Okita Souji (沖田 総司)
About the character : Okita Souji (沖田 総司) is actually a historical person from Japan's long history. And although I cosplayed the version from the anime and manga Rurouni Kenshin (るろうに剣心), his story in the adaptation stays pretty true to history. Okita Souji was the first squad leader of the Shinsengumi, a policing force of sorts set up during the chaotic period between the Tokugawa Era and the Meiji Era, where the shogun government was battling against imperial royalists, and the Shinsengumi was on the shogunate side. Okita Souji is well known to have been very young but very talented with the sword, and is often romanticised because of his death at a very early age (around his 20s) from tuberculosis.
Besides historical accuracy, Okita Souji in Rurouni Kenshin is actually a pretty small character in the series, appearing in a short flashback scene in the anime and manga, and then playing a slightly larger role in his historical capacity in the OVAs. He is drawn as a short and young pretty-faced boy character, with a very polite and kindly personality, but of course, deadly with the sword. In the series he was portrayed as being very close to Saitoh Hajime, another historical character who plays a much larger role in the series.
Why him? : I was (and still am) a huge fan of the Rurouni Kenshin series, and as a result of the Shinsengumi also, and my boyfriend at the time, whom I had been cosplaying with ever since I started, wanted to do the Shinsengumi version of Saitoh Hajime, after his successful attempt at the police uniform version the year before. Since the version of Saitoh Hajime in the series was very close to Okita Souji and our heights fit the two characters, we decided to do Saitoh and Souji and compete as Best Pair.
About the costume : Because the anime version and the OVA version of Okita and Saitoh (actually of Shinsengumi costumes in general) were vastly different, we decided to follow a mixture of the two, but more towards the OVA version, as we felt it was more accurate. So the costume was white hakama, half-kimono, shinsengumi haori and headband. And of course tabi and zori and we even borrowed my friend's acrylic swords. I actually sewed mine and my ex-boyfriend's half kimonos and my own haori, but my ex-boyfriend apparently pieced together his shinsengumi haori using iron-on seams! O_O. We got a tailor to make our hakama, basing the pattern off an aikido hakama, and everything else I already owned because I was already a big kimono fan.
First Appearance
Event : MAC Cosplay, December 2002.
About the cosplay : I remember this cosplay as one of my shortest, because I had to work on that day. So I went early in the morning, hung out for a while, then ran down to work for a few hours, and then ran back at around 4pm to cosplay. Fortunately we made it for the competition, where we competed as a pair as well as a group, which we had just joined on that day itself because the Kenshin in the group was our friend (only much later did we find out that the Hannya in our team was actually a good friend of ours, who had been sniggering silently behind his mask because we didn't recognise him). I actually learnt how to do the three-point thrust (or a version of it) with an acrylic sword to perform on stage! Good times, those were good times.
Picture credits : Reference pictures taken from Animated Lust.