin at that time and place, since by then WHR was considered an "old" anime and not in vogue. We all agreed it was a great anime and that there should be more love for it spread around~ Finally, I resolved on that day to take more photos, and brought my trusty manual film FM2, which people commented was very apt for the costume, even though Robin technically did not use a camera in the anime.
Reprisal
Event : Cosplay Convention, August 2008.
About the reprisal : I have always wanted to reprise Robin, if only for the fact that I never got to cosplay the version in the trenchcoat and I really liked the trenchcoat that I had sewn. The only problem was location: in sunny Singapore, to cosplay the full Robin cosplay with trenchcoat, I would require a cosplay that was indoors and in a location that was air-conditioned. Coming back from Japan and Australia after my graduation from university, I felt an urge to cosplay, since I had missed the annual Cosfest, so I thought I'd show up for the Cosplay Convention instead, a sub-event during the World Cyber Games Singapore Tourney. And since the location was air-conditioned, I felt that it would be great for my reprisal for Robin~ ^_^
In one of those rare times when I break my own rules, I choose to cosplay alone, with only Haruko by my side, who helped me with my bags and helped me take some photos. Cosplay Convention is a relatively small event if compared to the other cosplay events Singapore regularly hosts, so I saw a slew of cosplayers I did not recognise, and a small handful of "oldies" like me that I did. This time around I did an almost complete Robin costume, with trenchcoat, gloves and the proper hairstyle this time, the only thing missing being green contact lenses, which I had swopped for grey at the last minute. Although air-conditioned, I was still really hot in the trenchcoat, but I managed to survive the whole event plus a walk outdoors to reach my dinner location! *sweats*
What I really felt happy about for the reprisal though, was that people actually recognised me and the series I was cosplaying from. I really love Witch Hunter Robin and in its heyday, it was a really popular non-mainstream anime, but of late with a lot of younger cosplayers entering the scene, not many knew the series at all. Having people come up to me and recognising my character not only made me, the cosplayer, rather happy, but also the Witch Hunter Robin fangirl in me very satisfied. ^_^
Picture credits : Reference pictures taken from Anime Galleries dot net and photo credits go to Justin and Thomas.