Ao no Exorcist: Kurikara

This is Kurikara, the katana from Ao no Exorcist. Yes, it lights up.

This isn't the first light-up sword I've done (see my Seele Schneider from Bleach) but with the Seele Schneider I used EL wire, and it wasn't nearly bright enough - probably the type of wire I ordered, nothing to do with the wire itself, which worked fine. I wanted something that could be seen in a daylit convention center, so here I went with blue LEDs inside a plastic shell. It's powered by 6 AA batteries, and the hilt unscrews and opens in half so the batteries can be changed out.

It's probably a tad bit larger than a katana should be, but because of the size and number of batteries, it's as small as it can be while still lighting up to the full power I wanted it to.

Body of the katana is acrylic plastic, saya and tsuka are poplar. Tsuba and decorative hilt elements are polymer clay. Painted with acrylic paints.