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Photo: Tiffany cosplaying as Iida Kaori of Morning Musume and Wayne cosplaying as their producer, Tsunku for Morning Musume's "The Peace".

DENNIS:  Let’s talk about USA Musume.  How challenging was it to do a cosplay and dance/vocal routine at Fanime 2002 of the popular Japanese idol group?  WAYNE:  I mostly managed the group and did "behind the scenes" type work. It was a harrowing experience trying to get 9 girls from across California together, to rehearse, to make their costumes, to sing together, and exhibit good teamwork. We had to get matching materials since it's very important for the girls to match. Some girls had better sewing skills than others and required extra coaching and assistance. We had a few drop outs which needed replacements and even some of our replacements needed replacements. All of this brought alot of stress to Tiffany and I. But luckily we are both perfectionists and we don't give up no matter the circumstances so we pushed on to get this project completed. Tiffany was on the front lines so she has a more detailed story to tell about the singing and dancing. However, due to some of the costume problems I also assisted with the cosplay and did some hands on construction of costumes myself.

I must say, that the choice of materials was definitely not sewing machine friendly. I know that the confetti dot managed to break many a cosplayer needle and the gold fabric had a bad tendency to jam machines. The cloth would not be good material for a beginning cosplayer to work with. But accuracy is important to us, and that was the material that looked the best, so we put up with it, and continued on! In the end, we had our nine girls, with complete costumes, and managed to complete the performance. I can't argue, everything got done and the results were excellent! The goal was certainly worth it, even if the road was bumpy and had some surprises along the way for me and Tiffany.
TIFFANY:  The USA Musume performance of "The Peace" we did was an absolute blast!  I had so much fun doing it with the other girls!  They are all really great! Although, I must admit it was a bit stressful.  Nine girls is a heck of a lot of girls to organize!  It was especially difficult because there were a few girls who dropped out. Some at the very last minute, forcing me to find girls to take their places!  Luckily, I had some wonderful friends who were happy to fill in for them.  Another factor which made things a little bit difficult was that I sort of adopted the role of organizer as we went along.  It was all someone else's dream to begin with and I had been helping her to achieve that dream, but unfortunately she became too busy to even be a part of it!  I think future projects will be much easier to organize because I won't be picking up where someone else left off so things will be more organized from the get-go.  One of the biggest challenges was that all nine of us girls were spread out all over California!  So meeting for rehearsal was almost impossible.  We didn't rehearse until we were at the con and even there not everyone could meet at the same time, so we had several meetings.  I pretty much spent the whole weekend teaching people and rehearsing!  (Laughing)  That was a tad of a stress, but I loved my company so it was still fun!  Yes, we had many, many challenges and probably more difficulties than we would have liked to overcome, but I am very happy with everything!  It was worth the hard work we put into it!

DENNIS: Recently, both of you and a few girls from the previous USA Musume performance and new girls performed Morning Musume's "Morning Coffee" at Recca Con in the Bay Area? How did this come about? WAYNE: Tiffany and I planned to keep USA Musume a continuing type of thing with some more performances down the line. While the Tiffy and I were doing research on "The Peace!", I did some checking and found that "Morning Coffee" was one of their earlier songs which was very harmonious and pretty. After Fanime, it was brought to our attention that some of our friends in Northern California were trying to get a fledgling convention, Reccacon, on it's feet. The venue would be at a college and with the "Morning Coffee" outfits being school type outfits, we thought this would work out perfectly. Thus we decided to go help and support them and thought that this would be an excellent opportunity to have a "Morning Coffee" performance. For Morning Coffee, we chose USA Musume members with more refined singing talents and much of the rehearsals revolved around the singing and harmony. There were less rehearsals for "Morning Coffee" than "The Peace!" simply since there were less girls and the dance routine is less rigorous, and so the girls had enough time.

Photo: Tiffany cosplaying as Iida Kaori of Morning Musume and Wayne cosplaying as their producer, Tsunku for "Morning Coffee". Photo by Eurobeat Al

TIFFANY: "Morning Coffee" was a great project! I had a lot of fun with it! The way it came about was mostly through the birth of Recca-con. Wayne and I had been thinking that it would be nice to do a performance for that con, when a couple of UM girls decided to go and expressed interest. I instantly, came up with the idea to do "Morning Coffee", because it is one of my most favorite songs, and I had been hoping that we would be able to perform it at some point. Recca-con provided the perfect venue. We had 3 girls based in Northern California and 2 based in Southern CA, so we did not have too much rehearsal time as a group. The girls mostly learned their parts on their own, or in our locationally divided groups, and we put the pieces together at the con. And the rest is history!

Photo: Tiffany wearing her Hamasaki Ayumi cheetah outfit at Fanime 2002.

