>inb4 “KL JAUH!” >inb4 “Why not in PJ” >inb4 “OMG SECURITY SURE SUCK!” >inb4 3 of the 4 halls will be filled with cosplayers who should not be posing in the hallways

Oh well sucks to be you

Anime Shrine: Who are the current members of Spiral Cats and how did you all first met? Spiral Cat (Tasha): Spiral Cats current members are Tasha (as the team leader), Ren, Tomia, and Miyuko. Altogether we have 4 members. The Spiral Cats photographer, SinMae is currently responsible for our team external activities. You can consider him as our manager or organizer. Tasha is 26 [...]]]>
Finally after months of emailing coupled with back and forth translations, we managed to track down Tasha from Spiral Cats to answer some questions regarding their cosplay group. Why Spiral Cats again? Well honestly they’re just plain astonishing. Organised, great costumes, awesome photography (thanks to SinMe which we interviewed earlier) and more importantly they are gorgeous looking girls, so what’s not to like about them? It’s an honour for us that Tasha agreed to this interview. Therefore without further ado, here’s the entire interview session!

Anime Shrine: Who are the current members of Spiral Cats and how did you all first met?
Spiral Cat (Tasha): Spiral Cats current members are Tasha (as the team leader), Ren, Tomia, and Miyuko. Altogether we have 4 members. The Spiral Cats photographer, SinMae is currently responsible for our team external activities. You can consider him as our manager or organizer.
Tasha is 26 and started cosplaying since 1999, Ren is also 26 and started cosplaying a year earlier, Tomia is 24 and started cosplaying since 2005 while Miyuko is 21 and started cosplaying since 2006. Tasha and Ren were the two most spirited in cosplaying and were doing it consitently, and in 2009 Spiral Cats was born. In 2010 Tomiya joined and Miyuko joined in 2011. Since then, the activities are getting bigger. We are planning to sign two more members in 2012.

We hope that you guys will give us more love and support in the future. ^^

AS: What attracts all of you into cosplaying?
Tasha: When I was young, I was introduced to the Japanese culture by their manga and when I first went to watch cosplay (event?), it gave me such a culture shock. My heart was telling me “I want to try and do this”.

I was really young at the time but from out of nowhere, I got the courage to go alone to a market to buy cloth (for cosplaying). It was at the biggest folk market in South Korea, the Namdaemun market. I asked the merchants there where I could buy cotton so that I could hand-stitch a costume. I also use a necklace’s beads as jewellery, then I draw some pattern. I used a slipper-making-material that I bought and made a boot. I didn’t know what I (actually) did but it was fun.

It started as a hobby, now it became my job. I think that the more I am involved with this world, the more I am learning new things.

Miyuko: I first knew about cosplay from Korea Comic World (it is like Japan’s Comiket). There, I experienced a culture shock and since then I was all into cosplay activity.

Tomia: When I was playing ‘Dungeon and Fighter’, a Korean online game, I wanted so much to be like my character in the game, so I started cosplaying.

Ren: Since I was young, I liked comic very much. So when I entered middle school I joined a culture club. There, I was first introduced to cosplay.

I was very keen to be my favorite character, so at Comic World, I participated in cosplay for the first time. The reaction I got from the crowd was good and I was very excited, and from then I was in love with cosplay.

Tomia, Tasha and Ren cosplaying Vocaloid (Knife)

AS: Do you guys make the costumes by hand or did you buy them?
SP: All the members discusses and collaborate together from the pattern designs to the materials selection. Even when making the outfit, we do not make our own by ourselves, but the whole team will focus on one outfit per time and make it together.

Tomia Cosplaying as Korea's Vocaloid SeeU

AS: Which are your favourite manga/anime characters?
Tasha: I like Chiaki from Nodame Cantabile. I also like (Hiroshi) Tamaki who play as Chiaki in the drama.
Miyuko: I like Conan (Mentantei Conan). I read all of the manga and of course I watched all of the anime.
Tomia: Masaru from Sexy Commando Gaiden: Sugoiyo! Masaru
Ren: Because I like anime that have a gentle storyline, I think for now my favorite anime is Natsume’s Book of Friend. And also because I like cat, my favorite character will be Nyanko-sensei. Hihi. I also made a pottery of him because I adore him so much.

AS: When you guys are not cosplaying, what are your hobbies?
Tasha: I usually will go travelling at least once a year. I enjoy it so much. When I travel, I think it is important to make a travel book as I want all my memory to be carefully written in my travel book. (Editor’s Note: Come to Malaysia ploxx!!!)
Miyuko: I like cross-stitching.
Tomia: I draw pictures and play piano.
Ren: I am a gamer. I started to hold a console controller since I was 4. I practicallly lived with Diablo II when in highs school, and WoW during my university years. Now I ended up being a game designer ^^; (Editor’s Note: I bet she will kick my ass as well in Starcraft II)

AS: Do you guys always hang out together?
SP: When we are busy with cosplay activities, we see each other more often than our own family. We have been together for 4 years now and we regard each other as families.

