Tsuyoshi: For the two Vs, I kept in my mind to make the pieces like regular clothes so that they wouldn’t end up too costumey. Especially the jacket; in considering how comfortable it would be to wear and how heavy it would feel on, the final product really turned out to be something you could have in your closet. I’m pretty happy with the end result—they’re almost perfect as regular clothes.

Tsuyoshi: For costumes, it’s common to only pay attention to the parts that need to be seen, like not bothering to put in an inside lining. For these jackets, we carefully recreated every pattern and even went to a leather wholesaler to check out the different leather materials available to us. Finer details such as the stitchwork were also important; I wanted every aspect to come together for the whole to be seen as a high-quality leather jacket.

Tsuyoshi: The bottoms are based directly on the character concept art. All the stitching and materials were decided precisely in reflection of it. Also, these aren’t jeans that already existed, we went especially to Okayama (Japan’s denim capital) to source our denim and made everything from scratch.

What caught our attention was the reproduction of female V’s leather pants.
There were about 30 rows of pin tucks sewn together in the thigh area! Thick yet soft, and with such intricate stitchwork in leather, which is already difficult to crease—we have nothing but respect for the craftsmanship of a true professional.

KAIHO: V has cyberware markings from the temples to the cheeks areas beneath the eyes. As a finer detail, I wanted the cable-like lines to still resemble human flesh. Since special effects makeup necessarily means adding prosthetic parts to the face, I tried to make the lines as thin as possible so that they would appear sunken in rather than jutting out.

Mysterious pieces of A2-sized styrofoam boards with a bunch of pins...upon closer inspection, we realized that they were thin rubber pieces of “skin!” The pieces are put on the model’s face and blended in to their regular skin color using foundation. To add an even more techy feel, he also applied metallic paint. It was amazing to see how cybernetic designs unnatural to our flesh and blood could be made to look so natural.

We watched Tsuyoshi take a box cutter to the plastic parts and collar corners and wherever cloth was overlapping. We watched Tsuyoshi touch the jacket with white gloves stained black with shoe polish and cloth spray. While it was shocking at first to see the grime details being added, the overall finish is understandable. Going around the bustling streets of Night City, coming in contact with all the different gangs—there’s no way that V’s jacket would look crisp and new. This attention to realism gives even more depth to the pieces as faithful recreations of V’s in-game clothes.