Danganronpa is the kind of series where if someone asks me about it my whole body tenses up with excitement and I can't help but to gesticulate wildly while talking about all the reasons it is great and that if you remotely like visual novels or mysteries you absolutely have to check it out. 9 times out of 10 I don't know where the mystery is going, but not in that forced sort of way where it pulls out info you had no way of knowing on you in the last 10 seconds, but in a natural progression of discovery and no cliched predictability way. It's silly and serious and puzzling all at the same time, and did a fantastic job of making me fall in love (or in some cases, fall in hate) with characters. My first real love was Kyoko Kirigiri, arguably the hero of the first title and my favorite character of the whole series several games, mangas, and animes later.

Nevermind just looking awesome, Kyoko's role and personality made it very clear I had to channel her via cosplay. Despite not being a character in the most recent game, I had to have her finished in time to celebrate the long awaited release of the next installment of the series.

The wig is Arda's Venus in Lilac. The cos-test picture is with no modifications to the wig; as you can see, it's a great base to be starting with! For the real thing, I sewed extra wefts into the left side in order to create her signature braid. I used half of a weft pack from Arda to add enough hair to the left side to create the thickness of braid that I wanted as well as cover areas that would usually be made too thin by pulling the hair together for said braid. The hair was parted at an angle to help combat that as well. The braid will be redone to have it start higher up on her head than it does in this test picture, but this braid at least shows proof of concept and that I have enough hair in place to do what I want and need to do. In addition to sectioning the hair left and right I will also need to do it vertically to get it higher up. It'll essentially be a weird hybrid between a regular braid and french braid.

The overall length of the wig had to be cut, with small sections towards the front cut even shorter. I trimmed the hair to the right length with scissors, then used a razor comb to thin out the ends to make it a more natural looking cut. The front chunks are very separated, which means my hands ended up coated in hair spray as I lightly sprayed each section and then ran my hands down it to evenly apply it and keep it from looking crispy. The bangs were also shortened and saturated with hairspray to create the chunky look, although I opted to not recreate them exactly. I prefer a more natural-ish style when cosplaying characters rather than outright copying, which is also why I didn't try to separate out the rest of the hair into chunked sections as well.

An adventure to a thrift store landed me a dress shirt and blazer to use for the top of her outfit. The blazer of course needed some work, as Kyoko has a lot of unique detailing on hers, but not having to make a blazer from scratch was a lifesaver. I removed the lone button the jacket came with and picked up some really cool brass buttons from JoAnn's to add. Some creative use of chalk paper let me transfer a pattern for the emblem on the lapel which I was able to embroider over and still keep a good amount of the detail and sharp edges it has.

For the zippers on the sleeves, I picked up two 7" silver zippers with black backing. I also realized I haven't sewn with a regular zipper in YEARS, only invisible ones, so I had to relearn how to do that without it looking awful. I put on the blazer and marked on the sleeve cuffs where the middle of the back of my hand was in a neutral and relaxed position, then cut a slit in each sleeve at that mark going straight up and approximately 6" in length (1" short of the length of the zipper).

The beauty of cosplaying anime characters is that the emphasis is on the eyes and the rest of the makeup tends to be pretty neutral. Kyoko is no exception to this rule. I picked up some purple contacts from Pinky Paradise (Princess Pinky Cloudy Violet to be exact) and while I wish they were more transformative they were good enough for my tastes.