Fullmetal Alchemist Cosplay Photoshoot

This is our first cosplay as a family! Pensacon – Pensacola’s premier anime, comic, video game and sci-fi convention – is coming just next weekend, and we were aching for a cosplay project to get back into the swing of things.

We went from doing an average of 10 unique cosplays a year, to just 1 cosplay per year in the past two years. So needless to say, after having Navy boot camp and a new baby throwing off our cosplay groove, we are aching to get back into our favorite hobby!

We had planned on doing a cosplay from Willow, with me being Sorsha, Jonathan as Madmartegan and Tessa as Elora Dannon, but a combination of no time to work on costumes and no money to invest in (good) costume elements has temporarily placed that cosplay on hold. (We’re still hoping to crank this one out later this year!)

Anyway, we were pretty bummed that we didn’t have any new costumes to wear as a family to Pensacon, when we had a really awesome “small world” moment. Diego, one of our good cosplaying friends from California, just happens to be going to school here in Pensacola. And he just happens to be the same height / body build as Jonathan. And he just happens to have an awesome Hughes Maes cosplay costume. And Hughes Maes just happens to have a wife and a baby that are a prominent feature of the character in Fullmetal Alchemist. And Diego just happened to let us borrow his costume for our trip to Pensacon! HOW AWESOME IS THAT?!

So a HUGE thank you, thank you, THANK YOU to our good friend Diego, for making our first full family cosplay a fun and rather epic one. If you haven’t already, you should check out the Vocaloid photoshoot I did with Diego cosplaying as Kaito on Pensacola Beach.

Also a big thank you to our friend Cameron for taking these photos for us! It’s always awesome to have friends that are so chill that you could ask them randomly, “Hey, while we’re hanging out today, could you take photos of us dressed up in anime costumes?”

Since the “family photos” of the Maes family are usually in a rather bland / mundane / home setting, we decided to just take these photos outside of our apartment complex. (Usually our neighbors are used to seeing us leave the house in costume on a regular basis.. these neighbors were kind of like, “Why are the normal couple next door taking family photos dressed like that..?)

So! Here is a bit more about our cosplays (character profiles courtesy of Fullmetal Alchemist Wiki)!

Jonathan cosplayed as Hughes Maes. The costume was borrowed from Diego. Jonathan was excited to finally cosplay a character that allowed him to wear his own glasses! We printed out some wallet prints of us as a family to put in the photo wallet, but aside from the personalized photos and spraying Jon’s hair black, the costume was all Diego’s! More on Hughes Maes:

Hughes Maes is an Amestrian State Military officer stationed in the Investigations Office in Central City and Colonel Roy Mustang’s best friend, as well as the closest supporter of Mustang’s secret bid for the position of Führer. A devoted family man and exemplary soldier, Hughes is generally well-liked by the other characters (unless he is pushing his love of his wife or daughter on them) and his murder serves as the major starting point for the story to unfold.

I cosplayed as Gracia Hughes. We found the dress and cardigan at Goodwill and we picked up the medium cut wig at a wig shop and I cut and loosely styled it into a bob. More on Gracia Hughes:

Gracia Hughes is the kind-hearted wife of Maes Hughes and mother of Elicia Hughes. In the 2003 anime series, Edward Elric, Alphonse Elric and Nina Tucker helped Gracia get through her delivery of the baby by being there for her.

And last but not least, Tessa cosplayed as Elicia Hughes! Since Maes daughter is featured throughout the anime at various ages, and in tons of different outfits, we just put her in a colorful yellow dress and headband, since we figured it would look best for our color scheme. ^_^ More about Elicia Hughes:

Elicia Hughes is the young daughter of Lieutenant Colonel Maes Hughes and his wife Gracia. The apple of the Lt. Colonel’s eye, Elicia and her apparently unfathomable adorableness are the subject of just about all Maes’ casual conversation and grace her father’s presence in the form of a photograph that he carries everywhere and shows to almost everyone.

So that’s our first family cosplay that we’ll be wearing to the convention next weekend! How do we look?