The world is full of cosplayers, but when Yaya Han debuts a new cosplay, the world takes notice.
The award-winning cosplay veteran recently debuted a new photoshoot of herself dressed as Princess Mononoke from the beloved Studio Ghibli film of the same name (Mononoke Hime in its original Japanese), and she gave Playboy a peek behind the scenes.
“My friend Pixel Stitcher gave me this costume almost a year ago, but I hadn’t worn it until now because I was waiting for the right location to take photos in,” Han told Playboy. “Bear Lake in the Rocky Mountain Nation Park was beyond perfect and I got really excited in the weeks prior to the trip to fix up this older costume. I was super comfortable in it and had so much fun posing as San. I know Mononoke Hime, the film, inside out from having watched it dozens of times over the years, so it felt really natural to get in character immediately. Crouch, crawl, climb… just go feral! I had a quick change mechanism for the weapon prop to go from a dagger to a staff, so in each photo set up, we were like ‘Dagger or staff?’ I’m just stoked to return to my childhood and play dress up with this cosplay! And so thankful to my dear friend Pixel Stitcher for letting me give a 2nd life to her old costume!”
While Han was gifted the Princess Mononoke costume itself, she did do some of her own work constructing it.
“I airbrushed the dress and apron to look dirty, sewed a loose desert weave layer to the apron and tweaked some small parts like the necklace. I also made a dagger head out of EVA foam with an interchangeable handle for a staff, which made posing more fun,” she says.
Han told Playboy that the shoot took place thanks to a Rockies trip through a friend group on Discord.
“12 of us rented a cabin in Estes Park, all of us cosplayers from different regions in the US, and ran around the mountains for 3 days in various costumes, taking photos of each other and seriously confounding the tourists. It was awesome!”
Sounds like a dream trip!
