[Tangmen loli cosplay] JX3 Online: The First-Generation Loli I Almost Forgot

While browsing social media, I unexpectedly spotted my old Tangmen loli cosplay in someone else's post featuring ten-year-old Anime convention memories. It came as quite a shock—before this, I had completely forgotten that I ever cosplayed this character. Back then, our cosplay revolved heavily around stage performances and tournament competitions; everyone spent their days busy with rehearsals and crafting props, rarely taking time specifically for photoshoots. On top of that, I never had the habit of regularly saving photos, so looking back through old cloud albums now, the surviving shots are pitifully few—some are just low-res, artifact-heavy snapshots from behind. Yet gazing at these slightly grainy frames now, the fine details of our group rehearsals suddenly replayed in my mind like a movie.

Beyond taking few photos, our obsession with props was exceptionally intense. Our handcrafted costumes and weapons were entirely different from the ready-made merchandise you buy from vendors today. Even when many props were crushed on the train ride to the competition, we would laugh it off, patching them back together with glue on-site at the venue. That unadulterated dedication is a spark that feels hard to find nowadays. When we first made the ChinaJoy finals back then, my group members and I spent summer vacation riding the train for dozens of hours all the way from Chengdu to Shanghai. Surviving the hard seats was exhausting, but thinking about witnessing the clashes of industry legends filled us with an excitement and awe that remains vivid to this day. Everyone shared genuine cohesion back then—watching other teams compete from the audience had our adrenaline pumping, and when our turn came to take the stage, our palms were sweating with nervous thrill.

Nowadays, cosplay stage plays at conventions seem to have gradually faded, which is honestly quite a pity. In today's landscape, it may be harder to slow down and invest the patience needed to choreograph a full production; people lean more toward solo photoshoots or walking the convention floor. That pure spirit of dedicating oneself entirely to polishing every micro-expression and stage movement for a single performance is something that perhaps only existed in the atmosphere of a decade ago. Among the photos dug up this time, there were adorable shots pairing classic White stockings with candied haws, aesthetic shots holding an oiled-paper umbrella, and a completely blurry snapshot where you can only make out the blue outfit from behind. Back then, I thought I could easily reshoot it anytime, never giving it much weight, but now those frames feel extraordinarily precious. I truly want to tell everyone currently doing cosplay: take lots of photos and document everything! Memories need photographs as tangible vessels to stay real—after all, memory threads in our minds can fray, but visual images will always reconnect them for JX3 Online and beyond.