Griffith - the oh so charming villain of the cult anime "Berserk" - is the first megalomaniac cosplay I've ever done, for Japanizam 2013, to mark the beginning of Sakurabana’s partnership with EuroCosplay. I was wearing it while hosting the cosplay competition and I almost died of a heat stroke under the stage spotlights in early July, but I do believe that the costume had served its purpose: to raise the standards of the Serbian cosplay scene.

The thing is, here in Serbia cosplay is still a young, developing hobby, and back in early 2013 costume armors were a true rarity. In fact, I daresay they were basically non-existent: Griffith's armor is one of the very first projects of this scope and ambition made in the Serbian cosplay community. And damn, it felt awesome being a pioneer – even though it was tough as hell, given that we had no one to ask for advice, and foreign tutorials were of little use as they all recommended fancy crafting materials that were (and still are) unavailable in this part of the world.

The mastermind of the project was my bestie Vladimir Matić-Kurylev – also known as Shunak – who basically had to reinvent the wheel by thinking up of a feasible crafting method and finding the material we could use. It was a true art to look at everyday objects and see parts of the armor in them: the gorget is made of a bucket, the shoulder parts are flower pots, the breastplate consists of two pieces of floor padding boards glued together, while the legs and the bracers are water pipes. Add hours and hours of hard work with sandpaper, acrylic putty and several shades of silver paint, and you have it, you have a Griffith.

But let's get to my favorite topic: why did I choose Griffith? “Berserk“ holds a very special place in my heart: it was the first anime I’ve ever seen. With the cruelty of its plot twists and psychological complexity of its characters, it absolutely blew my mind and got me hooked on anime as such. It was my official Beginning of Madness. And Griffith was my first encounter with the ever-popular Japanese trope of a white-haired prettyboy bent ondestroying the world just because he can’t get what he wants – becoming my very first fangirl obsession.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those apologists who believe that he can get away with anything just because he’s beautiful, or that “poor honey” was “out of his mind” or had “good reasons” to do what he did. I do not think Griffith is a good person whose bad deeds can be forgiven or even justified, nor do I find him oh so cool and awesome in his egomania. Quite the contrary. Griffith fascinates me because he’s WEAK.

When we meet him, Griffith is charismatic, talented, pretty as a picture, born under a lucky star, well-intentioned, madly ambitious and smart enough to make his plans come true. At first glance, he seems so perfect that he himself starts harboring the delusion that he’s an Übermensch, standing high above all those primitive human things such as emotions. And yet, and yet. It’s exactly his hurt feelings – feelings he claimed he did not have – that led him to the path of self-destruction, when he first spectacularly f*cked up his own life, and then made one of the ugliest moves ever seen in fiction, spectacularly f*cking up the lives of everyone he ever knew and bringing us one of the most traumatic last episodes in anime history. There is something deeply human in his downfall, something devastatingly tragic in the most classical sense of the word, because in the tragedies of the Old Greeks, it was always said that the biggest sin a man could commit was believing he was equal to gods.

Given my love for all things creepy and my soft spot for tragic villains, it was only natural that I’d grow attached to a bastard like Griffith. Turning into him for one afternoon – exactly ten years after I watched “Berserk” for the first time – was a fangirl dream come true.

This cosplay is also special because that’s how I met Endymion, my cosplay partner. It was completely by accident that we appeared as Guts and Griffith at the same convention, but we felt instant strong chemistry between us and happily posed together, starting a wonderful partnership which would bring us many more joint projects.



Credits:
Armor and Behelit by Vladimir Matić-Kurylev
Cape and pants by Ana Barajević and Marina Anđelković
Makeup by Ljubica Mirković
Guts by Endymion

Pics by Ivana Aleksić, Chi En, Vladan Stošoć, Bojan Brankov, Dušan Ć.