If you follow me on any of my channels, you know that I usually make my own cosplays. But I really wanted to cosplay D.Va from Overwatch while at the same time I was busy with other projects and hit a creative slump. So I figured I’d give buying a cosplay a try!
In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with buying cosplays instead of making them. The reason I don’t (usually) is because I enjoy the process of creating things and that’s a really huge part of cosplay for me. I also realized when I shopped for D.Va that getting cosplays of characters I like in my size is near impossible. More on that later!
I’ll go through this part for part, according to what I bought where. I’ll start with the biggest:
The suit & armor parts
Seller, pricing & shipping
This is the suit I purchased. I know links to the actual items often disappear, so this is the AliExpress seller: Store No.2792191. This was the product picture used:
I paid ￡ 106.32/€121 including shipping, and was lucky to not have it checked in customs. I ordered it on December 16 and received it January 9, so it took a little less than a month to arrive from China to Denmark. That’s pretty good compared to usual shipping times from China, and the package had tracking.
The package was a bit squished, but the contents were fine. Photos:
Quality
I guess the most relevant question is: What’s the quality like. Well, overall, I’m pretty pleased. But there’s things that could be better. First, the armor pieces didn’t look as the references. The gorget (neck armor) was bent and neither that nor the shoulder armor had the colours shown in the product photo. They looked very cheap and plasticy and the shoulder armor wasn’t white, it was more of a transluscent cream. The green circles on the suit and the grey “plugs” on the suit also lacked some proper colour (and were also stitched on very assymetrically). However, I expected the armor parts to be so bad that I’d have to start over on them. But actually, some heat to reshape the gorget back to the intended shape and paints on the armor parts was actually enough to get a result I can live with. It’s obvious that the size of the armor parts doesn’t vary from S to XL, and so it should have been bigger, but for what it is – a mass produced costume – I think it’s great!
The backpack and the pink thingies on the back were both really well made, and the only thing I changed about those was the mounting – they were originally mounted with push buttons, but I changed it to velcro – so they’d be easier to put on and off and so they wouldn’t pop off as easily.
Reshaped and repainted gorget:
The sewing quality was mostly good. My biggest issue was the hip pillows. There were some big pillows (like, actual pillows with lumpy stuffing) ar the hips under the white parts. At first, it seemed the suit was stitched super bad, because it pulled in odd directions at the legs and looked super weird. But I discovered that it was just the “pillow”-seams that made it bunch up like that. When I removed them, the seams were flat as they should be.
The zipper is quite bad, and I’m considering removing it. There’s one at the side seam on the right (which works just fine) and another that goes down the back. The back one gets caught a lot and generally just doesn’t run smoothly. If I was planning to use this a lot at cons where I would need to go to the bathroom, I’d probably replace it – as it’s near impossible for me to get in and out of the suit by myself as it is now!
The gloves are pretty decent. I have long fingers, so they need to stretch a LOT – but it works! The only thing I didn’t like was the pillow stuffing at the wrist. I took it out and replaced it with a strip of 3mm eva foam. Perfect!
Sizing
The first thing I checked was of course – did it fit? I had been in contact with the seller to figure out which size I should by and although none of the size measurements really fit me, seller thought a size XL should do. I’m tall for a lady, especially by Chinese standards, so it was mostly my 173 cm that landed me on that size. Even so, the suit was too short for me. I solved this by taking it apart at the shoulder seam and adding panels of black leather on each shoulder and extending the sleeve cap a bit up to have a larger curve. It’s not perfect, but it works – this part is covered by armor pieces.
The suit was also too big around the waist and around the hips/booty area. Since there’s so many details, this was a bit hard to fix, but I did it by taking in each of the blue panels in front at the waist until it fit. I did the same at the butts with the blue panels behind. I removed the original hip pads (I’m quite wide-hipped and the pillow stuffing looked freaky), but the white fabric parts are made to be padded and looked wrinkly without, so instead I added a thin layer of batting.
This is how the suit looked before I did any altering – I’ll post photos of everything after I altered at the end of this post:
The gun
I purchased my gun on eBay last year, and the seller doesn’t have the item anymore, so I can’t show the same one. I’ve found this posting, which I’m almost certain is the same item, though. I paid around 40 euro for mine including shipping, and it took around a month for it to arrive here from China. Sadly, I don’t have photos of the box, but it was packaged in a very nice box of hard cardboard with a magnetic clasp on the lid and cute print.
This was the stock photos of the gun from the eBay seller:
It came with an acrylic stand for it and a matching pink charging cable. Apart from being perfect for cosplay, it’s also an 8000 mAh powerbank, it lights up and it has a laser pointer and flashlight function as well. I haven’t tested if it really IS 8000 mAh, but it’s at least enough to charge my phone a few times without running out of power.
Beware when buying this, there’s a few other models on eBay as well. One uses the same stock photos, but the price is like 1/10th and so is the size – it’s tiny. Usually the price will indicate and the photo gallery usually has a photo hidden at the end of the actual one they’re sending – which will have way less details and has a phone for size reference!
This is how mine looks – photos with my outfit will come at the end:
It even came with cute instructions:
The headset
My headset is the Razer Meka headset. It’s an actual headset made for gaming, but they made it accurate enough that it can be used for cosplay as well!
They were a gift, but I know they’re from the European Razer webshop. They cost 90 euro – All of the info on shipping etc. is on their webpage.
Seeing as it was a gift, I don’t know exact dates, but I think it took around a week to ship, and no issues with customs, since it was within Europe.
The sound quality is really good, but they also block out a lot of outside noise – great when gaming, not so good when cosplaying. I still managed to hear my photographers’ instructions, so it’s workable, but you do walk around in a bit of an echo chamber when wearing them.
They do have a microphone, but it’s not visible, since it sits within the ear cups. The quality is pretty good, good enough for voice chat in games.
The headset wire is the one thing that kind of bugs me. They made this great copy of the ingame headset that I’m sure they considered people would use for costumes. Yet the wire cannot be removed. It’s not a huge thing, because it’s easy enough to hide it under the suit, but it would be nicer to not worry about a wire.
Also, the connection is a single 2,5mm jack. I’m not sure why they chose that. If they had gone with USB, they could have made it light up, which it doesn’t. Single jacks are almost never used in desktops, and most people who game use desktops. I had to get an adapter to be able to use the microphone with my gaming computer, which is a bit silly for a headset made for gamers.
But overall, I really like the headset. It’s comfortable to wear and good quality.
Wig
There’s honestly not much to say about the wig. It’s also a cheap AliExpress one, and I’m not 100% satisfied with it. It’s very shiny and the colour is pretty flat. I’d recommend shopping for something else, but if you really like how mine looks, this is where I got it.
I cut the bangs shorter before wearing it.
Final words:
Overall, my experience buying a cosplay is pretty good! The final price is around the same as what I would have spent on making it myself, maybe a bit less. The time spent is a LOT less than I would have spent, and I see the attraction. I wanted to cospaly D.Va, so I could cosplay with my boyfriend, who does mostly Overwatch cosplays, and because I like her character. If I had 0 clue on how to sew, I would have been pretty disappointed with this cosplay, though. I did have to do some important alterations to make it look good. Of course you can find other cosplays where they make the cosplay to fit, but that limits the selection a lot. Either way, I think this cosplay turned out really nice, and I’m happy with the results.