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 schoolFirst 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;