Appreciating anime: Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon

Maria is busy with schoolwork (correcting tests and such) so this post is written by yours truly. As the title says this blog entry is about appreciating anime. Today it will be about Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon. It also doubles as our first super duper high school level awesome revelation about our first World Cosplay Summit costumes. 

Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon is an epic story about post-apocalyptic world where people have fled to space and when the space become a place not possible to live in human race returned. Unfortunately Earth is wasteland and dangerous so people live in all-powerful flying schools, have special powers (varying from archery to epic negotiation skills) and try to re-live mankind's history with the help of a book called "Testament". Somewhere everything went wrong and now Japanese people fight with Englishmen, Spanish Armada makes surprise attacks (by playing baseball) and no one knows what Italy and France are up to. To ensure the world peace (and to prevent destruction) Japanese school with their leader Toori Aoi have decided to take control of "eight armaments", big ass all-powerful weapons. Everything is backed up with an awesome OST so you should really watch the series (if you haven't already watched it).

When Kyoukai Senjou no Horizon first began in 2011 (my season 3 where?) I was anxious about the series. Due to lack of English translations I challenged my Japanese skills and began to watch the series without subtitles. That was an interesting experience because the language they use in Horizon is far from being easy (Something like Love Live! School Idol Project or Pokemon XY I can easily watch without subtitles). Characters talk and negotiate a lot and use different kinds of dialects. During the first episode I understood about half of the plot of the episode. This led me to put the series on hold for a while.

Then when the second season was airing I again remembered the series again and there were even official version of the first season available. So I began watching first season, loved it and watched the second season (loved it even more!).

Horizon consists of many levels of awesome. While it isn't the easiest series one to understand it offers enjoyment, a cast of around 60 to 100 characters, some of which are very well built, wide world to explore, and very serious themes concerning love, equality, war, peace, human emotion, and need to make the world to a better place. For a person who likes to learn about history it also offers many characters with the names of a real historical people. Some people may find the character designs and the amount of characters overwhelming but a more experienced watcher of anime will most definitely find Horizon to be a great series.  

When  I love something as much as love Horizon I just have to cosplay from it. If I had a lot of free time and unlimited amount of money (and awesome skills) I would cosplay at least 15 characters from series - from the best (reverse)trap Masazumi Honda to half-wolf Neito (Nate?) Mitotsudaira to megane-cutie Adele Balfetto. My non-cosplayable favorite is Kimi Aoi but making her hair (being Kimi-tier awesome!) would be impossible.

Kimi is being awesome here

During the second season of the series I found my favorite. The main idea of the second season is to get another armament back from Britannia and to achieve it Toori and his companions have to negotiate with Queen Elizabeth of England (yes, that Queen). The most important character of the second season is Elizabeth's twin, Mary Stuart (yes, that Mary Stuart) who just happens to be blonde girl with a blue outfit. With buttcape. Many dokis were had.

Mary is adorable and perfect

We had already planned to cosplay Horizon and the series was one of the candidates for the preliminary costumes. Unfortunately we lacked skit ideas for the series so we postponed our plans and made Melty and Maxima instead.  After we had won the prelims I had Maria to watch the second season of the series (she had already liked the first season) so that we could cosplay Horizon for World Cosplay Summit. Maria also found her favorite character and so the plans were set!

So here we are: presenting our first WCS costumes: Mary Stuart (ceremonialish outfit) and  Tomo Asama (ceremonial outfit).  Blonde Mary for me and blue-haired miko for Maria.

These lovely  ladies are for the parade and we are sure that hyperthermia will be our best friend. We are hoping to wear these in Desucon Frostbite (14.2-16.2.2014, do buy your ticket if you are over 18 years of age! This is a paid advertisement! Meaning that we pay to Desucon so we can advertise them.). Hopefully on Friday.

So, the first costumes are now out. Next time we shall be posting about our trip to Eurokangas (this is also a paid advertisement).

Ps. After I wrote the text, I just had to re-watch the series. It was more awesome than I even remembered. Deserves 10 out of 10 and A++ for an awesome OST (3rd season where? Deliver it already, Sunrise!).