The One Cosplay Emiru Never Thought Would Blow Up - Exclusive

With a large audience cultivated over multiple social media channels, cosplayer and Cloud9 content creator Emiru is uniquely positioned to get her high-quality costumes in front of fans from every corner of the internet. In the past, Emiru has debuted designs inspired by sources that include everything from "Genshin Impact" to "Adventure Time."

Emiru's ability to have her cosplays seen by such a vast pool of fans has even helped her work make it back to its original inspirations, such as when her Gwen cosplay was seen by "League of Legends" artist Jeremy Anninos. Anninos reached out to her on Twitter, revealing to her that Gwen's design had actually been based on some of Emiru's previous makeup looks — a true full-circle moment for the game and the streamer inspired by it.

While Emiru's impressive reach with the "League of Legends" fandom is pretty understandable, particularly given the game's massive popularity and Emiru's years of streaming the game on Twitch, sometimes the cosplays that get the most attention are the most unexpected. SVG sat down with Emiru in an exclusive interview to find out about some of those surprises, and she revealed the one cosplay she never thought would blow up like it did.

As a skilled cosplayer with an eye for creating costumes that are a faithful rendition of their inspirations, almost all of Emiru's creations get plenty of attention. However, Emiru was blown away when she shared a cosplay of Link from "The Legend of Zelda" on TikTok, where it has amassed over 1.8 million views.

When asked about what made that cosplay different, Emiru said she wasn't entirely sure, but felt it may have resulted from the character's enduring popularity. She also observed, "I think also maybe because of it being a surprise factor. People know that I'm a girl, and then I turned into kind of a convincing guy."

Either way, no one was more shocked by the community's interest in the cosplay than Emiru. She explained, "I was surprised by that one. I didn't think that one was going to be popular at all." The success of her Link was even more unexpected, because it almost didn't make it out onto social media at all. Emiru remembered, "I really didn't want to post that one, but I did it anyway because someone helped me put the costume together."

Both fans of "The Legend of Zelda" and cosplay enthusiasts are glad that she did, however, as the costume (and the subsequent TikTok) remains one of her most popular. Sometimes, Emiru noted, one of the most important parts of creating a great cosplay is to "just dress up and have fun."