Re:Zero became a wildly popular anime in a short period of time, and even more popular was everyone's love for a certain demon girl, Rem.

Rem is one of the many female characters in the show, but she proves to be one of the strongest and most loyal, earning her the title of "best girl" in many a fan's heart.

When my friend came to me saying she was going to cosplay Rem, the planning for Rem's morning star began. Rem's weapon of choice is a massive spiked ball on a chain to wield massive destruction to enemies and to the hearts of boys everywhere.

Weapons? Cosplay? Being bribed with bubble tea? It was time to get to work!

----------------

Rem is Not Your Senpai Cosplay

Step 1: Gather Materials

Before making my craft store run, I did a lot of reading on potential materials for this build. I'll discuss things I did, and didn't choose to do here-

What I used:

Smoothfoam Sphere
- Yes, smoothfoam is slightly different then styrofoam and is less porous
- The sphere size is dependent and up to you! The biggest thing about cosplay props is that you need to be able to scale them to your size and your body.
Styrofoam Cones
Floracraft Smooth Finish
Plastic chain
Dowel Rod
Paint (grey, black, silver)
Silver Sharpie
Screws
Hot glue
Tacky Glue

What I didn't use:

Some people like to use craft foam and roll it up into a cone for a bit more of a lightweight creation. But I don't trust myself with that process and Styrofoam is also incredibly light weight
To make things more sturdy, often times you will see cosplayers coat armor and the like in Black Worbla. However worbla can get pricey and I wasn't worried about this prop being banged around enough to warrant the extra weight of worbla blanket

Step 2: Paint, Round 1

Step 1. Turn on your favorite anime

Step 2. Paint

We first painted the styrofoam ball, which much to our surprise and joy came apart in two separate halves. In between coats of black paint, we also applied the smooth finish to the styrofoam cones. The smooth finish fills in the pores of the styrofoam and can be applied with a knife and then have excess rubbed off with either your fingers or with a very fine grain sandpaper.

We did a few coats of black paint and set the sphere aside in front of a fan to dry.

Step 3: Paint the Cones

Once the smooth foam was dry (only a few minutes after application), it was time to paint the cones.

We first did a bottom layer of silver paint for a shinier metal look. But then looking at the chain we were going to use, the metal looked incredible weathered. So using a sponge (or crumpled paper towel!) we dabbed the cones with some darker grey paint and then went over areas that either were still too light or had gotten too dark.

Step 4: Attaching the Spikes

Unfortunately I do not have pictures of this step, so this will have to suffice!

I had A LOT of wood screws sitting around from another project, so I decided to make good use of them.

I stuck the head of the screw into the cone (remember, it's styrofoam, it's gonna make a nice little tunnel), and then pulled the screw out again. I added a dot of hot glue to the screw head and reinserted the screw. Congratulations, you now have an actually harmful spike!

At this point I carved a little bit of foam out of the bottom of the spike so it would lie more flush to the spherical surface (see dotted line). There was not science behind this, it was just eyeballed.

Next, I made sure to carefully plan out where each spike was going to go on the sphere. I am awful at spacing things, so anything you can do to mark your plan is a huge help if you're like me. A light pencil line will suffice, or even tape. Mark the insert point and then the diameter of the spike.

And when everything is marked, I put a layer of tacky glue on the bottom of the spike (blue highlighter) and stabbed it into the sphere and let it set!

Step 5: 1 Chainz?

For the size of the head of the morning star, any form of a real chain would be too small and metal is loud and heavy for just carrying around a con.

We purchased some halloween decoration chain from amazon but you can find this at almost any halloween (or even party?) store.

On the end of the chain, we cut one of the links in half and then glued the half still attached to the chain to one end of the morning star head. Now, we had a spiked ball on a chain.

At this point, once again without pictures, we painted a dowel rod black and did the same process with the chain-- cutting it in half and gluing the half still attached to the chain to the dowel rod head.

Some tips for the dowel rod

Once again, it all needs to be proportioned. The dowel we used was around 1.75" and ~10" long. That's what fit well in my friend's hand and what didn't look ridiculous at length when she held it.

Step 6: Finishing Touches

Now that everything is glued together, it was just a matter of adding the silver embellishments. We first started with silver paint but found that it was hard to control the thin lines and then there was smudging...etcetc.

But we found the silver sharpie looked almost identical to the silver paint and a few passes of sharpie gave us a super precise line. We use some reference pictures here for the placement of the circles and flower like shapes that surrounded the spikes.

An instagram live stream, and another working session later and the morning star was done! I'm super happy with how this turned out and it ended up photographing incredible well! It was the first hands on prop weapon build for my friend and now she's graduated to some solo sword builds!

Thanks for reading, and feel free to follow my friend's future cosplay work (link below), or my cosplay work at Ribose Cosplay.

Happy making!

-------------------------------------