Lady Kaneda // AKIRA

Completed: January 2014
Worn to: Photoshoot

Inspiration

AKIRA, along with Ghost in the Shell / Armitage / Iria, had such a huge influence on me when I was young junior high school student. I was always interested in sci-fi, but the dark, dystopian vision of the future in Japanese science fiction really resonated with me and had a profound influence on how I view the world and the future. There is something truly unique about how Japanese science fiction portrays and examines mankind’s interactions with technology and in many ways I feel like AKIRA is even more relevant now than when it was made. I also thought that Kaneda was one of the most badass characters of all time and I’m very glad that I was able to fulfill my childhood dream of getting to BE him.

Construction

A lot of you Ninjas have been asking about my jacket. It’s an AKIRA replica jacket and set me back ~$250 buckaroos. That’s way more than I usually shell out for a costume piece, but it was very important to me to have the right jacket for this. I’m not even going to pretend that I have the necessary skills to make a leather jacket like this – my sewing machine probably isn’t even good enough to make it. Honestly, I think the expense was totally worth it; I would have literally killed for this jacket when I was in high school. LITERALLY! 

Overall, this costume was more an exercise in styling than costume-making. AKIRA Jacket is from AngelJackets, I took a pair of red coated denim jeans (coated = shiny) and ripped them apart to add in the black moto-stripes along the sides, the gloves and spike bra were re-purposed from my Lady Bane costume, and I used a pair of sunglasses and shoes from my personal wardrobe. The helmet is from Amazon (you can also find the bra and gloves from Amazon).

I thought about using my red leather Captain America gloves for this costume (it’s more accurate to Kaneda’s design) but I ultimately thought that black driving gloves looked better. Similarly, I added the black moto-striped to the jeans because I thought they broke up the overwhelming red of the costume and gave the look a more feminine touch.

 Photos by Geri Kramer Photography – Palmdale, CA