Rurusama is larger than life

If your only memory of Rurusama is from 2024, when she held a packed meet-and-greet at Singapore Comic Con, you may have a certain impression of her.

Back then, fans could pay $20 for a 10-second interaction with the cosplayer: a head pat, hold hands, or get slapped in the face. For $50, they got a full minute: to be cornered against a wall by her, or have her take a bite of the Pocky stick in their mouth.

Then there was the $1,000 option, limited to one fan a day: a peek at her feet, or a strand of her hair. The queue for the booth, which sold merchandise alongside these fan services, stretched about an hour.

I knew little of Rurusama when the headlines broke. One disgruntled member of the public wrote to The Straits Times’ forum page the following week, calling the session “degrading” and “unacceptable” for a public event. But among my immediate social circle, made up exclusively of 30somethings exhausted by the corporate ladder, the sentiment was far from judgemental. Good for her, we thought.

A playful expression crossed her face when I brought this up in our Zoom call, which feels less like an interview, and more like a video call with a friend. Rurusama appears on screen in a casual white tee, barefaced but fresh, bringing the camera with her as she moves from the couch to the fridge for a can of iced coffee.

“I tracked how many male versus female fans bought stuff from my booth, and how many people paid for fan service. And guess what? It’s a 50-50 split,” she says with a small flourish. “I have the sheets.”

Even now, she shares, her audience is far from male-dominated. It’s an equal gender split, with the female audience accounting for 70 per cent of her video views.

So if you haven’t followed her career or her content over the past two years, and know her only from the headlines back then, you can throw any assumptions you have about Rurusama out the window.

The lore of Rurusama

Shakespeare famously wrote that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. That’s the same approach that Rurusama has for strictly using only her online moniker in all of her appearances.

“Nobody needs to know my real name,” she told me matter-of-factly, in between outfit changes at the photo shoot, citing privacy concerns and how cosplayers never reveal their real names. She explains during our call that she’s never had to field questions about her name, until she moved into the influencer and content creator space.

Here’s what she’s comfortable divulging: She is an alumnus of Temasek Polytechnic, where she studied data science. She got into cosplaying during her second year. That’s when she started uploading her photos online as Rurusama.

“Initially, my cosplay nickname was Ashiru. But it’s a difficult name to remember, so I said, ‘Just call me Ruru’,” she says. When it came to creating a social media handle, her name with the Japanese suffix “-chan” – commonly used as a term of endearment for girls – was already taken, so she settled for Rurusama. In Japanese, “-sama” is a formal honorific suffix, added to a name to show a high level of respect.

Looking at Rurusama today, that honorific feels fitting. The 27-year-old personality dominating our FYPs clearly isn’t a “-chan”, which suggests a certain air of naivety. She is bold. Loud. Never self-conscious. And, as she recounts the start of her social media journey, it becomes clear that it is how she has always been.

“I remember bringing costumes to school because I wanted to take photos after. So I was literally in full cosplay makeup – I didn’t care! – and just went to school,” she says with a guffaw. “I would change into my costume in school, then take a bus to East Coast park to do my shoots.”

She spent her final year of polytechnic in Japan, working on a year-long school project that combined data science and robotics engineering. After graduating, she was offered a scholarship to continue her studies there, along with a role as a student lecturer at the robotics-focused school where she did her project.

“I rejected it. That’s not my calling,” she recounts. “I didn’t want to be a teacher, and I wasn’t interested in data science. I just studied because I had to, because it had good career prospects.”

Around that time, a Korean artiste management company scouted her through social media and offered her a trainee position. It was during Covid, so the entirety of her training took place in Singapore. Besides the expected vocal, dance and language lessons, Rurusama also underwent camera training to learn her angles, and styling sessions to understand which outfits and makeup work best for her. She went through two years of that, before coming to the realisation that it wasn’t for her, and left.

“Korean management companies filter and control how you speak online. And I realised I have more personality than that, and I wish people could see it,” she admits with a small laugh. “So I started making more talking videos online.”

Hard to box in

Which brings us to today. It has been almost a decade since Rurusama became a public persona, and her career has taken a turn many observers didn’t see coming. She has since broken out of her anime and gaming niche, working on campaigns with brands such as Samsung, Calvin Klein and Volkswagen.

The fashion industry has taken notice too, particularly this year. She’s had collaborations with Gucci, Onitsuka Tiger and Gentlewoman, and appeared at major fashion events including Haute Couture Week in Paris (where she was dressed by Indian designer Rahul Mishra) and New York Fashion Week.

Bring up fashion, and Rurusama visibly lights up. She is picking up new knowledge, she says, on colour theory, fabric and fashion history. All of it fascinates her.

