What got me into cosplaying

It all started for me in 2006. I met a few new people and got me first few anime on CD, namely
*Rurouni Kenshin
*Neon Genisis Evangelion
*X

I immediately started watching Rurouni Kenshin and I liked the Feudal clothing, so I desided to have a japanese / chinese party for my 16th birthday. Back then I did not know how to make the hakama and gi, so looking back my mom (yes, she made my first costume) did a great job with the limited information I gave her.

A month or 3 later, we finally got our hands on Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. We watched it (I ended up watching the movie 3 times in a row on the same day) and we decided to do a Final Fantasy themed Halloween party (seeing as some of my friends' parents did not like the Halloween themed idea), and doing weird things like modifying 2 swords to make a dual bladed sword, spray painting shoulder-pads, cutting my hair in the right style of the character and wearing fake leather when it is boiling hot outside, we managed to pull it off! So my very first decent cosplay was Kadaj.

 

So even sweating and walking around with shoes 2 sizes too big, it felt awesome. So awesome I wanted to do it forever and ever.