Java's Cosplay Timeline: Princess Peach, Nintendo (2005)

September 23, 2021

Happy Throwback Thursday, y’all~ I’m back with another entry on my Cosplay Timeline series~ As always, if y’all have been keeping up with my blog, thank you so much for reading about my trips down memory lane. This entry covers cosplay #4, done back in the fall of 2005.

Character: Princess Peach, Nintendo
Age: 17~ A couple weeks into being 17~
-Senior in high school
First Worn To: Halloween 2005
Also Worn To: None
Why Them?: My friends and I planned to do a Super Mario group of Mario, Luigi, Peach, and Bowser for Halloween at school.
Thoughts: I really loved being her! High school Java was super into being *~*~*KAWAII*~*~* and was also into Disney princesses/princess personas in general. In short, I was preeeetty jazzed about being a pretty princess for a day.
Status: Retired
Would I Cosplay Again?: She was fun, but I currently have no plans on revisiting her. If I were to, I would absolutely tackle her Smash Bros. dress, maybe in a different colorway though.

Halloween 2005 happened during my senior year of high school. Seeing as this would be our last Halloween together before we all broke off on our separate ways after graduation, my group of friends and I thought that we should absolutely go with a really awesome group costume. We settled on a Super Mario group of Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, and Bowser. The roles were hella easy. Being into princesses at the time, I claimed Peach immediately.

Getting the costume together was super, super easy, since I had seen a cute Princess Peach costume being sold at Halloween stores. The costume I wound up getting was the Leg Avenue one. Lmao, my first and only ever “sexy Halloween costume”, but I didn’t even wear it to be sexy lol. The photo on the bag featured a petticoat to wear under the skirt, but I felt it wasn’t really necessary.

Peach is also the second costume I’ve ever had to wear a wig for. The wig I got was labeled as a “Peggy Sue” wig. It was actually the second choice. The first one I got was a “cheerleader” wig that had a built in headband sewn in. I did not like how it looked on me at all, so I went back to the Halloween store with my dad to return it. The store couldn’t do returns, but said that I could exchange it for another wig of equal price. And so I got the Peggy Sue one as it was the only one that was of similar price. The blonde shoulder-length bob wasn’t very accurate to Peach at all. If I recall, I wished I could have gotten a longer one, but I had to take what I could get. At that point, I was just satisfied that I had the blonde hair.

The rest of the costume came about super easily. I just followed the suggested image that came in the Leg Avenue bag. I already had white tights and black Mary Janes at home. Unlike the previous Halloween costumes, I (my mom actually) did not have to stay up late the night before I had to wear it do some last minute work on it. It was quite refreshing actually lol.

This is the exact photo that came with my Peggy Sue wig. Halloween stores nowadays have a new, updated photo for this wig though.

LOOK AT HOW FUCKING CUTE WE WERE. I specifically remember suggesting we reference a Fruits Basket manga illustration for our pose here. — LOOK AT HOW FUCKING CUTE WE WERE. I specifically remember suggesting we reference a *Fruits Basket* manga illustration for our pose here.

Princess Peach in class~ This photo and the photo above were taken by the computer teacher/school photographer and I definitely took these photos from my high school website years ago lmao.

The morning of Halloween, I put on my costume and my mom did my makeup for me. I felt so prettyyyy~ As stated above, I was really into Disney princesses/princess personas then, so I was ecstatic to be in this costume. My last Halloween in high school wound up being really nice. My friends and I had SO much fun in our little Super Mario group. As opposed to anime, Mario is a lot more well-known to people, so others actually knew who were were. We were super recognizable when it was the three (our Bowser sadly didn’t work out) of us together, so we got a lot of compliments. When I was alone, people thought I was just a generic princess/not any particular princess, but that was fine. I loved Disney princesses, so I didn’t mind just looking cute and wearing a crown.

I don’t remember what we did after school that year. Knowing us, we probably just hung out together? Maybe got some dinner??? I truly don’t remember lmao.

Also, on a semi-related note, for this Halloween specifically, I remember my senior year all got together to do a mass group costume. Not everyone wanted to do it, but I’d say about maybe 75% of my senior class was a white sheet ghost that year lmao. It was a cute, funny idea and it was really amusing to see so many people just sitting wrapped up in white sheets in class.

