Hardcore cosplayers make their own costumes, and for Reika Saiki, that includes building her body to get Chun-Li’s thighs.
With so many popular female characters from anime and video games being on the busty side, the cosplay community has come up with some clever solutions for simulating a larger chest, such as shapely cloth breastplates to be worn under the costume itself. However, no amount of bust-enhancing trickery can help you if you’re cosplaying as Street Fighter’s Chun-Li, a character whose defining physical characteristic is her extremely muscular thighs.
As these photos show, if you’re going to pull off an authentic Chun-Li cosplay, there are no shortcuts you can take by putting something inside your costume. Instead, you’ve got to put yourself in the gym, like Japan’s “muscle idol” Reika Saiki, and never, ever skip leg day.
Dressed in Chun-Li’s iconic blue fighting dress, Saiki shows off her powerful quads, following up on previous showcases of her well-muscled arms, back, and abs. Nitpickers might criticize her bracelets for not matching the spiked version the character sports in-game, but others will wisely choose to keep such complaints to themselves, since it looks like Saiki could kick any killjoys through a wall should they do anything to make her lose her smile.
What’s more, look closely and you’ll see that since she didn’t have any spiked bracelets handy for the photo shoot, Saiki instead has a one-kilogram (2.2-pound) weight strapped to each of her wrists, which means that even while she’s cosplaying she’s still working out.
Which, honestly, is totally appropriate for someone who’s cosplaying as a character who’s win quote is “I’m the strongest woman in the world.”
Source: Twitter/@saikireika via Hachima Kiko