AS: What are you guys working as in real life?
Tasha: I work as a stylist at a studio. Every time there is a costumer who wants to take a wedding picture or a profile picture, it is my job to give them advice on styling. In 2012, with the support from other professional cosplayers in Korea, I decided to be a professional cosplayer as well.
Miyuko: I am a fashion design student. All the stuffs about fashion designing that I learned in school helps a lot in my cosplay activity.
Tomia: At first, I wanted to be a mathematics teacher, so I went to school of mathematics and education. But this 2012 semester, I switched to fashion design department. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I’m not regretting it. (Editor’s Note: NOOO!! Teach me maths sensei!)
Ren: I’m currently working as a game developer (planner) in a company. Nowadays, I am very busy with my works. It is a pity I cannot do cosplay much anymore. I give the other team members moral support from the back though since they are all working very hard.

AS: Any favourite picture of the cosplays that you guys did?
Tasha: My favourite is when I cosplayed as Boa Hancock from One Piece. I posed by turning on my back. It was a very cold winter day and the temperature was -2degree Celsius. Because of the weather, the shooting was very tiring but the result was so good, it became my most memorable photo session.

Miyuko: my favorite picture is when I cosplayed Kuroneko from Ore no Imōto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai. It was my first photo shoot session after I joined Spiral Cats, so it remains as the most memorable. I hope we can do this more in the future.

Tomia: I liked all of them, but Full Metal Alchemist’s Lun Fan is my favorite. During the shoot, the fire in the background made it much more fun and exciting.

Ren: there was a cosplay from Vocaloid called knife, where I cosplayed as Miku. The costume and the pictures had a deep impact for me and I’m very proud of it. That picture once became no.1 in a poll at a Japanese cosplay community site.

AS: Were there any memorable moments during your photoshoots?
Tasha: I wouldn’t say it is a memorable moment, but there was an unexplained mystery.
It happened when I was shooting Vocaloid – Love is War. At that time, everyone was busy preparing all sorts of things for the cosplay. Each person was holding a 150×190 cm flag of different colours and doing other preparations for the prop. However, when we were moving to the shooting site, the flags went missing. It was very weird. We don’t know where, how, or when it gone missing. Until now, we don’t know where the 9 flags went. It was a pity I could not held it during the shooting session.
Tomia: Every time I do a photoshoot, I think about the story and the memories (of the shoot). All those times were memorable (to me).
Ren: The time we spend outside shooting, during preparation, during breaks, I and the team will selca (Editor’s note: Shortened from “Self Camera”. Easier still it’s what Malaysian call Camwhoring). Cosplay is a kind of acting, but when we selca together we could see ourselves. It always become a memorable memory. I enjoy taking picture of us doing childish pose and funny face expression. It is so much fun.

AS: Have you ever guessed that you will be this popular and known not only in Korea but also
around the world?
SP: When Ren and Tasha first formed Spiral Cats, we always wanted to be a cool cosplay group in Korea and to be known worldwide. We are delighted to see that we are achieving that goal. In Korea many people are showing us (Spiral Cats) love and support. We could only humbly say thank you from the bottom of our hearts.

AS: How long do you see you guys cosplaying? Will there be a time where you think “This is the
time I need to retire from doing this”?
Tasha: As a career, it will certainly stop. But as a hobby, I want to do this until I became a granny. Then I can do cosplay that only granny can do like Dr. Kureha from One Piece or Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle. I already planned it out. (Editor’s Note: Wow, I respect her for this. Can’t wait to see a Sophie cosplay from Tasha in the very far future)
Miyuko: I want to continue doing cosplay. Even if I have children, I will make costumes and make them wear it. It is my dream to do cosplay together with my family.
Tomia: I want to continue doing cosplay in the future because it is a very exciting hobby.
Ren: I’m currently resting (from cosplay) because of my work load. But honestly I would never want to stop doing it. In any way possible, I will find a gap to do it at least once a year. Hihi.

AS: What was the most memorable cosplay costume that you guys ever wore?
Tasha: I have to say that the Sailormoon costume I wore when I went to WSC is closest to my heart. It is a 6m tall dress, and when I try to put it in my wardrobe, it doesn’t fit. Although it is hard to store, that dress will remain my favorite.
Miyuko: I really love Ahri’s (from League of Legends) outfit because it have Korean style design. We put many efforts making the costume and the props. It is the one I like best. The tail is so big it became troublesome. I cannot just throw it away, so now we use it as sofa chair. (Editor’s Note: Nice idea, it looked so fluffy)
Tomia: All of them has a place in my heart. Each of them carries special memories with it. It is hard for me to say I like one of them more than the other. I love all of them.
Ren: I think the one I like most is Miku’s outfit that I wore on Knife.

