Speech preparation goes down the drain, but at least he was ready for some crossplay.

As we saw recently with a fantastic yet accidental recreation of hit anime Kemono Friends character Kaban-chan, sometimes you choose to cosplay, and sometimes cosplay chooses you. While the SoraNews24 science team hasn’t yet been able to determine the exact conditions under which cosplay decides to attach itself to a person, living in close proximity to hard-core anime otaku may be a factor, as suggested by the tale of Japanese Twitter user @komugimaimai’s father.

Recently, @komugimaimai’s dad went on a business trip, during which he needed to make an important presentation. He’d prepared various documents and other materials to help make his points, which he’d placed in a rolling suitcase to take with him.

Despite all that preparation, though, Dad got careless at the very last step of his pre-departure preparations, which resulted in a very awkward situation, as relayed by @komugimaimai.

https://twitter.com/komugimaimai/status/966286494599008257

“My dad took a rolling suitcase with him for the presentation he’s giving on his business trip, but the suitcase he took is the one I keep my cosplay stuff in. To make things worse, he didn’t open the suitcase until he got to the conference room, so everyone saw he was carrying around a PreCure costume. It’s like he was outed as a 183-centimeter-tall husband and father who’s also really into PreCure. Or maybe the fact that he’s secretly a PreCure magical girl has been revealed.”

For those who aren’t fans, PreCure, officially titled Pretty Cure, is a phenomenally popular magical girl anime aimed at elementary school kids, but with a secondary fanbase of adult male otaku who’re charmed by tales of young female friendship. While @komugimaimai doesn’t specify which specific costume from the ensemble-cast franchise was in the suitcase, the series’ outfits are pretty much all sparkly, lacy, or otherwise girlishly pretty.

▼ Some PreCure cosplay outfits

https://twitter.com/KURE_KANAME/status/963422337289789441

Startled as he must have been, @komugimaimai’s dad has taken the incident in good-natured stride. After @komugimaimai’s story racked up more than 20,000 retweets, Dad generously offered to let his offspring share a snapshot of his face, to drive home the gap between an everyday, middle-aged businessman and the perky young anime heroine the costume was designed for. “But then people will know you’re Pretty Cure!” @komugimaimai said, to which Pop replied “I’ll become even more famous!” before changing his tune with “But let’s not. Your mom will be jealous over all the fans I’ll get.”

No word on whether Dad, who ostensibly had to wing the presentation since he didn’t have his materials, decided to make lemons out of lemonade and give his speech while wearing the costume.

Source: Twitter/@ komugimaimai (1, 2) via Kinisoku
Top image: Pakutaso

Follow Casey on Twitter, where he can neither confirm nor deny that the SoraNews24 science team is just the collection of staff members who’ve watched the most episodes of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman.