Morning Musume's Kago Ai from Sakura Mankai

This was SoA's first major cosplay project. It took her about 3 weeks of solid dawn until dusk (and often times more) to get all of these pink monstrocities done. This actually started as Kristi, Liana, and SoA wanting to go to Ohayocon. Shortly thereafter, SoA was introduced to the song and the PV of Sakura Mankai, which she fell in love with. Kristi and Liana were then able to convince her that going as a group would be an amazingly fun thing, so she volunteered to take charge of the sewing. The trio was soon joined by four more to form the full Sakura Gumi group: SoA as Kago Ai, Kristi as Takahashi Ai, Liana as Hitomi Yoshizawa, Shuu as Yaguchi Mari, Windy as Niigaki Risa, Kanappe as Asami Konno, and Alex as Kanmei Eri.

The costumes were definately a team effort. While SoA patterened everything, she only sewed the tops and skirts. This was a massive task in and of itself, however. Liana and Alex took on the jobs of sewing the obi and the legwarmers. Meanwhile, Kristi painstakingly painted all of the fabric with sakura flowers, made the hair ascessories, and painted all the fans. Windy undertook the task of cutting out and sparklifying the little felt sakura petals that decorated all the outfits. It was the hope that everything would be done before the con, however that did not come out quite so. There was a little bit of last-minute painting, lots of sewing stripes on legwarmers, as well as putting the little felt petals onthe fabric.

The group spent the rest of their time learning and practicing the dance, then performing it at the masquerade. Although they didn't win anything, they mostly had a great time and particularily enjoyed posing for pictures.

This whole thing over, SoA has been driven slightly mad by the sheer pinkness of it all and vows not to sew anything quite so pink for a while, despite how much she loves her cute Kago ouftit.