I no longer have the Leg Avenue costume in my possession. Several years after I wore it, I wound up passing down the dress to a younger cousin, who actually ended up using it for a Princess Bubblegum Halloween costume. I kept the white gloves from the costume, just because you never know when you’ll need elbow length white gloves for another cosplay (👀 we’ll put a pin in this for now). I also kept the plastic crown from this set, mostly because I wanted to keep using it and I guess for nostalgia/as a souvenir (👀 we shall also put a pin in this for later). Uhhh, I don’t remember what happened to that Peggy Sue wig. I probably let it go really early though.

I had a lot of fun as Princess Peach and I loved recollecting the memories from this day. As much as I loved being her though, I don’t really see myself ever cosplaying her again. She doesn’t really fit into any of the types of characters I cosplay nowadays. Doing these past few entries made me realize that I did a pink-themed cosplay during my last three years of high school lol. My next entry shall commence my cosplay journey throughout my late high school/college years era, which I’m excited to cover. The next costume was a very formative one for me and I’m really looking forward to sharing it.

Java's Cosplay Timeline: Shampoo, Ranma 1/2 (2004)

August 26, 2021

Ooooooof, soooo, hey y’all. It’s been a while lmao. I totally fell off working on this blog. My bad :< I will say though, things are looking better??? now that I have been vaccinated though. I’ve been able to go out more and spend some much needed time out of the house and with friends that I’ve missed. I hope things are looking up for everyone. We’re not out of the woods yet, but at least things are on the way to hopefully being even better. Anyway, back to this blog. If you notice in the drawing below, I had actually completed the artwork for this entry back in May. I just never got to sitting down and writing this lol. But let’s just get on with it now that we’re here. This entry is going to cover the third cosplay I ever did, for Halloween 2004.

Character: Shampoo, Ranma 1/2
Age: Sweet 16~! Had a fun party a couple weeks before~
-Junior in high school
First Worn To: Halloween 2004
Also Worn To: None
Why Them?: I was very into InuYasha and Ranma 1/2 at the time. I had always thought Shampoo was soooo cuuute and I loved her! I thought her Chinese Amazon outfit in particular was a feasible outfit for me to do then because I already had some stuff that I could use at home.
Thoughts: I LOVED being Shampoo! I loved getting to talk as her with my friends. Again, no one knew who the hell I was, which I expected. But I was just having such a great time getting the chance to cosplay again.
Status: Retired
Would I Cosplay Again?: Oh, ABSOLUTELY. I’d want to do a different outfit though and obviously with a new wig with accurate classic Rumiko Takahashi-volume.

As I said in my previous entry on Sango, there were no nearby conventions that I was aware of at the time, so Halloween was my rare chance to get into cosplay again. Though, as opposed to our InuYasha group cosplay last Halloween, my friends and I were all different things this year. I was really into Rumiko Takahashi’s other work, Ranma 1/2 at the time too, so I decided to be Shampoo. I thought she was so cute and was really excited to be her.

This is actually the image that I printed out and brought with me to school that day. Like with Sango, this is what I showed to people whenever they asked what I was dressed up as.

Shampoo has a ton of outfits on the show, but I decided to go for her Chinese Amazon outfit featured to the right. To me, it seemed the most possible to make using items that I already had in my house/could easily buy and alter.

Shampoo was the first costume I ever had to wear a wig for and that part was very exciting for me at the time! I believe the wig was listed as a “mermaid wig” from a Halloween store. Obviously, a cheap Halloween wig clearly doesn’t have the volume or length to pull off the signature Rumiko Takahashi-esque voluminous, thick hair, but I was just happy to have the purple hair. On Halloween morning, my mom somehow played around with the wig and somehow...folded??? some of the hair to sort of mimic Shampoo’s hair buns.

I was looking at this picture as reference when drawing her, which is why her pants are a light pink in my illustration lol.

There isn’t that much to really go into in regards to the construction of the costume. Everything stated in the artwork above is pretty much all the work that went into it. I don’t really remember, but she sounds like she was less stressful to bring together than Sango was. Some things like the color of her shoes, sleeve cuffs, her waist sashes, and especially her hair were not totally accurate to my references, but that was okay. All the pieces gathered together as a whole was similar enough for me and I was really happy with it. I still felt really cute wearing it. I didn’t have the weapons she was holding in the image above, but I did have a plastic sword with me, as she’s sometimes seen with a sword as well.

