cosplay – no-face and friends

A Sweet Maid is Sweeter with a Deadly Weapon

In the last year, I’ve seen three new anime that have gotten me all lit up, and one of those is Re:Zero. It got plenty of other people lit up too, and I’ve seen about a million cosplays of Rem, the character lauded as the show’s “best girl.” BUT what I have not seen a lot of is Rem with her flail. Because a sweet maid is sweeter with a deadly weapon, I thought I’d post a tutorial for Rem’s flail. It’s my first tutorial so bear with me.

You’ll need:

a styrofoam ball and five styrofoam cones from the craft store
a piece of plastic chain (the length is up to you–I got mine off Amazon. Pictures below!)
a 3/4 in dowel
black and rose gold acrylic paint
black spray paint
a screw eye
a drill (though you could probably fight through using a hammer and nail instead)
a handsaw
hot glue and glue gun
mod podge and (if you want) clear plasti-dip

STEP 1: So you have your styrofoam ball right? Mark it so that on one side you have a spot for the chain to attach, and directly on the other side mark the “top” spike. Or be like me and just make a bunch of random ass circles without planning at all.

But seriously, Kushina is a bad bitch

I cosplayed Kushina Uzumaki (Naruto’s mother) this past weekend. I don’t get a lot of character recognition when I do this cosplay, because I’m not wearing the clothes that Kushina is depicted in for most of the show, a white blouse and a green jumper. But that’s okay. Because I need to play this mama like the badass that she is—and if that’s expressed in terms of clothing, then you gotta lose the jumper.

I wear Kushina in the clothing she wears as jounin, a member of the Leaf Village ninja ranks. That is, I wear her dressed as a soldier, which is what she was before she got pregnant. We all know that when it comes to feminism, Naruto is not especially progressive, and is sometimes downright infuriating. The cool thing about cosplay, and about fan art in general, is that we can sort of re-frame these female characters and cast light on their more powerful, independent aspects. And if we’re talking about power, Kushina has A LOT of it. Unlike Naruto, Kushina is able to