DENNIS:  Tiffany, you also did Hamasaki Ayumi “leopard” outfit.  How challenging was it to create that costume? TIFFANY:  I absolutely love this costume!  I remember when I first started listening to Ayu around the time that her “Love Appears” double CD came out.  My boyfriend said that she reminded him of me on that cover because of the long hair she has so he bought the CD for me for Christmas.  I went crazy when I saw her cheetah costume!  I saw a promotional poster in a CD store, before “Duty” was even released and I was like "I have to HAVE that costume!!!"  And so it was indefinite that I must make that costume.  I didn't even care if I wore it anywhere. I just wanted it.  I became obsessed with finding the exact same cheetah print and it took me almost a year to find it!  But finally I found the closest fabric possible.  I am a little bit disappointed in what I did with the fabric though because I really didn't take my time on that costume at all, after all of my waiting and searching for the perfect fabric.  I ended up rushing it, in order to please a friend, spending only a week on it. That's somewhat disappointing to me, but I am still happy with the costume overall.  The shoes are next to impossible to walk in, but I love that costume regardless!

DENNIS: For the people who don't know much about anime, video game or Japanese music celeb cosplaying, one would think of these cosplayers to be no different from the cosplayers from Xena, Star Wars or Star Trek conventions, War enactments or perhaps even Ren Fair cosplayers. Is there a difference?
WAYNE:  It's typically not referred as cosplay for anything beyond anime, video games or Japanese. Cosplay, the term, is pretty much reserved for costuming of that nature. Everything else is costuming. Renaissance and science fiction costumes and masquerades have been around for a much longer time, and cosplay was initially inspired by that, taken to Japan, added the twist of anime and game topics and sent back to America. Of all the costumers though, I would tend to believe that the Renaissance Fair and Traditional costume variety people get the most respect. Their costumes are generally elaborate and detailed, and tend to be original creations with inspiration. Where else will you find a knight in full armor with chain mail and a cast metal sword or a traditional villager dress? I also find that the science fiction costumers also get alot of respect as well as their costumes typically involve armor and make up that surpass the the budgets of many costumers. For example, Stormtroopers and Klingons. The question is poised with the assumption that the person does not know anything about anime, and so of course they would have a higher tendency to respect RenFaire and SciFi stuff since they have more exposure to that sort of thing. Of course you'll find people who will think they're all crazy. A fine example occurred with the recent opening of the Star Wars Episode II movie. If you remember how the media and viewing audience handled and responded to costumers showing up at the movie premiere, that should give you a good idea of what the general public thinks.

DENNIS:  Have you experienced any freaky or embarrassing situations from cosplaying?  May it be the costume or even experiences from fans?  WAYNE:  Nope.  I’ve been pretty lucky from that standpoint. TIFFANY:   Not yet!  Thank goodness!  Luckily, I think I've done a pretty good job of dodging some of the weirdo stalkers that can come along with being a female cosplayer.  As for any embarrassing stuff...nothing I can think of! DENNIS: What is the most satisfying and most frustrating aspect of being a cosplayer? TIFFANY:  The most satisfying part of cosplay is when you successful and totally complete a costume that you have been working on.  Seeing the pieces all come together and finally have the results of your hard work.  The moment when you put a new and completely finished costume on for the first time.  I can't think of anything that's the most frustrating aspect.  There tend to be a few things that are slightly annoying, but nothing overall frustrating. My sewing machine is half broken, so I guess that's my most frustrating thing now! WAYNE:  Attention and recognition of your character and your costuming skills are always satisfying.  Frustration in the hobby comes around from people who take the hobby too seriously and make it “not-so-fun” for the rest of us.

Photo: Wayne cosplaying as Laguna from the SquareSoft Playstation RPG, "Final Fantasy 8".

DENNIS:  For those who are new to cosplaying, they will notice that many of you belong to a group or a circle of cosplayers. Are these groups public, members only or area-based type groups? What advice do you have for those who want to join a group?
WAYNE:  Some groups are public, many are not.  The groups that Tiffany and I are affiliated with are members only.  Those cosplayers who wish to be in a group should gather some of their friends and start their own group.  That’s how our cosplay teams came into being.
TIFFANY:  There are a few different kinds of groups, but mostly I'd say that groups are "friends" based.  I guess you could say that they are "members-only" although some accept new members.  Usually these groups consist of a group of people who are already friends and decide to give themselves a name and make it somewhat official.  Some groups are less exclusive and if you express interest in becoming a part of their group or doing a project with them you may end up joining them, but usually groups are already formed.  If you want to be in a group, the best thing to do is just make friends with people in the cosplay scene.  Be friendly, get to know others at conventions and then eventually you'll find that a group of friends will form by itself.  Once you have this group of friends, then you have a cosplay group!

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