Don't Lose Your Way
About 7 or 8 years ago, when I started to get into anime in earnest, I came across a show that blew my mind in all the best ways. The premise - a super powered schoolgirl and her sentient uniform, which shrinks to become LUDICROUSLY tiny when she fights, try to avenge her father’s murder at the hands of the student body president of her new school. Her main weapon is half a giant pair of scissors. Her main allies are a teacher who sexually harasses her as his clothes slowly slide off his body to reveal his sparkly nipples and another girl whose main power is giving nonsensical motivational speeches.
I don’t think I’ve even managed to capture how genuinely bonkers this show is, but I think you get the gist. So what do I love about it? Well, how absolutely insane it is, but also the stuff that comes after you settle in with the premise - themes of found family, overcoming trauma, abusive parents, overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and moving beyond the trappings of childhood as one becomes an adult, even as those same things live on in memory.
Ryuko Matoi, the super powered schoolgirl in question, has always appealed to me as a character. She’s strong, but not infallible; smart, but willing to learn; lonely and hurting, but still able to be vulnerable with others. And she’s got a giant fucking scissor blade, and that’s just cool.
Some behind the scenes info - I recently joined a group, Chicago Cosplay Meetups, where we… well, meet up and do cosplay. Wear cosplay. Whatever. And photographers come and stage short shoots, so everyone ends up with good photos for the socials. It’s great! I honestly think the vintage community could use the same thing.
The photographer who took these photos, Afrodyte, has kind of taken me under her wing the past couple of months, and I feel like I’ve learned an incredible amount about photography in that time. It’s honestly been interesting moving away from the self-photography that I’ve primarily done to being a model or a photographer, but not both at once.
Character: Ryuko Matoi | Anime: Kill La Kill
Photos by Afrodyte Charlotte at a Chicago Cosplay Meetup
