Unknown to most people, I actually cosplayed during the third day of Ozine Fest 2011. Why? Well, it’s partially because a friend of mine kept bugging me to do so (You know who you are, heck, I’m posting the pictures because you’re bugging me to do so!), but it’s also for me to go outside of my comfort zone. The comfort zone being inside the four walls of my room. Hard to shake that hikikomori habit off. In any case, amidst a lot of uncertainties and apprehensions, we decided to go for it. How much can go wrong anyway?
A lot actually, but that’s not the point. So we began a few months prior, trying to come up with nice little ideas of how to pull this off. I bargained to my friend that I wouldn’t do this alone, so he had to make this into a group cosplay thing. I’m not good in front of cameras, so there was no way I was going to go solo on this first attempt. After a long time of discussion, we were lazy at actually finalizing stuff, we decided to go for Code Geass. At the very least, you have got to choose a series you love, right?
With a couple of well-meaning ideas but not much concrete plans, we assembled a group of possible cosplayers among our circle of friends. But things soon went sour. We had no idea what we were doing. We had no contacts of tailors and costume-makers. We had no prior experience with making props. None of us had any valuable experience about this anyway. We were pretty much lost people.
We had set for ourselves a date that we want to do this project of ours during Ozine Fest 2011. But it was soon March, and we had not even started with anything. So we decided to simply take a chance at it, and my friend suggested we just go for two persons for our first attempt: me as Lelouch and another friend as C.C.. Safe and canon choices. And so we started with our preparations, hoping that somehow we can make it in time.
But work has an ability to mess around with your plans, and I soon found myself sent out of the country, only to return to the Philippines exactly during Ozine Fest. At this point, I was like, “Oh what the heck, let’s just see where things go.” And true enough, it was one hell of a ride.
Without the two weeks prior to the event available for preparation, I soon found myself with just the Zero costume. I had no helmet nor boots, or even props for that matter, to accompany it. I was unprepared as I set off from home on that day…
And the whirlwind of events took place true enough. My friends and I met up that morning. We made our preparations, with the make-up and all that stuff. We donned our costumes and set our hairs, well, the way they should be. And finally, I was faced with the hardest part I was dreading the most: how the heck am I supposed to pose?
I’m not much of a picture guy. As a kid, I usually ran away from the camera. As an adult, I usually would beg off from it. But now that I’m in this situation, this is something I should at least be ready to do, right? I’ve done a bit of research as to how Lelouch poses, but research doesn’t really weight much without practicing these poses. And oh boy, I had no practice on it whatsoever.
And so there I was, on that day, at my friend’s house, and we were soon called to practice our poses. At the very least we shouldn’t be dumb-founded once we reach Megamall. But man, it was crazy. We really had no idea what to do that it kind of became awkward. We contented ourselves with a few practiced poses since time was running out; it was soon an hour past noon. And so we sped off to face our battlefield.
Everything went by so fast once we reached our destination. A few people asked to take our pictures, and in the process I kept repeating the same set of poses ^_^” I’m at least certain I wouldn’t have gone beyond 10 distinctly different poses. I’m not even sure if I had more than five! Hopefully no one noticed…
I’d guess that my brain went into hibernation that day since I can’t remember much of what happened anymore. I guess it’s a coping mechanism my brain used. Probably…
Overall it was a fun but definitely nerve-wracking experience. It definitely was scary. I’m just thankful I had a face mask that covered the lower half of my face, which I never took down on that day. It’s kind of like a security blanket ^__^
Anyway, the results of what we did…
