Cardiff Anime & Gaming Con 2021

Hey Skwad!

So after a whole global pandemic, @mollyyy.jayne and I were ready to take the cosplay world by storm! As anime lovers and wanting to try something new now that I'd completed every single outfit Harley wears in Suicide Squad (2016), we agreed to cosplay Sailor Venus and Sailor Moon from Sailor Moon, respectively!

My cosplay came in on August 27th, quite late at night, so here's a video of me trying everything on super quietly so as to not wake anyone up! The wig wasn't here yet so I attempted achieving her moon buns in my own hair, something I'd learnt by wearing my hair in this style every day to school back when I was 14.

We did a cosplay test together once both the wigs had arrived a few days before the con, practised our poses and worked on our routine for the cosplay competition!

As it was also Molly's birthday, I bought her a fancier version of Sailor Venus' hair bow and a bag that resembled Sailor Venus' cat, Artemis, so that she'd be able to store her essentials both fashionably, but also in a way which meant she wouldn't have to take off her bag every time we were stopped for photos (which was a lot!) and it genuinely did just become another part of the cosplay! For myself, I have a cat bag that I've owned forever, which resembles Sailor Moon's cat, Luna, so don't you worry! Here are some photos we took during the cos-test (as you can see I had only finished styling half my wig 😅):

It was so nice to have a much more chilled con, where I did not feel the pressure to be everywhere at once. I made a promise to myself going into this con not to take or ask for photos, unless prompted, with the expectation never to see what I looked like in them. Something I've noticed within the cosplay community is the increasing professionalization of our hobby resulting in ever-growing stress levels and cons becoming a networking event. A series of photoshoots one after another in a bid to create and put out the most amount of content possible in order to grow a following. It genuinely sucks all fun out of the experience. And is something I refuse to participate in going forward.

We also watched, and even participated! (pictures below), in the lipsync battle where we heard PSY's Gangnam Style, a song I personally haven't heard since its release in 2012 and view with the virality and meme-ability as being 'rick-rolled'. We also signed up to participate in the cosplay competition, but unfortunately, our cosplays broke after only 1 day of wearing them!! :(

While the actual base dress was mostly fine, there were some holes in the armpit region as well and in the gloves, if I remember rightly the straps on Molly's shoes went, not to mention my wand shattered into a million little pieces (Ok, maybe not that many), and needed to be hot-glued at the con to survive the rest of the day! Moreover, the gems on my broach just straight up fell off and even before we arrived at the convention one of the buns of my wig went walkies and got run over by a car, and if it wasn't for Molly's keen eye I never would have noticed (honestly, the wig was that heavy and actually made up of 5 pieces that I couldn't actually tell you if got any lighter). Not forgetting how many times my arms actually got stuck in the wig but that's my own clumsiness for you. I did have a much more realistic necklace it was a much darker red than my boots, bows and gloves and so was too obviously different to wear. Lastly, both Sailor Venus and Moon wear tiaras, yet (and we're both under 5'2" and quite small figured) we couldn't get them to fit either of us! So how tiny the models on the website we bought them off must be, I don't know!