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“How is your cosplay so perfect…?” “How did you escape from the movie screen?!” “Are you ACTUALLY Hiro?”

For Filipino artist and self-confessed “cosplay dork” Jin, questions like these are a regular occurrence. Already an internationally recognised cosplayer, when promo images for Big Hero 6 were released last year, Jin began to get messages from fans pointing out an uncanny resemblance to the film’s central protagonist Hiro Hamada. Which is pretty interesting, seeing Big Hero 6 is a Disney movie and Hiro is, of course, computer-animated.

Intrigued, Jin tried it out – and has been cosplaying Hiro ever since. Fast-forward a few months and Jin and friends continue to produce incredibly realistic, beautifully produced photos of cosplayed Big Hero 6 scenes. Join us after the jump as we take a look!

In case you haven’t seen the movie and don’t know what Hiro looks like, here’s the Big Hero 6 trailer:

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And here’s Jin cosplaying him!

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Hiro is Disney’s first Japanese protagonist, and also the only character in the movie with that awesome spiky anime hair. All in all he’s just about the ideal Disney character to cosplay.

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In a blog post on tumblr, Jin goes into some detail about the disarming experience of seeing a Disney character that looks just like you. When Jin and cosplay buddy Miguel saw a picture of Hiro for the first time, they were both so struck by the likeness that Miguel said, “like seeing Disney renders of you!” And when the pair finally saw the movie together, Miguel kept prodding Jin, going “It’s you! It’s you!”

There really are some striking physical similarities – as we can see in this imagine Jin posted of the shape of their front teeth side-by-side.

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That’s not to say that the likeness is all natural though. There’s an impressive amount of work gone into completing this look, from the hand-finished wig to the tea leaves Jin uses to black out Hiro’s tooth gap.

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Here’s Jin with fellow cosplayer Miguel as Hiro’s big brother Tadashi, for a series of shots cosplaying the family.

▼ They’ve both got that crooked smile down to a tee, for sure.

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With cosplay group Tuxedo Team, Jin and Miguel focus on shoots, rather than attending cosplay competitions. In an interview with Filipino Japan pop culture website Magnetic Rose a few years ago, Jin explained the motivation behind this:

“My friends and I aren’t really the competitive sort so we’re really happy just coming up with photos that express our appreciation for a series. A lot of our costumes are quite simple, so there’s not much point in competing with them against the many brilliant cosplayers in our local community.”

Above all, the team’s Big Hero 6 cosplay series is proof that a simple idea done really well can be the most effective art.

▼ Here they are joined by NyanKat as Aunt Cass.

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▼ Check out the characters next to their animated counterparts.

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Sources: Facebook/Jin (behindinfinity), Tumblr (behindinfinity)
Related: Facebook/Miguel merkymerx, Kat Langomez
Images: Facebook/Jin (behindinfinity), DeviantArt (behindinfinity) unless otherwise stated
[ Read in Japanese ]