First Worn at AnimeDetour 2005

These suits of armor were a collaborative effort between friend and fellow cosplayer Grandis and myself. (We had decided that, since the rest of the Utena canon of characters and outfits had been done to death, that we had to do something special to show our love of the series. So we decided to make the suits of armor worn by Utena and Anthy in the opening credits.)

The most difficult aspect of the costume involved our getting together to work on it. (Since Grandis is a prof who only had a few days over Christmas vacation to work on our project, that was the time we had to choose for our collaboration. I agreed to do all the travelling and she agreed to give me free room and board in return.)

The suits were constructed using my foam and styrene plastic method of armormaking. Our first ask was to create the patterns for the breastplates, which we did by draping tagboard over our bodies, bending it and marking off where our arms, shoulders, and chest darts should be. Once construction of the breastplates was finished, we created the rounded shoulder pauldrons (which we made using 10" round plastic Christmas ornaments.) We attached the shoulder pauldrons to the breastplates by using laces. In all, we used styrene, foam, and rounded plastic to create the breastplates, shoulder pauldrons, elbow cops, knee cops, shoes, wrist cuffs and neck cuffs. The rest of the costume (the bodysuit) was made from form-fitting spandex. Grandis was supposed to be in charge of all of the sewing for the project, but we were unable to locate any spandex in any of the local fabric stores during the course of my visit. It wasn't until a few weeks after I had gone home that Grandis was able to find some spandex in an online shop that had the right color and stretch, which she sent to me. She made her own bodysuit and I made mine (and considering it was the first time I had ever pulled off anything unitard-y in nature, I think I did a pretty good job.) I did most of the construction of the armor (although Grandis gave it a very valiant try and she managed to pull off a few of her own pieces. She also did most of the painting for her armor as well.)

I created the props (since I had more free time and more experience with styrene as a medium.) The black lance that Grandis(Utena) holds I made using a plastic stadium horn, styrene, foam and a broom handle. The rose banner that I (Anthy) hold I made of fabric, a length of gold cord, tassels, fringe, a wooden dowel, and two broom handles connected together at the middle. (The broom handles each had a handy hook at one of their ends. I covered up one of the hooks and I painted the other gold. I then hung the cord for the fabric banner from the golden hook and it stayed quite well.)

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