Liui Aquino as Sanji of One Piece

The penultimate key in a cosplay shoot is to capture the essence of the character being portrayed. Making the subject look good is secondary and incidental. The final images should connect to and convince hardcore fans (no less) of the anime/manga series, game, or movie that what they are seeing IS the character they know so well. That said, a good cosplay photograph does not just happen. It is well researched and studied by both the cosplayer and, just as importantly, the photographer.

In this set, Liui Aquino does his rendition of Sanji from the long running anime and manga series One Piece’s New World (time skip) story arc. Instead of submitting photos from his already quite extensive collection, he wanted to give Shuffle+ Magazine readers something fresh that hasn’t been shown on facebook, ever.

Four of these are featured inShuffle+’s Issue no. 2 released on April 2013. One particular photo has made it to TokyoPop’s Cosplay Frieday no 17 list and Kotaku’s One Piece cosplay king roster. If Liui’s Sanji is still not too convincing after that much fanfare, I don’t know what is. Pardon the cigarette. Sanji smokes like a chimney.