Sakura Con 2013: Our Top Cosplay Picks
written by Justin Prince (@prince_justin)
Sakura Con has come to a close, another year and our group had another epic Easter weekend of photos and cosplay. We’ve mentioned it before but something that the anime cons have in absolute droves are cosplayers. Going to other cons like San Diego Comic Con or even our local Emerald City Comic Con, cosplay isn’t really that big of a deal as it is at the anime convention, it could be the fact that the former two are 10 times/twice the size (respectively) of Sakura Con, but when it comes to cosplayers per square feet, Sakura Con has that on lock. This was the first year we visited Sakura Con as Lifted Geek and we wanted to fully promote our site, one thing we did was discuss the 9 best costumes each day… some of you may be asking “why the 9 best? Top 10 too much and top 5 not enough?” Well child, it’s because we are Lifted Geek and we do things differently… also, 9 square photos fit well together on the Diptic app (the app we used to combine the photos and post to Instagram). Anyway! Check out the following photos and enjoy, these are the costumes we felt were the best each day at the con.
Friday Day One
Day one was a pretty epic day, I myself dressed up as Kuroko Tetsuya from Kuroko no Basuke and Lillian dressed up as Irisviel von Einzbern from Fate/Zero. It was a nice day out so I was super comfy in my basketball jersey… Lil was getting a bit hot under that heavy jacket. Anyway! On to costumes other than ours! A few notable costumes we came across was a gorgeous recreation of Yukari’s blue dress from Paradise Kiss, the pattern on the dress was spot on and the cosplayer herself looked absolutely stunning in it. This guy who operates under the Fantasy Armor by Davence made this awesome Blade Arm from Prototype 2, you should all check out his Facebook page and like him and also hit his blog. Another one that really caught me by the nostalgia was a guy dressed up as the cheesy Mega Man from the original NES box art, I remember the days when video game box was so far removed from what we can expect from a game, then again… how else could they justify a generation of side scrolling platformers without snappy box art? There was a lot of gorgeousness from the first day, check our gallery for the entirety of day one’s top 9.
Saturday Day Two
Saturday is always the BIG day at Sakura Con, it generally draws the largest single day crowd and if you cosplay and you want to be seen, this is the day to do it. The stand out costume from our Saturday top 9 was this gent I met while Aniplex was holding a special cosplay event at their booth. He cosplayed as Heathcliff from Sword Art Online and if you’ve seen the show (in fact if you haven’t go watch it now, it’s on Crunchyroll!) you know just how intricate his armor is. The minute I saw his costume I was like jaw dropped OMGness. It looked super awesome and it was a privilege to take a photo of him wearing it, guy’s name is Erik and you should totally check out his Deviant Art page. At ECCC I saw an awesome Doctor Doom and Batman, and these two cosplayers were also present as Sakura Con, sure it isn’t anime but Sakura Con has such a wide swathe of fandoms from Doctor Who to Adventure Time… it just fits. I met this pair from Canada out in the courtyard, the one that really caught my eye was this awesome cosplayer dressed as LSP (Lumpy Space Princess) from the Adventure Time episode “The Creeps”. Even her facial expression in the photo was spot on; I was absolutely enamored by it. It seemed like our day two picks rarely had much to do with anime at all… mostly being gaming and comics related, speaking about comics, I met this lovely lady Elicia cosplaying as a pretty fantastic Lady Loki. Her cape especially was very well made, I love it when cosplayers pay attention to the little details that bring an outfit together, overall she looked absolutely fantastic, I couldn’t get over it. Overall, Saturday was another epic day of cosplay.
Sunday Day Three
Sunday is generally a slower day, it’s like most folk are either off doing Easter stuff or just came for Friday/Saturday. Either way, Sunday at the con tends to be a quieter day of last minute shopping and saying goodbye for another year. Cosplay was still pretty fantastic though. Nothing says empowerment like the Hawkeye Initiative (here, let me Google that for ya) and that was exactly why we chose a H.I. Hawkeye as one of our best. A very unique take on The Legend of Zelda found Princess Zelda stepping into an Ancient Edo period version of Hyrule, I ran into her (complete with a Ronin Link) walking the merch hall and I had to stop them for a photo, I loved the color choices she used for her Zelda-hime and while the interpretation may be far from the source material, she was obviously Zelda. Both Lil and I agree that our favorite of the day was an epic Taffyta Muttonfudge from Wreck-it-Ralph, had had it down to the pose and even the runny eyeliner. We couldn’t help it but fanboy/fangirl over her portrayal, it was absolute cosplay perfection. Also, I gotta add that it's nice to see Final Fantasy X Rikku cosplayers as opposed to the seemingly more popular X-2 iteration.
Overall, it was super hard to pick from all the costumes we shot the entire weekend, check out our Facebook page for all the galleries (in fact, if you haven’t liked us yet, you probably should… because… awesome). Lil and I talked it over and we wanted to crown a BEST OF amongst all 27 picks for the weekend. We didn’t get her name and we hope she finds our Facebook page (or if someone knows her, point her our way) because the lovely lady who dressed up as Taffyta Muttonfudge on the last day is our top pick for the weekend! Her costume was amazing and her attention to all the little details from her pose in the photo to the fact she chose to portray Taffyta “post-big-cry” left us in stitches. She edges out Erik as Heathcliff from Sword Art Online just barely, it was a photo finish but we got to hand it to her. Awesome job!
Also, I got to hand it to everyone who cosplayed this entire weekend, whether you made it or bought it, whether it was screen accurate or made out of cardboard… we had fun right? And that’s what matters most, be well and we’ll catch you all next year.
ed note: for more photos, don't forget to like/subscribe on our Facebook page, we have more galleries there and it's the main hub to stay dialed in on LG.
