Who knew Uniqlo was such a good place to hunt for an an iconic anime costume?
With summer in full swing, it’s not only the season of the sun, but the season of the anime convention. The biggest, of course, is Tokyo’s upcoming summer Comiket dojinshi manga gathering, but even if you’re not making the trip to the capital of anime’s home country, odds are there’s some sort of otaku-oriented event going on in your neck of the woods in the next few weeks.
So if you were hoping to pull off a completely convincing cosplay of an iconic anime character, but haven’t started putting your costume together yet, you might think it’s too late. But take heart, because Japan’s favorite affordable clothing brand, Uniqlo, actually has a surprisingly faithful cosplay of one of the medium’s biggest stars, ready to go right off the rack!
Sounds too good to be true? Take a look at this mannequin Japanese Twitter user @3_miso_3 spotted in a branch of the chain, and the idea of Uniqlo-prepared anime cosplay goes from hard to believe to hard to deny.
To the non-otaku-trained eye, that might look like an ordinary ensemble of a pale blue shirt, worn open over a red T-shirt and paired with some simple yet chic black pants. But to anime fans, whether they’ve been watching since the 1980s or just last February, that outfit is unmistakably the fashion of…
…Ryo Saeba, a.k.a. City Hunter!
“I was at Uniqlo, and someone said ‘That combination is really cute!’ but all I can see is City Hunter,” tweeted @3_miso_3, and judging from the 75,000-plus likes her discovery has racked up, plenty of people agree.
While a side-by-side comparison reminds us that Ryo actually wears a blazer, not an unbuttoned overshirt, the similarity is so strong that it’s hard to imagine that the Uniqlo clerk who dressed the mannequin wasn’t intentionally trying to replicate Ryo’s signature style (we’re still not entirely sure if H&M’s stealthy Gundam Wing cosplay was just a coincidence, though).
@3_miso_3 doesn’t mention which specific Uniqlo she saw this at, but one of the chain’s flagship Tokyo stores is in Shinjuku, right down the street from Shinjuku Station, where Ryo has been rendezvousing with clients seeking his private investigator/bodyguard skills for decades, and it seems like such a display at that particular branch would seriously boost sales.
But really, the more pressing question is if Ryo’s clothes are on the mannequin, does that mean that the City Hunter is naked right now? Not that that would be against his personality or anything…
Source: Twitter/@3_miso_3 via Hachima Kiko
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