I became interested in manga during my A-Levels

         

I became interested in manga during my A-Levels, while studying art. This lead on to anime at some point. My first manga was Mitsukazu Mihara's 'Doll', which gave me unrealistic expectations from petticoats, and my first anime was 'Hellsing' - closely followed by 'Loveless' - which gave me realistic expectations about over half of all anime plots. I began studying Japanese in 2007 and at University met the people I started cosplaying with. I've just returned from nine months studying in the Kansai region of Japan, where I learnt that Japanese cosplay is not all it's cracked up to be, and have a summer ahead of me in which I plan to prepare for my first ever masquerade.

I've been sewing since I was a teenager and, being the child of an engineer and a costume historian, got pretty heavily into steampunk at one point. I still do far more historical/original 'costumes' than I do someone else's characters.

I'm also really, really, REALLY rubbish at getting photos - I've been to about four events since I started this account (And that's just at the time of writing) and managed to come back from every single one without a single picture of what I was wearing. For shame!