Just like with Sango the year before, absolutely no one at school knew what I was supposed to be dressed as. I wasn’t surprised at this either. Anime and manga still wasn’t so mainstream back then. I didn’t mind though. My friends and I knew who I was and I was just very happy to be cosplaying again. I don’t quite remember what else I wound up doing for the rest of that Halloween. I probably hung out with my friends in costumes after school I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This was my go-to pose for Shampoo when taking pictures of her. This was out in my front yard, after school.

And now finally, here are the very few photos of my Shampoo costume from Halloween 2004. The full body one was taken by my mom, out in our front yard. The one from the waist up was taken by my friend KabukiRoad. If I remember correctly, that photo miiiiight have been taken with a fucking disposable camera. So she sent me a photo of a physical photo I think. I’m so glad she had that pic though. These are the only photos I’m aware of that exist of this costume.

This is definitely a better look at the styling my mom managed to do to mimic Shampoo’s hair.

She was, I believe the first hint of my “Get Into Character” button developing, in that, Shampoo was the first costume that I had a go-to pose for when a photo was being taken. I remember the pose so distinctly, that I knew I just HAD to draw it in the artwork for this entry. Also, one of the features about Shampoo that I loved was her cute, little high pitched voice that they gave her in the English dub. And high school Java was AAAAAALLLLL about being cute and ~*KAWAII*~ at the time. I would put on the voice all the time, and the chance to get to do the voice while being dressed as Shampoo was REALLY fun for me. Lol I would only do the Shampoo voice amongst my friends, don’t worry lmao. I didn’t use it during classes and when talking with teachers.

And that wraps up another Cosplay Throwback Thursday~ Sorry this was so late! D: I’ll definitely try my best not to delay between entries again. Writing this reminded me how fun this series was though and I’m motivated to pick it up regularly again. I’m quite excited for the next costume on the timeline~ Thanks again for reading <3

Java's Cosplay Timeline: Sango, InuYasha (2003)

March 11, 2021

Hewwo~ It’s another Throwback Thursday, so I bring y’all another post from my Cosplay Timeline~ Thank you to everyone who read my last entry in this series if you did~ Seeing as this will be a series, I did create a tag for it, so if anyone would like to read up on any past entries, you can do so via the tag “Cosplay Timeline”. Today we’ll be going into my second ever cosplay, also done in 2003.

Character: Sango, InuYasha
Age: Freshly turned 15 a couple weeks before!
-Sophomore in high school
First Worn To: Halloween 2003
Also Worn To: None
Why Them?: My friends and I wanted to cosplay as an InuYasha group for Halloween at school~ I loved Sango’s design the best. My signature hairstyle during high school was a high ponytail, so I claimed Sango immediately.
Thoughts: I LOVED being Sango. I have always loved her demon exterminator design since I first saw it. It just looks so cool. I felt pretty badass in this outfit, not gonna lie. Like Rem, no one at school recognized what I was supposed to be dressed as, but I didn’t care and was simply just really happy to be cosplaying again.
Status: Retired (this particular iteration anyway)
Would I Cosplay Again?: ABSOLUTELY. I still love this outfit of hers to this day and I’d love to take her on again now that I have the skills, knowledge, and resources to make her properly. I’d even try to do the boomerang and her mask this time too.

After Big Apple Anime Fest in the summer of 2003, I was officially bitten by the cosplay bug and couldn’t wait to do it again. However, as I said in my previous post, BAAF wound up getting cancelled. Because of that, my convention going would kind of fall to the back burner for the next couple years. That left me with just Halloween as my opportunity to cosplay. Of course, many years later, I now realize that I could have easily just cosplayed without an occasion, but little 15 year old me didn’t think of that at the time. When I was in high school, we were allowed to dress up for Halloween, as long as we paid dues of a couple of dollars to do so. The money went to either charity or as funding for the school. I don’t remember lol. Still riding from that high of our first con a few months before, my friends and I wanted to do another group cosplay. We were all really into InuYasha then and this time we had more time (something like a month or two) to prepare in advance.