AS: How much have everyone spent (collectively) on maintaining this hobby?
SP: Spiral Cats team never counted how much money we spent to make our outfits. It is also kind of impossible to guesstimate.

AS: What are the future plans of Spiral Cats?
SP: Domestically, we are trying to be a professional costplayer team. We are currently the mascot for a Korean professional game team – League of Legends, and also models for Kinect of Microsoft Korea. It seems like we are getting widely accepted by our community. ^^

Miyuko as Ahri, a 9 tail fox (Kitsune) from LoL

Currently we are stabilizing our foundation locally and we hope to be a professional team and do activities globally. Until we became a professional team, we hope you all will look forward to our performance ^^

And with that we would like to thank Spiral Cats for making time in their busy schedule to do this interview. We hope that we could see them soon in Malaysia and really, all the best of luck to them. They have worked hard to reach here and wishing them luck is the least that we could do. Don’t forget to visit their websites as well here.

Each charm represents a goddess which would give you a different kind of protection (?). Means that to get the full protection you need to buy all of it or something. >inb4 my PC don’t have that much USB connection.

Added Info: The Mikos in the ads are performed by “Dempagumi” idol group.

The draw up was held at a [...]]]>
While last weekend, the news was mostly on either RAGE or AFKL (or if you are a hipster, Nottingham’s Bunkasai), I was invited to another event, a Draw Night / TDC Tweetup organised by Malaysia Games and Comic Convention (MGCCon). I nearly didn’t go. The fact that I had spent a boring 2 hours at AFKL earlier in the day and then drove to Melaka for RAGE and stuck in a massive jam due to three accidents meant that I was really tired. But somehow I felt that I just needed to go, especially since the MGCCon PR team was very friendly and I don’t feel like turning them down. And I am quite curious about the event as well thus I thought it was a good time to ask directly about some stuffs that I wanted to know of the convention

The draw up was held at a shop called earth638 in Kelana Mall. For people that know me well they would know that if there is something I hate in Malaysia it’s the LDP. But what do? Have to go through there. With some help from the GPS and Google Maps, I finally arrived at the place, which turns out to be this comic shop which specialises in western comics. Sorry, no pics of it’s exterior. I was too tired that I forgot to take pictures of it.

There I met with Angelia Ong (left in that Sherlock(?) type cap), boss of Banshee Creative and also a part of the MGCCON team and also handles some of the PR stuffs, which means that whenever I tweet or email to MGCCON, it’s highly likely that I was talking to her. There she answered my questions about the event (which I think I have forgotten much of it, damn I should have written them down) and also introduced me to her husband, Sheldon who does artworks in western comics. While I am not a fan of western comics (I am a manga fan through and through), I do like artwork in general and after much “persuading” by her I got one of her husband’s work (which means I will be eating maggi for the rest of the month orz).

Said husband signing my food money

She also showed me the “Malaysian Artist” wall (which again, I forgot to take pic of) that featured the artwork of local artist, some published independently, but all are given the same treatment as any western comic title. It was then that she introduced me to some local comic artist that was doing some comic drawings (hence, the Draw Night). I feel quite awkward at first before one of them (I forgot his name) offered me a “peace offering” (air laici kotak) and asked me to sit down. Before long we were joking and talking about their experience in doing comics

Remy drawing on a Galaxy note

I also got to know Remy “Eisu” Mokhtar, a veteran artist who had worked with Gempak before. He and his friends has released doujins yearly at Comic Fiesta and we talked about how their experience selling their artwork at CF and how they experience first had the growth of that event. During that time Remy also touched about the Malaysian comic market, as in the normal, consumer and not the niche doujin ones. And it was not surprising. To be marketable in Malaysia the only thing a comic artist should publish is either a love story containing good artwork or something that involves Mat Rempit. Storyline is optional. And that is true. See how many love novels or Mat Rempit dramus that are being fed to us and you can guess it’s the same with the comic market as well. While locals can accept foreigners drawing superhero or non sequitur comics, they will ignore you if you are a local and try those kind of stuffs. Remy told me how he debuted in Gempak with a horror story and was largely forgotten but when he published a love story a few weeks after, everyone was talking about it.

That takes me back to years ago when I read the local comic Ujang and one of the comic I liked was Mat Despatch. I mean it contains that very same formula that Remy talked about. It has love story and also it involves rempit. No wonder it was one of the more famous story in Ujang. And yet I do yearn the time when Malaysian artist was not tied to this genre, the time where Ujang can be known just because of his part autobiography comic, or how Rejabhad was known for his good story telling skills. Sadly that time has long gone and we are now in danger of associating Malaysian Comic to being generic lovey dovey mat rempit gansta wannabe story.

It was a tiring night but I kinda enjoyed the experience. It was kinda different from the ones that I usually have when hanging out with my more “weebo” friends and somehow along the line, I got to learn some new stuffs about the local comic industry. Thank god I accepted that invitation to attend this event. Hope that can meet them again during MGCCON or CF