Late last night on Matthew “Super” DeLisi’s regular Overwatch stream, a pink haired anime girl by the name of Natsuki made a surprise guest appearance. You may recognize her from the acclaimed 2017 game Doki Doki Literature Club, published by Team Salvato.
Viewers in chat definitely recognized her, and proceeded to lose their collective minds when she showed up and started playing Overwatch. It was a hyper-realistic cosplay done by Super himself with makeup by Overwatch streamer Seyeumi. I know, it’s difficult to tell the two apart.
So, what’s the story behind this blessed moment? A few months ago Super “made a stupid bet with chat” to cosplay as Natsuki if he gained another 1,000 Twitch subscribers. Clearly this was incentive enough, as just a few days later he hit his goal. Due to a busy season and a global pandemic, he understandably wasn’t able to put together the cosplay right away, but his faithful chat never let him forget the promise he made. Thus, Mattsuki was born.
After posting his cosplay to Twitter, Super was showered with an influx of compliments and support from fans and pro players alike. Kyle “KSF” Frandanisa, Jiri “LiNkzr” Masalin, and Caleb “McGravy” McGarvey were only some of the professionals either calling him cute or trying to slide into his DMs.
Even the actual Shanghai Dragons and Hangzhou Spark twitter accounts got involved.
— Shanghai Dragons #OWLMVP Fleta // #OWLMVP Void (@ShanghaiDragons) August 25, 2020
When asked about his commitment to the cosplay, Super himself admitted that the combo of shaved legs and a skirt was surprisingly freeing. “I gotta say, when I put on the skirt with my shaved legs, I feel so much more aerodynamic. Like… I feel like I could fly. There’s no wind resistance! I could do whatever I want!” He then proceeded to play Roadhog in competitive Overwatch for 5 hours and ended up losing 6-8, which we can only assume is what he wanted to do.
Super and his Natsuki cosplay have now joined an exclusive and elite club of Overwatch League personalities who have cosplayed before, including Josh “Sideshow” Wilkinson, Brennon Hook, Chan-hyung “Fissure” Baek, and famously Caleb “McGravy” McGarvey.
Perhaps the rest of us are missing out on something? Something that can only be achieved by cosplaying a cute anime girl or video game character. Once my Mercy cosplay gets here in the mail, I’ll be sure to let you all know.