I tackled the “bodysuit” first. I already had the leggings in my closet. I got my dad to drive me around one weekend to pick up some supplies, where I bought a black turtleneck and sheets of felt. I quickly did some arts and crafts and the “bodysuit” was done. Lol I don’t know how apparent it is in my drawing above, but I purposely made all the black parts of my outfit sliiiiightly different shades of black from each other to illustrate the mishmosh of different pieces that came together for this costume. It was important for me that even though the “bodysuit” was made up of separate pieces, I had to get all the black fabrics to at least look relatively uniform. Lmao even back then, I was a stickler for the little details.

The part of the costume that really eluded me was all of the pink armor bits. I distinctly remember doing a google search to see how other Sango cosplayers pulled it off. I remember one person actually used metal…caps? Parts??? Knobs??? I don’t remember exactly what they used, but I remember that they were actually made out of metal or something and from a hardware store like Home Depot. As a note, this was also back in the day when cosplay was more of a niche hobby and there weren’t companies and corporations catering to it like they do now. We really had to make do back then lmao. Nowadays, those armor pieces would absolutely be made out of EVA foam and/or worbla or something. In the end, my mom thought the idea was ridiculous when I asked her to drive me to the hardware store, literally the day before Halloween. I legit have no idea why I saved that part for the day before. Even despite having decided to do this costume way in advance, my mom and I were still up late working on parts of the costume the night before I was supposed to wear it. And so my first taste of “con crunch” begins lmaooooo. My mom has actually always been pretty crafty, so she ultimately came up with the idea of using shoulder pads covered in fabric to make into the armor bits. She also came up with the idea to use satin dinner napkins as Sango’s front panel. She spent a few hours folding and handsewing my “armor” so I could wear them the next day at school. I had no experience with sewing yet at that point, though if I had, I most likely would have been the one staying up on a school night to finish my costume lol. I don’t remember if I was bummed about the color inaccuracy at the time, but at that point I was just glad to have a costume to wear lol. And once everything was on, I thought I looked hella cool anyway.

I actually printed out this picture of her to bring with me to school to just show whoever asked me what I was dressed as. I figured it’d be easier than full on explaining who she was lmao.

Anime wasn’t so mainstream and easily accessible back then, so absolutely no one at school recognized what me and my friends were dressed as. It was totally expected though and I didn’t care. I was just super happy to be cosplaying again. Although, according to two of my friends from that group, a single girl actually recognized them as InuYasha and Sesshoumaru. My school bus driver thought I was dressed as a ninja lmao.

Overall, it was a very fun day. The school day functioned pretty much as normal, save for the fact that everyone was dressed up. My friends and I hung out together after school. They had changed out of their costumes to wear something more comfortable. I stayed in Sango, since she was pretty easy to wear. My sister was actually my group’s Shippo. But seeing as she was still a middle school student at the time, she was not able to hang out with all of us in costume. But she wandered around with me as Shippo and Sango that night. I don’t really remember what we did besides wander around that Halloween night. I think we got pizza for dinner? We probably went to one of our houses and watched anime or something lol.

I hadn’t mastered the art of posing just yet here lol. My “get into character” button definitely was not active yet, for sure.

And that wraps up this entry~ Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far~ I hope you’re enjoying this series so far as much as I am. It’s been super fun to look back on these memories. I think I’m starting to develop a groove with these. Hopefully, I’ll be able to post another one this month, depending on how fast I can draw lmao. Expect more Rumiko Takahashi rep soon lol~

And now for some of the very few photos I have of this outfit! I literally had to dig through several old family albums to find these. I’m amazed I even found them to be honest. I definitely had to up the brightness on these a bit though so you could actually see the ding dang costume. The photos are still a smidge dark lol. I am SO sad that I don’t have any pictures to show of my whole group in this entry though. I think maybe my friends might have photos from this day??? I think I captured the “awkwardly standing in the living room” energy pretty well in my illustration lmao. I definitely had the photo to the left in mind as I was sketching. Also I guess I didn’t wear gloves after all, like I thought. And the photo was probably taken before I slipped the red bands around my shoes I guess. The illustration for this entry was one of the ones that I had long since finished the sketch for and was only able to finally render recently. I am pretty impressed with myself at how much of the details I was able to remember though.

