WHO DA MAN?!?

It's that time again, and this time I'd like to introduce all of you to my favorite... ok one of my favorite Magician Arcana goofballs. That's right, it's time for Jinpei Iori!

Junpei was actually my second Persona 3 cosplay, but my first one was incredibly difficult to wear and therefore not worth keeping around, even though it was pretty cool. I am, of course, referring to Thanatos, which I wore a total of once: Ohayocon 20..somethng

What's most frustrating is that I totally forgot to bring his gloves and his sword, so the only time he has and will ever be worn he wasn't even complete *FAIL*

But this did prompt me to do a new Persona 3 cosplay and I knew it would have to be one of the humans because the personas are just too freaking ostentatious to make for easy cosplay and I knew I'd want to wear it more than just once as I'm totally in love with this game.

It came down two three characters: Akihiko, Junpei, and Jin. Jin was a little too obscure, and while I generally enjoyed his character I wasn't overly fond of him. Akihiko is awesome, and I may end up cosplaying him in the future, but Junpei was one of my favorite characters and he's a total goon so naturally I went with him.

The costume itself was relatively easy to put together, he wears a regular button-down shirt, dress pants, and black shoes. The only thing I really had to construct was the school uniform jacket, which I patterned off a jacket I got at the thrift store (thrift stores are wonderful, beautiful places). There was the hat too, but I just had to make the little insignia and attach it to a plain hat, which wasn't all that exciting or strenuous.

Then came my favorite part, of course, the props! The evoker was fun to make, though it was still quite early in my career making props so it took a long time and a lot of trial-and-error. Nevertheless I think it came out quite well.

I also decided I wanted to make a little Hermes to carry around with me cause I really like Hermes's design. Unfortunately it didn't translate all that well into pictures but he is pretty cute.

I debuted Junpei at Colossalcon 2003 and the Dark Hour photoshoot was one of the most ridiculous and fantastic photoshoots I've done. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised that the Persona fandom would be so ridiculous but it was definitely an experience to remember. There was another Junpei cosplayer there that fit his personality perfectly and actually helped me out quite a bit when I cosplay him just to remind me to loosen up and be a goofball cause I tend to be a bit too serious when I'm Junpei. Not really sure why. I've definitely gotten that out of my system though :-)

And all of the Dark Hour shoots I've been to since have just gotten more and more ridiculous. I suppose it helps that pretty much everyone comes hammered nowadays, which definitely makes for a hilarious shoot.

One of the coolest things was actually getting some recognition by a group of P3 cosplayers as one of the better Junpeis around . I was invited to do a full Persona 3 group at Youmacon last year and it was awesome. We definitely got more recognition and photos taken because we had a full group. It made me wish I had more opportunity to do big group cosplays like that and just wander around the con getting photos taken. Everyone in the group had spot-on cosplays too so it turned out really well.

Needless to say, I have a lot of fun cosplaying Junpei and I've been really fortunate to have found such awesome cosplayers to chill with. Junpei is definitely staying in an active spot on my cosplay roster for a while yet so you can expect to see more of him to come!

Thanks for checking back folks, and don't forget to send me some questions for my post next week! Later gaters!