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 schoolFirst 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