My little godsister came by to trick or treat at my house ;v;

Java's Cosplay Timeline: Intro & Rem Savarem, Trigun (2003)

February 25, 2021

Hello y’all. It certainly has been a long while since I last posted here. I had really, really wanted to post in this blog regularly last year, but…lol we all know how 2020 went. 2020 totally sucked away my drive and made me very unmotivated to do anything remotely creative, even though I really, really wanted to do something with all the free time I have now. Within the last several months though, my creative juices have been slowly coming back to me and I’m starting to get back into the groove of things. I haven’t really sewn anything new yet, but I hope to get back to it soon. I’ve started to pick up on drawing again. I’m also ready to start posting here again.

Things are still not great yet, but we are in a new year. With this new year, I’m happy to introduce a new series to my blog here—Java’s Cosplay Timeline. It will be a series of blog entries in which I will be dedicating an entry for EVERY. SINGLE. COSPLAY I’ve ever done thus far since I started. I started cosplaying all the way back in 2003, which basically means that I have been cosplaying for literally a little over half of my lifetime. Also lol hi guys. I’m hella old. This series of blog entries are an effort for me to post art more frequently, practice drawing full bodies, just draw in general, and to get better at drawing and coloring digitally. It’ll also be a motivator for me to post here more frequently as well. This blog series was actually an idea I had back in maybe 2018/2019 or so??? I had originally wanted to debut this series in 2020 to signify a new decade, but..lol 2020. I’d been sitting on the few first drawings of this series for a while now, but it wasn’t until very recently (i.e. this year) that I had finally been able to render the very first one in a way that I liked.

Anyway, intro aside, let’s get this blog series started with my very first cosplay.

Character: Rem Savarem, Trigun
Age: 14, going on 15
-Summer before sophomore year of high school
First Worn To: Big Apple Anime Fest 2003
-Bby’s 1st con. No longer exists.
Also Worn To: None
Why Them?: My friends and I wanted to go to our first anime con and thought it would be fun to dress up as a group. Trigun was a show that we were all into and thought we could realistically get the costumes done in a really short amount of time (i.e. literal days I think), as opposed to outfits from InuYasha or Rurouni Kenshin or Sailor Moon or whatever else we were into during that time. I was actually originally supposed to be Meryl Strife. My sister was going to be Kuroneko-sama, the little black cat that shows up in every episode of the anime. I don’t exactly remember what happened, but somehow, my sister suddenly didn’t want to be the cat anymore and chose to be Meryl instead, which left me having to switch characters at the last minute (literally like, the day before). Rem was the easiest choice since her outfit was completely attainable at such short notice.
Thoughts: Bby’s 1st Con and Bby’s 1st Cosplay. I had only heard of cons and seen pictures of people in cosplay online. I remember thinking that it was SO COOL to dress up as anime characters and I really, really wanted to try it out too. I especially loved seeing when groups of friends would all cosplay from the same series together as a group. I was so caught up in the excitement of my first cosplay and my first convention. I was just so happy to be doing it. This was in ye olde times, back when I didn’t care so much about accuracy or looking particularly great/presentable for photos. I didn’t care that I was pretty much in just normal, everyday clothes. I didn’t care that I would be recognized as also cosplaying only because I was standing with my friends who were more recognizable as the characters of Trigun. I rarely got asked for photos, but that was okay because I was just happy to be there.
Status: Retired
Would I Cosplay Again?: Most likely no, to be honest. If I were to cosplay Trigun again, maybe I’d actually cosplay Meryl like I had originally wanted to lol.

