Shopping Guide
In the last article, Kazuharu Kina and the other illustrators bounced questions off each other, shouting things like, “I want to draw high school girls!” In this installment, we’ll continue the conversation, focusing on the thoughts and troubles of Alice and Nonomy, two cosplayers who enjoy a great deal of popularity on TOM and elsewhere.
Creator Profiles
Retsuna
Illustrator. Planning to work as a CG designer for a game company starting in April.
Alice
Cosplayer. Outside of cosplaying, works as a model and media personality and has also appeared in TV, films and fashion shows.
Nonomy
A male cosplayer who primarily portrays female characters. A law school student outside of cosplaying. Studying hard to pass the bar exam.
Kazuharu Kina (just Kina below)
Illustrator. Many pieces feature high school girls. Says, “I want to spread the cuteness of high school girls and the beauty of Japanese school uniforms throughout the world.”
Fuumi
Illustrator. Draws light-filled fantasy-like worlds by hand using Copic markers. Has been taking on digital art recently.
atori
Illustrator. Excels at drawing bishōjo.
Kusakabe
Illustrator. Has an established reputation for depicting things found in real life, such as scenery and cities.
Why Nonomy Continues to Crossplay
Kina: I have something I’d actually like to ask Nonomy.
Nonomy: Okay.
Kina: So why... You were saying earlier that in the course of cosplaying, there were times the character you wanted to portray was female, so you would cross-dress for that, but I guess I wanted to ask you why you’ve been able to keep following through with that. Actually, a long time ago...and this connects to what we were just talking about, in high school, it was really...uncomfortable for me not having any girls around, and I struggled with that...and I in all seriousness wished I could become a girl. And so, there was a time when I seriously cross-dressed.
Alice: What! I want to see.
Kina: I’ve thrown all of [the photos] away. I once entered a sort of cross-dressing cosplay contest and somehow won.
Kusakabe: No way!
Kina: I did all the make-up. I’d buy cosmetics and cover up any grayness and facial hair with concealer and such. It makes you pale, doesn’t it? I put it on regularly. I even grew my hair out once.
Nonomy: You grew it out naturally?
Kina: I grew it out naturally. But, one day I just went back to how I was and quit, but you’ve kept on going and are still active, and I wonder what your motivation is to do that.
Nonomy: Well... How I started was, when I was in college, I formed a student group with my friends, and we wanted to do something to stand out at the enrollment ceremony... There were only three of us in the group. We went, “Let’s cross-dress!” and that’s how it started.
Kina: So it was a pretty silly joke.
Nonomy: The idea was that all of us guys would go in really bad drag and be an eyesore. We had no makeup at all and our costumes were like mens 4XL size. Of course, I was actually Marisa 1 from Touhou. I put on the costume and did it. Then, after a year, the group grew to the point that we could take part in the school festival. But, there were only men in the group, so we thought about what a group of guys could do, and came up with a cosplay cafe. In women’s clothes.
Again, we decided to go all out with the ugly factor and do it. In the end, we managed to sell the most out of all the exhibitors in the room.
Kusakabe: That’s amazing!
Nonomy: It was to the point that there were lines up and down the stairs, and that was doing it without even having any makeup on. But, there was a girl there who followed Miss Universe, and she said, “You would be really cute if you put on makeup, so come to Comiket this winter. I’m going to have you do your debut as a cosplayer.” I bought and prepared my costume, but I had someone else do the makeup and then I went to Comiket. I was a bit happy to find that I was pretty well-received. Like, “Wow, this really works.” I still wasn’t doing it seriously then, but I started to feel really shunned at the Touhou doujin circle I was selling for. Looking back on it, it was just that I didn’t have any friends. In cosplay, there’s quite a culture of having fun with your friends and taking pictures up against the wall, and I found out later that if you don’t have friends, no one is going to turn your way. At that time it was like, “That’s so stupid!” So, thinking I was going to take them down, I practiced doing makeup and took it to a higher level...and that was the second phase. As for how I feel doing it now... There aren’t that many people who are coming up behind me, but... I work hard to show those kind of people one potential possibility. I’m not necessarily the best looking guy, and I’m just someone who just faked his way into creating work, but there aren’t that many bold cosplayers who go all in cross-dressing for a photo and depicting a female character with a male body, or perfecting the photo and costume or design. As far as I know, there aren’t that many people doing that who are male. I take some pride at how much I’ve been able to work at it, including my professional work, but without many people like that, I’ve been discriminated against for cross-dressing, I’ve not been let into events, I’ve had horrible things said to me and I’ve had times when I couldn’t get photographed. Doing an entire costume, it’s a lot of trouble to sometimes take a year just to get one photo. You feel inferior. However, for those people... Well, not exactly for them, but in order to leave a ray of hope I’d say, if I work hard at it I can do it, right?
So, I use this expression a lot, but I want to be the first Gundam. Now, there are Unicorn Gundams and all sorts of other Gundams, right? If you line them up chronologically, the newest Gundams are of course the strongest, but those Gundams came about because the first Gundam was there. I’d like to be the first Gundam and leave something behind where people will look back and say, “Now there are plenty of men portraying female characters, but the one who worked for it in the beginning was him.”
Alice: You’re such a pioneer.
Nonomy: With that thought in mind, I do it feeling that I have to keep pushing on with my crossplay.
Alice: That’s so awesome!
The Fans Become Support
Alice: I’m someone who started doing cosplay as a hobby. Then eventually I started getting people’s attention and I was offered various kinds of work. And lately, I haven’t been able to separate my work from my hobby, so what does everyone do about that?
Kina: I think if you can’t sort out your feelings toward them, your downtime ends up becoming work.
Alice: On top of that, when you’re doing cosplay to be photographed, it’s important for cosplayers to maintain the body proportions. But you can’t do anything about your age. So I think the window of time when you can work automatically becomes shorter than for an illustrator. So sometimes I feel a sense of urgency.
Nonomy: If I may say something as a fellow cosplayer. I also feel a sense of urgency like you do about my body going into decline and such. Because of that, I feel like I have to keep putting out good work at this moment.
And one way I keep up my motivation is by remembering my fans. I think whenever you can’t tell how good you are, it gives you emotional support to think about your fans who accept your style and work.
Alice: Thank you. That’s helpful! I have to write that down before I forget!
^1^ Full name: Marisa Kirisame. She is a character who appears in Touhou Project, a series produced by doujin circle Team Shanghai Alice. She is a witch.
This is a Tokyo Otaku Mode original article.
