Photo: Jae | Form of Therapy

First con of the year, Anime Los Angeles! New convention + new cosplay make for extreme intimidation levels.
To properly recap ALA, I must mention that fact that both of our cosplays were nowhere near done the night before. Thus, an all-nighter cosplay workshop was had, where cups of coffee were abundant as were countless sewing needle pricks. If you've ever cosplayed, you'll experience true self-hatred when attempting to finish a costume after months of procrastination. Why do we do this to ourselves?! Well...

We were cosplaying as Manolo Sanchez and Maria Posada from The Book of Life, and were initially drawn to the characters because for once, they were Mexican- just like us! The movie itself is fantastic, and I highly recommend it for it's cute storyline, beautiful animation, and festive portrayal of our culture. We even had the pleasure of meeting Sarah Marino, a character development artist for the movie (that we met at Anime Expo last summer), who later helped us with the finer details of our costumes.


Once we arrived in Los Angeles for a photoshoot in La Placita Olvera, we were immediately approached by the cutest, tiniest, chubbiest little Mexican children! In Spanish they exclaimed, "Mom, mom, it's Manolo!" and we turned around and were greeted with the happiest faces. All of the hours of stabbing myself with sewing needles, burning my flesh off with a hot glue gun, not getting any sleep the night before the con and being up for 48 hours straight. it’s all worth it if a chubby little nerd runs up to you.

The photoshoot went well, albeit it was a bit rushed since we (apparently) needed a permit and basically got kicked out. Around noon we decided to drive over to the convention, where we were immediately recognized. The fear of people not realizing who you're dressed up as is always scary. so having people not only know who were were, but also completely freak out when they saw us, was so validating. I had never been to a hotel-con before, but I really liked the closeness of it all- how people there were all in the same cosplay community, no one was judgey, and really just wanted to have a nice time with their friends. The artist's alley and dealer's rooms, although small, had your typical array of con-items (think buttons, prints, keychains, shirts, etc.), without the astronomical prices you'd find at Comic-Con.

Photo: Manny Llanura

After saying a sad goodbye to our one day at ALA, we grabbed some yummy ramen at Shin-Sen-Gumi and took the nicest stroll around rainy Little Tokyo at night. A few days later, we posted some photos onto tumblr were they accumulated ~20k+ notes (a huge shock for both of us), were posted by the director Jorge R. Guiterrez's tumblr, twitter, and facebook, the official Book of Life tumblr reblogged us, man it was just insane. I think we both felt so happy, surprised, and grateful by the response our dorky little costumes elicited.

This movie, and character, meant so much to me. For years, I had loathed being Mexican- all I ever heard in school were horrible stereotypes that made me want as little to do with my culture as possible. Then comes along an innocent little film that is 100% un-apologetically Mexican, that not only lets me know that it's okay to embrace your culture, but that I can and should be so, so proud of it. To me, that was the best part of this cosplay, as silly as it may sound. Maria is by far my most favorite cosplay, and I wear her with so much pride in my heart!

To view the rest of the photos, please visit my tumblr!