BENGALURU: For Sydney-based cosplayer AK Wirru, picking just one favourite costume is the hardest thing to do. “All my costumes are babies to me,” he tells CE, just days ahead of his maiden trip to India, where he will be making an appearance at Bengaluru Comic Con as well.
Having first started cosplaying in 2006, Wirru doesn’t remember when his hobby turned into a full-time profession. “It just felt natural one day,” explains the cosplayer, 30, who is considering bringing his Agatsuma Zenitsu (Demon Slayer) or Mutsunokami Yoshiyuki (Touken Ranbu) costumes for the city event taking place on November 16 and 17. Bengaluru’s weather, he adds, might also play a role in deciding his answer.
As a child, Wirru has always been a “creative arts kid”, one who liked to draw, sew, make plastic models, do wood work, paint, write music and perform. This would explain why the artist (who has over 43,000 followers on Instagram) took to cosplaying so well, considering it “lets me practise all the different forms of art that I loved without having to choose one discipline.”
But as much as he loves doing this, Wirru also honestly, and playfully, admits that each of his costumes, which can take anywhere between two hours and 14 months, has given him a hellish challenge or another. Interestingly, most of these hurdles are self-inflicted. “Sometimes it’s choosing unreasonably repetitive methods to create a simple costume, spontaneously adding projects to my schedule with no spare time, or deciding to create an intricate costume on a tight budget, or simply choosing to cosplay a character whose design just doesn’t make sense!” says the 2019 champion of the World Cosplay Summit.
Given the intricate nature of his costumes, it’s no surprise that cosplaying is his main pursuit these days, which sees him getting mixed reactions from loved ones. “My friends have been supportive because they are all cosplayers too. But since I come from a traditional Asian household, my family still thinks I should try to find a ‘proper’ 9-to-5 desk job,” he laughs.
Life as a cosplayer may seem all fun and games, but Wirru is quick to add that it could be scary as well. “I can never know if one day my work, my platform and influence, or even cosplay itself can suddenly all become irrelevant.” But during such moments, it’s the freedom that the field provides that serves as a reminder of all that Wirru loves about cosplaying. “Being able to create whatever I love and share my methods with my audience is really rewarding.”