Anyway, here's something a little different - I did a cosplay for Tomie two months ago.
Thanks Icie/
rurumi and rayfy_chan for these photos respectively!I love Junji Ito so much, not even kidding - he's my absolute favorite horror manga author/artist of all time. And I have a love/hate relationship with Tomie, arguably one of his most famous characters ... on the one hand she's a massive bitch and I hate her, and on the other hand she's this amazingly creepy otherworldly entity and I can't get enough of her stories!
I decided to go with an "in-between" version of the school uniform - so this outfit takes elements from both the manga and the live-action movie versions of Tomie. Again, it's an outfit I altered, as I managed to find a vintage-style ensemble for cheap online and just modified it.
(Added note: PLEASE BE AWARE THAT MY BEAUTY SPOT IS ON THE CORRECT SIDE. The earliest Tomie translations flipped the manga to accommodate English readers for left-to-right reading so Tomie's beauty spot on the wrong side in those scans XD)
I've cosplayed solo to cons in the past but this is my first solo photoshoot. I'm so used to shooting in a pair or a group that it was a little intimidating being the sole focus, but I hope the results make up for it.
Harmony/myself as Tomie
Photography by
strawbarry_gurl, Icie and rayfy_chanSpecial effects makeup by
strawbarry_gurl and rurumi (thank you all!)(Please excuse any inconsistency in the set of photographs - this is owing to the individual creativity of each of the three photographers and their different visions for the shoot. :D)
Before going on to the main shoot, I did a very quick shoot in a nearby hotel to portray glamorous!Tomie. Anyone who's read the manga knows that Tomie tends to have a habit of sitting in fancy chairs, all dolled-up. One of the illustrations that caught my attention was the cover page for the chapter 'Painter', so I cosplayed it! (Found the perfect top online for $15, made the skirt myself).
Then we moved to a nearby school, where we started on the main shoot. Here, have some normal schoolgirl Tomie. Tomie doesn't get more normal than this.
And every horror story also has that turning point where normalcy is thrown out the window. I love all the scenes in the series where Tomie has a creepy demon head growing out of her, whether in a photograph or in actuality.
We did a sort of re-enactment of the scene in chapter 2 where a classmate takes candid photographs of Tomie just walking by or standing there, and the developed photos have the demon head in them (a great scene!). I was lucky enough to have my team help me edit three versions of the head, with the first one being the very first photo in this entry (scroll up to the top; special edit by
rurumi) and the other two below (special edits by strawbarry_gurl and Icie).
And this is followed, of course, by rageface!Tomie and cut-up Tomie. Because we all know that all the guys who get involved with Tomie in some way end up getting an abnormal irresistible urge to carve her up and kill her, and she's often angry about it. (Special cameo by
rayfy_chan below. I'll pretend he's a classmate lol).
And it's all just good ol' creepy from here. Fun story: while I was doing the shots below where I lie at the bottom of the stairs (we had the idea to enact a scenario where someone might have pushed Tomie) a lady was walking down the stairs and nearly got a heart attack because I looked legitimately cut-up and dead and all photographers were under the stairs, out of her view LOL. Poor woman. Anyway, enjoy the rest of the shots!
Well, that's it for now. I had a lot of fun on this shoot, and I would like to do more Junji Ito cosplays someday (accompanied by
tehcrayonofdoom who is thankfully also a huge Ito fan) lol. I have my eye on you, Remina - and Marusou too! We'll see if we have the time to spare.~ Harmony
EDIT: Thank you to the Junji Ito Index for featuring this cosplay ♥
