I’m a 34 year old chef from Anchorage, Alaska with a giant penchant for anime and videogames. I grew up mostly playing videogames during the majority of my free time and got into anime in the early 2000’s. My collecting spree really began back in 2012 when I started going to conventions again after a 3 year hiatus (due to my job at the time). After attending Sakura-Con for my first time and having plenty of disposable income I was able to see just how much merch there was for a lot of my favorite series, old and new.
My latest prop was Sanji’s bazooka from One Piece Film: Strong World. His whole outfit that goes with the prop has been on my list ever since I decided to do as many different outfits of his as I possibly could, and finally I felt I had the skills necessary to do it at least SOME justice. It took me over a month to finish as I worked on it for a least an hour or two after my work shift every night.
I’ve lived in my current home for 10 years now. I lived here every other week with my mother for several years beforehand, but when I was able to move in myself and call it my own home I realized I could hang up the few posters I’d amassed wherever I wanted in the house, and could display all of my games and anime merchandise in my living room. It really made it feel like “MY” house.
Now I pretty much have something anime or game related on display in every room of my house save for my bathroom, and of course the volume of displayed stuff has only increased over the years.
After 4 years in college I changed my major to culinary arts, and during that time I ended up starting the series “One Piece” after seeing a friend of mine posting some clips online. My only exposure prior to it had been the infamous “4Kids” dub, but after watching these new clips I decided to bite the bullet and plunge in.
Now it’s my absolute favorite current series. After being hooked I knew I had to cosplay from it, and remembered the character Sanji was known as the cook of the Straw Hat Pirates, and after seeing him in action I felt I’d found “my” character.
(photo princesskyuu)
After cosplaying as him to various cons in 2012 I got the wild idea to try and start my own cosplay page & persona on Facebook, and from there I decided to try and branch out by doing a cooking series on YouTube as Sanji as sort of a “hook”; not just a cosplayer but also a real chef.
Cooking has become my career and a big part of my life, and seeing it seep into the anime and manga world drew me to certain characters in some of my, now, favorite series, such as JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure and Food Wars/Shokugeki no Soma.
While I’ve only cosplayed as 3 chef characters total thus far, my friends and fans all see me as synonymous with with any character that enjoys cooking, and this is the best I could hope for as a fan and a cosplayer.