Japanese man spends $15,700 on dog costume to fulfill lifelong dream of transforming into an animal

To fulfill his lifelong dream of transforming into an animal, a Japanese man spent 2 million yen (approximately $15,709) on a realistic border collie costume.

For his costume, the man, Toko, commissioned a Japanese company called Zeppet, which specializes in sculptures and models for movies, commercials and amusement facilities as well as TV costumes and mascots. The costume reportedly took 40 days to create. Toko also went through multiple rounds of revisions, including meetings and fittings for the costume.

In an interview with Mynavi, Toko explained that he chose a border collie costume as the long hair can “mislead the human figure.”

“I made it a collie because it looks real when I put it on. 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 said. “I met such a condition and made collie, my favorite breed of dog.”

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A Zeppet employee said that creating the costume was difficult as it requires a significant amount of time to study how the dog’s figure can correspond with a human figure.

“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,'” the 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.”

Toko posted a video to his YouTube channel on April 12 where he tries on the border collie costume and transforms into a dog, making dog-like motions. He can be seen waving his “paw” in the air and flopping to his side as a real-life dog would.

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The dog-lover also posted several photos to his Twitter page @toco_eevee, where he captioned that he was “able to fulfill my dream of becoming an animal!”

The tweet received more than 18,000 retweets and 55,000 likes since being uploaded on April 11.

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Featured Image via 動物になりたい