À La Carte

I said I was going to get a cosplay and so I did! My dad gave me $100 to buy this cosplay… but it really cost $103 something. Dx

First thing’s first, I did NOT make the outfit. I bought it from lawrara shop. ( Website | Cosplay (Blue) | Cosplay (Pink) )

While it came in record fast time… I’m still slightly disappointed…

When I finally had the money and decided upon getting the blue or pink version of the outfit, the sale on the item ended THAT DAY. O__O; So I contacted the shop owner (Clara) to ask if the sale was really over. I got a response within 24 hours! Well she gave a good explanation as to why the sales were over and surprisingly… even offered to give me an extra pair of socks if I order that day. Now I wanted those socks. They’re the 70cm socks that basically come up to your thighs. I’ve never had one and really wanted one. The outfit already comes with a free pair of black socks so I chose white socks as my extra choice.

yes all sales are over. coz recently the chinese dollar,
japanese yen and all stuffs in Hong Kong are price up.
Business is getting more hard to do.

The outfit was ordered on Thursday, May 15 and was shipped the following day. My kuya (well, actually my brother-in-law) was the one who ordered it for me so it was sent to his house. I’m not exactly sure when it arrived but he came over to my house to give it to me on Wednesday, May 21. Less than a week to get here! I immediately ripped open the package and examined the contents.

While I was happy, I was extremely disappointed. The first thing I noticed was that the ribbons throughout the outfit were a different color. I counted 3 shades of blue (actually, one’s more white) used for the ribbons.

Here’s a picture of the sleeve. I had to turn the flash off or else it makes the ribbon look like it’s the same color throughout — which it isn’t. If you look well enough you can tell that the ribbons are a different color. The “bow” is a periwinkle-ish blue while the ribbon that runs down the sleeve is more cyan. That was the first thing I noticed when I opened the package. However, that wasn’t the only difference.

The back part of the outfit… The bows in the outfit are all the same color (sleeves, back, and skirt) but the other ribbons used in the outfit are different colors. Here, the ribbon used is more of a white! It doesn’t even look CLOSE to the color of the bow. For some strange reason though, the back doesn’t bother me as much as the sleeves do. Still, if they think that nobody’s going to notice that… that’s just stupid.

Another gripe of mine is that the ribbon on the skirt isn’t even straight. It’s tilting like crazy. Although I suppose that can be fixed… But I definitely can’t fix this:

There is a HUGE space between the bow and the ribbon on the skirt. Perhaps it isn’t too noticeable from afar but it truly does bother me.

Here are more pictures of the outfit:

While it is fairly accurate and a somewhat high quality, I am extremely disappointed. The fact that the ribbons are all different colors just kills it. If they were all the same I could live with the bows on the skirt being a few cm apart… but the colors of the ribbons?! Ugh… At least the socks were nice. I’m wondering if they gave me the crappy version just because I had to go and complain about the sale being over. I mean… I wasn’t really complaining. I was just asking if it was truly over. -__-;

Well I e-mailed Clara telling her that I got the outfit and love it – save for the ribbons. She said that she’s glad that I like it and that I should write a review on the site. However, she did not address my concern towards the ribbons at all. I’m debating whether or not I should e-mail them again. I doubt that they’d do anything about it though… but that’s definitely not good. I guess I should have been suspicious when I saw that all the reviews on the site are either 4 stars or 5 stars – and that there are so few of them. That means that all the bad reviews they decided not to put up in order to save face. Ick… I even looked at the commissioner review thread on cosplay.com to see if they’re a good place to buy from. They’re average score is a B. D: I wonder what compelled me to not even bother to suspect that!

I guess this is what I get for being ignorant. ^__^; It was definitely not worth $103. Besides, I didn’t even get the outfit custom sized (that means +$30 and more time). Instead, I bought one of the pre-sized items. You would think that those would be at least NICER. I honestly don’t think I’m going to buy from there again…

Final Grade: B-

Pros:

- GREAT communication!

- Fast shipping.

- Fabric is nice!

Cons:

- HORRIBLE …. HORRIBLE D< ribbon-ness…

- Suspicious site regarding reviews. T__T

Sure the pros outweigh the cons… but the ribbon incident just killed it for me. However, like I said earlier, the outfit is fairly accurate. I found a higher-quality looking (yet more expensive) version on a Japanese site. ( Blue | Pink | Hat ) They even sell a hat! And on the back, they even have the school crest thing. (How they managed to find a good reference image for that I’m not sure).

Oh!! I didn’t even talk about where the cosplay is from! Well it’s from another visual novel by Navel. Apparently it’s not even out yet (coming June 2008.) It’s called Oretachi ni Tsubasa wa Nai — 俺たちに翼はない Apparently it literally translates to “We Don’t Have Wings”. It seems like a really nice name if you ask me. It is shortened to Oretsuba sometimes. Also, on the official site (here and here), I see the words “Under the Innocent Sky” there as well. It seems like a good series and I’d really like to play it one day if it were to get translated. Hopefully there will even be an anime!

I think I’ll make another post on the game itself and all my findings! ^__^ Until then~

(( And maybe I’ll post some pictures up of me wearing the outfit! Maybe I can even manage to find a similar colored ribbon and fix that darn thing myself, either that or go to some tailor to get it fixed >Hopefully that won’t be too expensive!< Oh, and another thing that I forgot to note down. This thing is HOT! I don’t know how I’m going to survive wearing this to AX! XD )) :D