Kai – Heavenly Sword’s slightly unstable support character – is quite memorable thanks to her unique look. The red-kneed protagonist not only gets to play with a massive crossbow, but uses every inch of the environment as her playground. Cosplayer Harajuku Ninja did a fantastic job of capturing conflicting sides of Kai, from the fun-loving youth to the more serious and troubled sister to Nariko. Check out her gallery below!

Who: The Character
Kai from the PS3 videogame, Heavenly Sword.

Why: The Decision
When the Heavenly Sword commercial came out, I automatically fell in love with it, and even more so after playing the game! Nariko and Kai were both lovely, but Kai stuck out to me the most. I feel I was more like her and I usually cosplay the younger, “childish” characters.

What: The Process
The costume itself was hardly difficult, I didn't use any patterns and I found a lot of the extra strings and fabric around my house. Some of the outfit has been updated though and brought into more detail over time. The most difficult part of this whole cosplay was the giant crossbow! It took me three tries before I considered it decent enough to show off. The outfit was made of mostly cotton and the crossbow was constructed of mainly cardboard, masking tape, hot glue and Styrofoam. I was even able to hook it onto my back like Kai does in the game. :)

Where and When: The Debut
I first debuted the costume at Fanime 2008, I ended up with a lot of random photos from photographers at the convention, but I do a full photo shoot until I was back home and my sister (an aspiring photographer) took some nice shots of me in it.

Links: The Cosplayer
You can find me on DeviantArt!

The Gallery

Miss the past few CosBlogs? Check out the CosBlog Hub for a full archive and information on how to submit a costume of your own.