As soon as I found out there would be a con in NYC in the summer of 2003, I jumped at the chance and told my friends about it. We were all really excited to go. We were all quite young, so we did have to have a chaperone for this trip. It was a little awkward, not gonna lie, but we all just really wanted to go, so we dealt with it. This chaperone was also our mode of transportation to the con since none of us really knew how to take the train into the city back then. Thinking back on it now, I honestly don’t know what we would have done with ourselves had we gone alone lmao. We were all definitely in over our heads a little bit I think. We didn’t even know what panels were. We didn’t know there were screenings. We didn’t know that guests were a thing. We didn’t even know that a con schedule existed, for that matter. We were just very happy to be there. I think we were all just so starstruck by the mere existence of this type of event; where everyone else was an anime and manga fan just like you. Where people wanted to dress up as their favorite characters. I can’t recall if there was an artist alley at this con, let alone the fact that we most likely had no idea what the hell an artist alley even was at the time, but we were amaaaazed at the dealer room. You mean we could just BUY anime stuff????? Anime/manga wasn’t so mainstream at the time and therefore the merch and VHS (yes, VHS.) or DVDs were not so easily accessible as they all are now. So seeing all this product available blew our minds back then. I was given an allowance of $60….FOR THE DAY. Lmaoooo. I think we all know that that amount DOES NOT LAST. I blew a big chunk of it on ONE (1) item in the dealer room—an InuYasha plush drawstring purse. The rest of the money I had was then spent on lunch at Sbarro’s, which we went to after spending a mere few hours at the con. Lol again, we had no idea that there were panels or events at conventions, so we had no plan for the day. I think we knew that the con was a whole weekend event, but we were only able to afford/make it for one (half) day. I don’t remember much of what we did. We spent the majority of it wandering around perhaps. ALTHOUGH, as I’m writing out this entry, I am slowly remembering a particular moment early on in the day, where we came across a Kenshin Himura cosplayer WHO HAD NO X-SHAPED SCAR ON HIS FACE. We dutifully pointed it out to him, for him to reply with “…...DOES ANYONE HAVE ANY LIPSTICK OR SOMETHING?”

THESE ARE SCANS/PHOTOS OF PHYSICAL PHOTOS, CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? Many thanks to my friend, KabukiRoad (our group’s Wolfwood), for texting these to me out of the blue last year. She had come across them while doing some pandemic spring cleaning lmao. …Huh. My hair’s actually shorter than I remember it being then. Also, I guess I was wearing sneakers that day. I figured as much, since we were doing lots of walking. And I guess I didn’t tuck the shirt in after all. Lol as I said earlier, the lineart for the drawing above had actually been done back in 2019 I think. I didn’t see these photos until last year lol.

For a Trigun group though, we sure DID lack a Vash the Stampede of all characters. Way to have everyone except the literal MAIN CHARACTER. We even brought a box of donuts with us to the con to fucking give to a Vash cosplayer if we ever saw one. Fortunately, we actually came across a single Vash cosplayer (with a Wolfwood) during our few hours at the con. They loved the donuts. We had our Meryl and Millie give the box to them a la Insurance Girls style. I think I remember the Vash cosplayer pretending to tear up when they saw me as Rem lol. We were utterly ECSTATIC over this interaction. It definitely made our day. Afterwards, we parted ways to go enjoy the con. We did see them again in passing some time later on in the day; they and their Wolfwood still eating the box of donuts lol.

BAAF 2003 Con badge

This con was unique in that it offered “half day” tickets??? Like…you could only go for half the day? Idk how you would even track how long someone had been there. There must’ve been a sticker or something to indicate what time the person bought the badge.

The aforementioned InuYasha plush pouch. Lol I had to google search for this image, as I have no idea where the hell mine is now (I actually also managed to find an eBay listing for one). I definitely still have it somewhere in my house. I used mine to carry around my cell phone (lol back when cell phones weren’t so fucking big). I’d tie the strings onto a belt loop on my school uniform skirt or my pants, so I’d always have my phone on me at my waist.

Big Apple Anime Fest no longer exists. After our first experience with a convention, I had really wanted to go to another one. I was super hoping to make it to BAAF again the next summer. But in 2004, I was bummed when I heard that it would not be returning to that venue. Instead, the venue would be hosting the Republican National Convention or something that year. I remember being particularly salty about it; not because of them being Republican, but because they canceled my anime convention lmaoooo. BAAF never happened again after that. Not totally sure what happened there. Maybe it fell on hard times and was just never able to recover. I’ll always remember it though.

And that’s it~! If you’ve read through this whole thing, thank you! Thank you for taking this trip down memory lane with me. I think it’s gonna be really fun to revisit old memories and fun times. I think it’ll also be interesting to look back on the convention and cosplay world throughout the years. It’s definitely grown and changed a lot. I don’t know when my next entry will be, but I hope to post at least one a month. Ideally, I’d like to post once a week, since I’ve got A TON of costumes to go through. Maybe this will inspire me to learn how to draw faster too lol.