His nickname is “Good Boy.”
A Japanese man is going viral after spending more than $15,000 on a hyperrealistic costume, so he could fulfill his lifelong dream — of becoming a dog. A clip of the man masquerading as Lassie has racked up more than 600,000 YouTube views since it was posted in April.
“I made it a collie because it looks real when I put it on,” canine cosplayer Toko-San told local news outlet Mynavi of the furry getup, for which he paid Zeppet — a company that makes costumes for TV commercials and films —a whopping $15,709, Yahoo reported. The final product took 40 days and multiple revisions to create.
Describing his inspiration for becoming his own best friend, Toko-San said, “My favorite is quadrupedal animals — especially cute ones. Among them, I thought that a big animal close to me would be good, considering that it would be a realistic model, so I decided to make it a dog.”
Toko-San said he decided on a collie costume because its long hair can “mislead the human figure” — not to mention that these herding pooches happen to be his favorite breed of dog.
In the aforementioned clip, the ruff rider can be seen in his collie costume waving, rolling over and performing other super naturalistic canine im-paw-sonations like a pooch-parroting Andy Serkis. Other clips show Toko-San playing fetch, snuggling with stuffed animals and, somewhat less realistically, bouncing a ping-pong ball on a paddle. Toko-San also shared photos of his Lass-querade to Twitter with the caption describing how he was “able to fulfill my dream of becoming an animal!”
Perhaps most impressive is the dog costume itself, which looks so realistic it could be CGI. Achieving this effect was no mean feat, as it required Zeppet to tailor the animal costume to the human body.
“The point is that the skeleton of a dog can be reproduced on the skeleton of a human. Since the structure of the skeleton is very different, we spent a lot of time studying how to make it look like a ‘dog,’ ” an unnamed design employee told Mynavi. “In addition, we collect photographs taken from various angles so that the beautiful coat of the collie can be reproduced and devised so that the coat will flow naturally.”
“This is so kawaii [Japanese for cute],” said another.
Needless to say, Toko-San’s transformation sparked a stir on YouTube with one commenter describing, “That’s amazing . . . hats off.”
However, some critics found the man’s hobby frivolous and even creepy.
“Silliest thing that one can ever commit to,” scoffed one detractor, while another wrote, “This is like a car accident, disturbing but you can’t stop looking.”
Masquerading as man’s best friend might seem ludicrous, however this isn’t the first time someone’s taken their love of animals to the extreme. It is estimated that at least 250,000 people in the US identify as “furries,” a subculture whose members enjoy dressing up as cartoonish animals, sometimes as a sexual fetish but more often as a fun escape.
Meanwhile, a recent survey of American pet owners found that the majority of people would rather sleep with their fur baby than their spouse.
