“It’s not a con’ until the Shinsengumi march!” (Clint Hay, photographer)
It was day two of Sakura-Con, and we had just finished having dinner at the Elephant and Castle restaurant/pub underneath the Red Lion hotel in Seattle; there were the seven of us from Vancouver in various states of cosplay, as well as a new friend we had made at the con dressed as Kenshin Himura. We were back in our hotel room at the Seattle Sheraton, trying to decide what to do next. Two of the girls in our group (two hotel rooms) had done some elaborate Trinity Blood cosplays and felt it would be a waste to not wear them more at the convention (while at the same time agreeing that they were absolute pains to get in and out of); “Kenshin” herself was planning on going to the dance that would start in the next hour; I mostly just wanted to get back into the convention center to take more pictures.
Well, our plans started to come around fairly quickly when one of the other Trinity Blood cosplayers called us with the room phone. In just three words, our night was set:
“Shinsengumi night march...”
We all came together through a love of martial arts, history, and samurai anime like Rurouni Kenshin and Peacemaker Kurogane. From there, we’ve become – and I’ve yet to fully confirm this, but we believe we’ve become – the largest Shinsengumi cosplaying group in all of North America with about a dozen “core members” as well about half a dozen part-time (reserve?) people who meet with us whenever they can. Over at Anime Evolution’s forums we have the longest-running thread ever with (at present) over 1,500 posts and over 11,000 views since originally being created in July of 2006.
Our first official gathering happened at Anime Evolution 2006 in Vancouver, BC, where seven of us got together for a photo shoot; the following year, six of us got out of country to Sakura-Con of that year. Come time for Anime Evolution 2007 again in August, our numbers had doubled to the point where we had fifteen Shinsengumi cosplayers (and one Shinsengumi Domo-kun plushie).
As for marching, well… the tradition began at AE 2007 when we built a couple large red and white Shinsengumi flags and deemed that the most prudent means of showing them (and us) off to the convention-goers would be to “patrol the convention” with a formation march. We did two marches: a “night march” on the first day, and a “daylight march” on the last. There’s just something really exciting about being in a group of uniformed samurai as they make their way through crowds of an anime convention and watching that very crowd slowly make way for you. It’s exciting, it’s a little empowering, and it’s just a whole ton of fun.
So that’s us: the Vancouver contingent of Shinsengumi cosplayers.
Back to Saturday in Seattle, all of us in our hotel room (save the one young “Kenshin” who got to watch this sudden transformation) quickly started changing, pulling out our gi and kimono, our hakama, our tabi, our bokken… and of course, our blue and white Shinsengumi haori. Further, being the insidious dreamer I am, I also had a sachel slung around my body with an iPod, a small set of portable speakers, and a songlist of the most epic “marching” music I had.
By about 8pm that night we were gathered on the ground floor of the convention center – seven Miburo (the nickname meaning, depending on whom you ask, either “Mibu Ronin” or “Wolves of Mibu”), one large makoto flag, and one “Kenshin”. After some quick photos, we popped into our column-formation. Our fully-armoured spear-carrier led the front, followed by two columns of the rest of us; “Kenshin”, meanwhile, walked in the center of our formation – a “prisoner escort”, if you will. So we escorted her to the dance.
We had plenty of opportunities for pictures as we were starting on the lowest level of the convention center and the dances were all on the sixth level. I imagine we must have been quite the spectacle, especially with our tight, orderly formation and bombastic "taiga-drama" music playing from some unseen source… and yes, it really is about as ridiculous as it sounds.
