Happy Wednesday Club Members! Right now the one and only Sharivan Spark, and myself are teaming up against Foundation X. So grab your belt and “Henshin”!
1. What were you like growing up? What were some of the things you were into as a child/teenager?
It was hard because a lot of people have forgotten about tokusatsu and what is Kamen Rider or sentai, Ultraman or even metal heroes. During the 80s and 90s were the boom of Tokusatsu here. I was fond of tokusatsu during the early years even through my childhood and teenage years heck, even the present time. Growing up? It was challenging I mean life is hard it has it’s ups and downs. Lots of people leaving and staying but you still have to keep it real and move forward. Not to mention during my childhood years I was a fan of super robots like Great Mazinger, Getter Robo, Grendizer to name a few.
2. Did those things influence who you’re today?
To be honest yes. A lot of things from being the person that I am today.
3. You cosplay a lot of Tokusatsu characters. What made you decide to focus solely on them when it comes to the cosplays you made.
To be honest I focus on their personality and their armor designs. Not to mention their sole purpose of heroism and justice. Take Kamen Rider Drive for example, his sense of justice and heroism aside from his awesome armor design made him my favorite from the show. I did cosplay 2 villains. 1 of them is Black Beet from Juukou B-Fighter. He was a sole villain with a purpose of fighting and defeating his arch-nemesis to prove himself to whom he is. I wanna focus on other cosplays actually I wanna try mecha as I mentioned early maybe one day I can try cosplaying Getter Robo, or Great Mazinger etc to name a few. But for now, I wanna focus on tokusatsu cosplay as it is my forte.
4. What is your favorite suit you’ve made so far?
To be honest I have top 10 armors here is my list so far.
- Kamen Rider Drive Type Tridoron
- SyncRedder
- Kamen Rider Drive
- Kamen Rider Accel Trial
- Goseiknight/Roboknight
- Blue Beet/Super Blue beet
- KnightFire
- SolBraver
- Bull Black/Black Knight Hyuuga/Magna Defender
- Winspector Fire
5. What costumes do you plan on making this year?
To be honest I really don’t know what plans I have but mostly gonna focus on armored sentai heroes. But I wanna focus on doing some other forms of Drive to be honest.
6. Off topic, favorite food?
Grilled foods and some sushi. Grilled baby back ribs and some steak alongside vodka or “lambanog bubblegum flavor” I’m not sure what it is called on US terms, though.
7. Any advice you can give someone starting out when it comes to making Toku suits?
It takes time effort and A LOT of tears and blood but if you ever wanna start on making one never ever forget to remember why you wanna do a toku suit of your favorite character. Let’s admit it Toku cosplaying is quite expensive since sometimes you gotta buy some foam, DX gadgets and many more materials. It might take some months or heck even years but trust me once you’ve finished it. The money, effort, blood, sweat and handwork you have added in making your toku suit will be worth it. You can also try pepakura there are lots of tutorials on youtube and lots of free pepa files on google you can download.
8. Off topic, what do you think of this years Tokusatsu shows? I’ve been really enjoying Ex-Aid so far. I have yet to check out this year’s Sentai and Ultraman.
I’ve really enjoyed Ex-Aid so far. I wasn’t sure about it 1st because I can’t judge a show just because of their wacky suit designs and TBH I really really wanna buy Ex-Aid’s gamer driver belt but I solely wanna collect more transformer toys this year and less tokusatsu toys haha. The previous sentai was Zyuohger. I wasn’t really fond of the whole animal cube motif but it grew on me as the show became great and even better than Ninninger. The new sentai is Kyuranger which is a space motif sentai with the most plenty of core members so far since it consists of 9 core rangers as opposed to 5. Kyu means 9 in Japanese so it figures. For Ultraman however, I really enjoyed the recent Ultraman Orb. It’s another anniversary series as his motif is using cards and using the powers of 2 past Ultraman. The show didn’t also rely much on special teams that have high-tech gadgets and vehicles so that’s why it’s unique to me. There’s an upcoming movie for Orb this march.
9. What conventions are you going to attend this year?
Too many events to see but I might attend Ozine Fest for April. Toy-con and lots of major events here. Hopefully, my wallet can take it since I have lots of transformers to buy this year haha.
10. Do you plan on making costumes outside of Tokusatsu characters?
I did before a comic book character named “Boy Bakal” or in English it means “Boy Steel” a Filipino comic book character inspired from Marvel’s Iron Man. I plan to make other non-tokusatsu characters to cosplay as I wanna move to mecha cosplaying soon.
11. What is a convention you’ve dreamed of attending?
It already happened back then Toku Spirits. Four Toku actors from our childhood returned to take a visit. Even if the event did not require tokusatsu cosplayers the whole premise and feel of the event was just glorious!
12. Final question, anything you want to say to your fans?
Never give up on what you wanna do, accomplish and achieve! Hard times might take on your from all sides but if you keep your head high and know to stand up again after countless mistakes, bloopers and misunderstandings. It’s never too late to rise up again!
As always Foundation X got away but none the less the day was save. Thanks to Sharivan for coming through. I’ll update this once I get his Social Media page if he has one.
Coming to the Cafe next is…..
Utahime Cosplay makes her debut. Until next time, I’m still XBen3000 and I’m out!
