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DENNIS: Before we talk about cosplaying, let's get to know a little bit about the both of you. Where were you born and raised?
KIE: We are from the San Francisco East Bay Area. We go to school in Pasadena, though.

DENNIS:  Both of you are perhaps the most well known twins that cosplay in the West Coast. Which one is older and since you are twins, are you both alike or are you very much different from each other? Do you both share almost everything with each other? Friends, vehicle, clothes, etc.  LILY: I am the older one. Kie and I are more "alike" than "very much different," but as far as twins go, we are quite different. Different enough that we're sure we're not identical twins even though we have never been tested for it. We do share almost everything, but our tastes differ enough that there are certain friends, certain clothes, etc. that we don't share. We don't share costumes, either. KIE: Paffles (Lily) is older. We are pretty similar. We share most things, some out of necessity, and some due to our shared interests. DENNIS:  How did the both of you come up with the name "Neko Twins"? KIE: Actually, we didn't. Full credit goes to a Japanese cosplayer, Renka Izumi. At first we were known by our website name, "Double Cosplay Attack!!", which was supposed to sound like some crazy sentai-style special technique.

PHOTO: Kie & Lily cosplaying as the "Kitty Sisters" based on Hamasaki Ayumi's costume from the "Surreal" music video.

Later some of our friends started calling us the "Kitty Twins" because we love cats, and our online personas are both catgirls. We were also jokingly referred to as the "Northern California Leave It to the Twins", after the Japanese cosplay twins Luke and Michiru. Renka Izumi (who, coincidentally, is Luke and Michiru's cousin) was the first to call us the "Baby Neko Twins", in reference to my nickname, "Baby Snow Leopard". Our friends caught on, and after that it just stuck.
LILY: I think the name fits us well because we really like cats and we prefer doing cute cosplays as opposed to popular, sexy, or gothic cosplay. Hence the "baby" in our name, because we all know kittens are cuter than cats. Some of our cosplay friends started using Baby Neko Twins to refer to us as a group, and after that the name just stuck. I guess some people now say Neko Twins because it's shorter, but we're still officially Baby Neko Twins.

DENNIS:  If a friend traveled to your area to spend several hours with you, where would you take them or what would you do for fun? (what is your idea for having fun?)
LILY: It would depend on which friend, but generally I would ask the friend what he would want to do rather than impose my own will on my guests. As for myself, I'm amused just playing video games all day
KIE: Gosh, there isn't much to do up here at home. Maybe we'd go to San Francisco, to Japantown or something. Or we'd stay home and just chat, play videogames, watch music videos or depending on the person, have drawing parties. In SoCal, we would go to Little Tokyo, or Hollywood, or perhaps Life Plaza for some boba and sticker picture goodness. I used to go to the arcade a lot too, but the arcades just don't seem as good these days.

DENNIS:  So, if I was a passenger seat in your car, what kind of music would I expect to be listening to?
KIE: All J-pop. Well, maybe a little bit of videogame music, but that doesn't work so well in cars. Most likely you'll hear Morning Musume or Aya Matsuura… mixed with a little bit of Takako Uehara, Utada Hikaru, and Ayumi Hamasaki.
LILY: Nothing. I don't listen to music in the car.

PHOTO: Lily & Kie cosplay as Jenny of the anime "Pokemon".

DENNIS:  If a friend visited you at your home, what would they catch you watching on television? LILY: They would catch me watching my dad play video games. I don't watch TV. Not even anime on TV. KIE: TV? We don't watch TV! lol! DENNIS:  What kind of students were you back in high school? (the cheerleader, jock, computer person, library person, band person, stoner?) KIE: We were always the quiet, well-behaved little students who sat in the back unnoticed by the rest of the world… drawing pictures in class, but our teachers didn't care because we were at the top of the class anyway *lol*. They were amused. Our classmates generally did not pay much attention to us because we were too quiet, thus we managed to avoid most of the drama that surrounds the "Smart Kids". We were also band people, but the petty competition among the sections got to be a bit tiring after a while. LILY: We didn't fit a type at all. We weren't even that notable for being twins because there were so many pairs of twins in our grade alone. We were just good, quiet, boring students. DENNIS:  By any chance did you ever pull "twin" practical jokes on people or even boyfriends by pretending to be one another?

LILY: Yes, in fact, how do you know we're not pulling a switch right now? Actually, no, we didn't ever do that. We didn't ever need to. Throughout junior high and high school we had almost all our classes together and our teachers already had enough trouble remembering who was who. Of course, once they could tell us apart, there was no point in trying to play such practical jokes. Most of the people who know us think we look rather different, so there was never really any opportunity for us to try to trick people by pretending to be one another. We have, however, both intentionally and unintentionally used the fact that we're twins to trick people in other ways, such as when people don't realize there are two of us.
KIE: Nope. And anyway, it wouldn't work. The people who actually know us wonder why they ever thought we looked identical. They have no trouble telling us apart even at a distance, with our backs turned.