“I’m someone who is, innately, very curious. So I ask a lot of questions, and being in a new space allows me to be a child again,” she says with a small smile. “I’m not afraid to ask. I don’t want to pretend like I know stuff. I want to learn from the people who actually have knowledge.”

Her candour is refreshing. She admits she can be a bit over-the-top, but that’s just who she is – online or offline. We pause on that. I ask if she has ever been told she’s too loud, or that she’s overdoing it.

“Always! All the time!” Rurusama laughs, without hesitation. “But I feel like that’s why cosplay and fashion is great for me, because the people in these two particular communities do not apologise for taking up space. They’re like, oh, red stockings look good with green heels, you know?”

Rurusama has found similar footing in acting. She has two microdramas under her belt, Love in Transit (2025) and My Girlfriend Is an Alien (2026), and will play the female lead in upcoming microdrama The Inheritance, produced by Mark Lee’s King Kong Media Production for streaming platform Viu. Earlier this year, she also made her big-screen debut in the mahjong flick Luck My Life, starring Richie Koh.

Seeing her leap from a niche community to a mainstream audience makes me wonder: “Was it the plan all along?”

“Not really,” Rurusama admits with a shrug. She knew she wanted to grow her audience and had a broad strategy, which she executed over three years, but she didn’t plan for her career to pan out this way.

“When I’m busy, I can literally only think about today. When I’m not so busy, I think about the next month.” Content creation is a flexible industry, she adds, so she keeps an overall compass, but doesn’t plan far ahead. “A lot of things can change within just a few months. You just need one good video, and suddenly, your whole career can change.”

That unpredictability is precisely why she loves the job. “I cannot predict what clients will come in. Whatever comes, I’ll take,” says Rurusama.

“It’s all about the side quests,” she elaborates. “You are already doing the main quest regardless, so just go and do the side quests you actually want to, and enjoy.” She acknowledges that this is a privileged take, one afforded by her career choice. And for someone who has spent nearly a decade refusing to stay in one lane, it’s an apt philosophy.

Knowing her worth

But back to that infamous booth at Singapore Comic Con. Money wasn’t the motivation, she clarifies. She had spent $30,000 out of her own pocket to set it up.

“It was to prove a point that cosplayers are actually worth way more,” says Rurusama. There’s a misconception that cosplayers are just mascots, she explains, and she was frustrated that people didn’t seem to value their ability to draw crowds to an event. “That is the power of a cosplayer,” she says. “That was what I wanted to prove to everyone.”

Despite the negative online chatter, she enjoyed meeting her fans. In fact, she was oblivious to the news coverage until after the event. “I had such a great time… people were fun and the event was good. It was my first time running such a smooth booth,” she recalls.

“Personally, I found it funny,” she continues. “It doesn’t hurt me, and it makes for great content.” For the record, her mother was there to help run the booth, and saw everything that went down.

It’s also why she bristles when online commenters fault her parents’ upbringing for her persona. “My parents are very nice to me, and they have been nothing but supportive of my career,” she states for the record.

And Rurusama is paying it forward. Two months back, she started a group chat on Telegram for the sole purpose of offering advice to other creators, no strings attached. But why give away the secrets of her trade?

“Knowledge should be free,” she says, without skipping a beat. “In my opinion, the value in the advice is in the fact that you are going to take it. If you don’t take the advice, there’s nothing I can say. I’ve said this a hundred times: if you want to grow your social media platform, you should post seven videos a day. But how many people are posting seven videos a day? Not many.”

Then there’s her belief in growing the pie. “The more creators there are, the more opportunities there will be,” she states plainly. “The bigger the economy, the more money there is.”

Nor is she afraid of competition. She brings up how people would tell her that so-and-so creator is trying to emulate her, but she firmly believes that isn’t a possibility.

“How can you be another human being, completely? There’s no way another person can be me,” she says, raising an eyebrow. “And I’m always very happy to see other people succeed.”

It’s a striking contrast. The woman who once drew headlines for what she charged now gives some things away for nothing, and is just as certain about both.

“I don’t have bad feelings when I see other people succeed. If you do, you have a problem.”

PHOTOGRAPHY ZANTZ HAN
CREATIVE DIRECTION & STYLING: LENA KAMARUDIN, ASSISTED BY ISABELLA LUNA & RYUNA LOW
ART DIRECTION RAY TICSAY
HAIR JIMMY YAP/KIMISTRY
MAKEUP ZHOU AIYI
OUTFIT FOR FEATURED IMAGE DOLCE & GABBANA
JEWELLERY FOR FEATURED IMAGE TIFFANY & CO.
KEY RING LONGCHAMP
DOLLHOUSE FURNITURE COURTESY OF ALEXANDRA CLARE NG