Touki (透輝)
About the character : Touki (透輝) is the water archangel in the world depicted in the CLAMP manga series WISH (ウィッシュ). In this world, the heavens have four archangels, in charge of the elements water, wind, fire and earth. The main story of WISH revolves around the disappearance of the wind archangel and the exploits of a minor angel Kouhaku (琥珀) who goes down to the human world to find her. Touki is the second archangel you see in the series after Hisui (翡翠), the wind archangel. She first comes down to the human world to investigate why the messenger of God (the WISH bunny!) has not returned, only to find that Kouhaku and Hisui has imprisoned the messenger in order to prevent the orders of God from being carried out. Touki is depicted at first as a very strict and to-the-book type of angel, even to the point of being a little unfeeling. But in her interactions with the earth archangel, who continuously teases her, you can tell that she's actually pretty soft-hearted inside. ^_^
Note: In WISH all the angels and demons are technically androgynous, but I like to refer to Touki as a female since there are more "male" like characters around.
Why her? : I've always been a huge CLAMP fan, and WISH is one of those manga that I love a lot too. At one point we were planning out what to cosplay next, and someone mentioned WISH, so we all decided to cosplay characters from there. I wanted to cosplay Touki, because her outer shell of indifference versus her inner soft-heartedness was really interesting to me. Plus, I've always had a soft spot for sullen silent characters like her.
About the costume : My first time actually sewing a costume! ^_^ The costume I picked was the costume Touki was last seen wearing (in the manga story at least) and it was quite the challenge with the strange collar-line and outer coat. In the end I made a long white skirt, a white long sleeved top with the high collar lined with blue ribbon, and a blue cloak with a white standing collar and blue chiffon sleeves. I had to learn how to modify commercial clothing patterns for the cloak and the top and skirt. And since Touki was never drawn in colour, I had to give my best guess as to what colours were her costume and hair and such (though to be perfectly honest her hair should either be white or blue... but oh well, no wigs at that point of time...). It was really quite fun, handling different types of cloth, like satin, faille and chiffon. Though this is also the costume that led me to swear never to use satin for the costume again... it's far too hot!! >_<
First Appearance
Event : Cosfest, mid 2002.
About the cosplay : If I remember correctly this is actually the very first Cosfest held in Singapore! ^_^ It was quite fun cosplaying as Touki, it's my second time cosplaying in a group, and this time it was a character that I actually knew and liked (plus a series I actually read!). We first had our own private photoshoot at a yacht club, so technically when we cosplayed for Cosfest it was a reprisal of sorts, so we were quite used to the costumes. It was really hot though, I remember staying at spots where the air-con vents were! Haha... Touki is a really short character, I'm supposed to be half the size of everyone else! So I ended up kneeling every time we took a picture. It was tough having to look sullen and silent during photos, I'm usually a very smiley person, so this was my first taste understanding how to cosplay characters that are different from my own personality~ ^_^
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 : Tenchi Opening, mid 2005.
About the reprisal : Tenchi was a manga store that was doing its opening in a grand way: by inviting cosplayers to come and holding a mini karaoke session, amongst other things. We decided to show up in some old costumes, and since my Touki costume was still intact and complete, I wore it out~ To be honest one day I should like to do a proper Touki costume, with the forehead markings and a nice blue/white wig. A different costume perhaps, than the one I chose. And maybe, I should be ambitious enough to try making wings to go along with it! ^_^
Picture credits : Reference pictures taken from the manga and photo credits go to ?? (Was it Mel's digital camera?).