DENNIS:  It's easy for one to get confused which twin is which, how do you explain to people which person is Kie and which person is Lily?
KIE: We look different. (laughing) Actually we do not look that similar, for twins. People don't ask us "Are you guys twins?" as much in public any more. In fact, we've gotten a lot of "Are you guys sisters?" recently. And no, we are probably not identical. Telling us apart is mostly an issue inside of the cosplay community, where we play up the twin aspect. One would think that wearing identical costumes would just accentuate our differences; but then again, people who only see us for a few brief moments cannot be expected to remember what we actually look like. When asked, we usually just say quickly, "Oh, Kie is taller," or "Kie has thicker bangs", or something simple that people can see easily. If asked further, we could go into all sorts of details about our facial features, our hair color, our skin, etc.
LILY: I point to my sister and say, "That's Kie!" Or we make people guess. After that we leave it up to them to figure out how to tell us apart. We look and act quite different, and many people who know us pick up on the differences rather quickly. Mostly people can tell us apart, they just don't remember which name goes to which girl. Though we generally look the same, there are subtle differences in our appearances, which people often point out to us. My hair is lighter in color, my skin is darker, my eyes are smaller, my face is thinner, I'm shorter, I'm right-handed while Kimmie is left-handed, etc.

DENNIS:  Do you both go to those twin conventions? Also, is it true that twins share a mysterious bond and if one is like away and in pain, the other twin can feel it? Have you had those experiences before? LILY: No, we don't both go to twin conventions. In fact, neither of us go to twin conventions. It may sound odd, but I'm sure there are at least some people who go to twin conventions without their twin. We haven't even heard of any twin conventions, and we aren't interested in searching for any, either. We were one of many pairs of twins in our schools before college, so I don't feel that being a twin is something so rare and special that I would want to search out other twins at random. However, I am interested in meeting other twins who cosplay. I know there are many out there. As for twins sharing a mysterious bond… well, does magic exist? No. KIE: Twin conventions? They have those kind of things? Well, I suppose they have conventions for everything else. Um..no, do you have a psychic link with your parents? It makes no logical sense… the question has no basis whatsoever. I don't know who thought of a crazy idea like that, but we've been asked it so many times! DENNIS:  Are you a big fan of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen?

Photo: The Neko Twins cosplaying as KITTY-N from the popular Playstation videogame "Bust a Groove". (photo by Lionel Lum)

KIE: No. Yuck.
LILY: Uh, who? I mean, no! (laughing) Of course I know who they are, but I don't watch TV and I'm not into American pop culture, either.

DENNIS:  If there was one word to describe you as a person now, what word would that be and why?
LILY: Indescribable. There we go! Why don't we just leave it at that? "Unique" just isn't a unique enough answer to cover it all.
KIE: "Meow." What, you expected a real answer? (laughing) I don't think there is any one word that can even attempt to describe any one person… hence the indescribable sentiment of "meow". I like cats. Meow.

DENNIS:  Let's now get into the cosplaying section of the interview. Tell me how the both of you got involved with cosplaying?
KIE: We've always loved costumes and dressing up, and when we were little we even based a few of our Halloween costumes on our favorite videogame characters. It was only natural that when we began to watch anime, we wanted to dress up as our favorite characters. At one point we were practically obsessed with finding clothes that looked like Mia's from "Ronin Warriors". Shortly after that, on a random trip to the fabric store, we noticed new costume patterns labeled "Sailor Moon", and I thought, this looks like a videogame!

The Neko Twins cosplaying as Lynn Minmay of the anime series "Macross". (Photo by Lionel Lum)

Ooh I like the dark-haired one, Sailor Mars! Then it occurred to us that this may be another one of those Japanese shows like Ronin Warriors, so we searched and searched the TV guides, and a few months later they started showing Sailor Moon. I desperately wanted a Sailor Mars costume for Halloween, but Mom said the skirt was too short, and it would be too cold to wear a sleeveless costume anyway. A few years later, I found some costume galleries on a Sailor Moon site, and a link to the Anime Expo homepage. It turned out we would be in Anaheim exactly one week after Anime Expo. I was sad, but was determined to go the next year to meet my online fan art friends and while I was at it, bring lots of costumes! Our cosplay debut was earlier than that, though. The next Spring, we were in San Francisco Japantown and picked up some fliers for a new cosplay contest that was to take place in two weeks during the Cherry Blossom Festival, which we'd been to the previous year. We threw together the quickest costumes we could come up with and entered the contest. We had so much fun, and met such great people, that we began to prepare anxiously for Anime Expo. From there, our cosplay lists just grew and grew, with no end in sight. LILY: It's my sister's fault! She made me do it!

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