sanguinecha.me/leon

I Cosplayed as Miyano

01-Apr-2026

Note: This post was published on April Fools' Day 2026. Make of that what you will.

When it comes to other people, I can roughly categorize them into 6 categories:

  1. Those who have authority (directly or otherwise) over me
  2. Those who know me (online or otherwise) for nerd stuff (including but not limited to IOI, Codeforces, Project Euler, all that jazz)
  3. Those who know me for non-nerd stuff
  4. Those who are my IRL nerd friends
  5. Those who are my IRL non-nerd friends
  6. Those who are just random Internet strangers

(These categories are not mutually exclusive.)

I invite you, dear reader, to consider which categories you fall under.

For those in Category 1, oh my god, I'm so sorry. Why are you reading this. Please stop.

For those in Category 6, thanks for stopping by! I hope you enjoy your time here.

But anyway, this whole stunt is an attempt to simultaneously unify and give heart attacks to everyone in Categories 2 to 5.

I cosplayed as Miyano.

T-minus 1 year

Back in 2025, I was but a young, self-conscious boy in his first year of university. One day, I happened to find myself at Gardens by the Bay for completely unrelated reasons.

As luck would have it, that day was March 9, the second day of Anime Garden 2025.

So I thought to myself:

"Wow, these anime cosplayers look stupid."

"But they look like they're having fun!"

"Nah, they look stupid."

"But maybe I would find it fun!"

"You won't. You don't have the looks for it. You'd just be an idiot there."

"But–"

"No."

So young Leo just wallowed there, knowing full well he'd never ever go cosplaying.

T-minus 2 months

Unlike young Leo, now I have infinite rizz, so of course I'm gonna go cosplaying.

I took a look and yep, they're doing it again this year. March 21 and March 22.

Great! Let's just order a costume online and–

Estimated Delivery Date: March 23, 2026

oh god oh frick oh god oh frick–

T-minus 3 weeks

I spent another Sunday preparing for stuff. I pestered my hairstylist once again (bless her), restocked my contact lenses (astigmatism sucks), you know, self-care and all that.

I had ordered Miyano's typical school uniform and it was on its way (earlier than expected, very thankfully). But just to be safe, I wanted to buy a different outfit. Physically, of course. No more gambling with online stuff.

Sometimes Miyano wears a blue sweater vest over his white button-up shirt. The white shirt would be easy, so I focused on buying a blue vest.

So I bought a blue vest.

…

I said, I bought a blue vest.

…

I said, I bought a blue vest.

…

Okay, I don't know if there was an issue on my end, but there are exactly 0 blue sweater vests that are available for purchase in Singapore. Exactly 0.

I racked up over 20k steps just running around every possible retail store.

But, well, my package literally arrived the next day, and it was fine.

So all's good, perhaps.

T-minus 2 weeks

Honestly, these 2 weeks sucked.

I had midterms to study for (which I didn't have time for during revision week, since I was occupied with other things), and a whole bunch of other responsibilities scattered throughout that I had to deal with.

It was just really unfortunate timing. I don't think I could've done anything better.

It didn't help that one of the midterms was particularly horrible. I'm not one to complain, so the rare times I do, you know how bad it was. I probably did fine though. (they haven't even released the results at the time of writing this, would you believe?)

Luckily, I ended up mostly unscathed, and I was able to arrange 2 (TWO) whole days off where I could just do nothing but be resident gayboy.

I got a bit sick on Thursday, but I pretty much recovered and was good to go for the weekend. Maybe the stars took pity on me.

T-plus 1 week

You may be wondering about the jump forward, and, well, that's because, yeah.

Nothing much happened, to be honest.

…

I was planning to make a whole video. I even had some footage way before the event.

But just the day before, I thought to myself:

"Nah, there's no way there's enough content for a video."

So I didn't bother recording anything, and I was right.

There really wasn't much to do, huh.

…

Okay, okay, hear me out.

It was fine. I had a pretty good time there.

But now that all's said and done, I have some advice to share. Mostly for future me.

Advice 1: Plan ahead

I genuinely had no idea that costumes would take that long to be delivered.

The funny thing is, when I checked in mid-January, there wasn't any info about the event yet, so I just went on with my life as usual. I definitely should've had the foresight to buy something at the time.

But hey, I have a nice costume now, which I will happily reuse if I decide to go again.

Advice 2: Go with others

Day 1, I went solo, and I managed to stay there for almost the entire duration. Though honestly, most of it was padding: buying stuff, eating and drinking stuff, etc.

Maybe this comes as no surprise, but it's much better to go with other people. Day 2, my good friend (who had no idea I was cosplaying) also showed up in a costume. Ay.

Despite leaving earlier (we were getting bored), I had way more fun. Good times.

Advice 3: You will be a sweaty mess

I mean, obviously, yeah. This is Singapore.

Don't even attempt to wear make-up, either. It'll slide right off once you get there. Sigh.

Advice 4: Don't expect much

I could already tell from last year that it was a pretty small area.

Maybe I hyped myself up too much, or maybe I was worked up from the weeks before, or maybe I was worried about stepping out of my comfort zone. It's probably a combination of all three. Who knows.

But now that I've actually attended a convention like this, I can confirm that, yes, there really isn't much to do.

Maybe next time I'll go overseas for a bigger event. No promises. That's a future problem, anyway. Details.

I was also slightly bummed that no one recognized who I was. Then again, this is admittedly a pretty niche character. If my goal was simply to be recognized, I would've picked someone more popular. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal. Bleh.

Point is, it's just an event. You'll be fine.

I don't even watch anime or read manga.

So I Cosplayed as Miyano

What should you make of this? What should I make of this?

Was it worth rearranging my whole workflow for this event? Meh, I'd like to leave my answer as N/A. On the one hand, if I actually regretted doing this, I wouldn't have done this elaborate April Fools' follow-up. On the other hand, it was… kinda underwhelming for me, to be honest.

That being said, as I'm writing this, I'm still unsure what the public response will be. Once I hit post everywhere (and I mean, everywhere, lol), all my IRLs are gonna know me as "that guy who cosplayed once".

I really hope this lands reasonably well, or at the very least, no one cares enough because they're busy with their own lives. We all are.

At the end of the day, though, I planned a thing. I prepared for the thing. I did the thing. The thing went (objectively) well. I'd call that a success any day.

Anyway, what I'm trying to get at is:

You can just… do things with your life, you know?

It's crazy how I've only realized it this year. But hey, better late than never.

If young Leo (not even last year, just in general) saw this, maybe he'd think:

"Wow, this guy is cringe."

But I'm sure that, deep down, he would think it's cool.

And one day, when I'm older, I'll look back at this post and think:

"Nah, this was cringe. Worth it though."

Hell yeah.

Special Thanks

None of this would have been possible without these lovely people:

Lastly, there's more rambling that I couldn't fit here, so all that will go to the appendix.

With that, this has been your rizzlord. Peace out.

– Leo