Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Infomational Rant on Anime Cosplay... ...

Some of you people out there are most likely scratching your head and wondering "What the banana are they doing?" or "What is that?" well I'm here to clear thing up. Firstly I'll break down the words anime cosplay. Anime is Japanese cartoons that are made and aired in Japan and it usually has a very stylized look about it. The word cosplay breaks down into two words "cos" with stands for costume and "play" with stands for play. The word play in cosplay could mean two different things, one of them being just playing around and having fun with it, and the other being the drama type of play because when you dress up as your character some people go to the extreme and act like their character as well. Cosplay is when you pick one your favourite character from any anime series and then dress up as that character. Cosplaying is extremely fun and I believe that it is a form of flattery for the author of the anime. It also is a great way to show off you skill with a needle and thread, plastic, nylon, styrofoam, metal, and various other materials that you would never think of using, for example did you know that pop bottles make very nice upper arm bands? Not only is cosplay fun but it's also a type of competition. When you are cosplaying you are trying to make your costume look as close to your character as possible, down to every last detail, and when you arrive at the convention the better the costume the more attention you will receive. This attention includes many photos and lots of hugs to go around. I don't believe that I have mentioned what happens to you when you do cosplay at conventions. One of the main things is that people with ask to take your picture and then you pose in a pose that your character would do, the better the costume the more photos you will get, and if you dress as a character that everyone loves and you are lucky enough that no one else is dressed as that character you are going to get a lot of attention, speaking from experience. Another thing is that you will be asked for is hugs and you may even get the occasional glomp, an unexpected tackle or hug, so don't be afraid if you see this going on at conventions. Cosplay is a lot of work and hundreds of hour go it in some of these costumes and some of them take hours more to put on in the morning of the convention not to mention the gravity defying hair, which I am still working on perfecting, which is a skill by it's self. I have been cosplaying for two years now at Anime Evolution, which is a anime convention held at SFU in Vancouver, and speaking from experience it is all worth while and extremely fun.
Check out the links below for examples of cosplay:
Warning! Some of these costumes aren't exactly business casual.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYfJxezLn1o&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=wS0oIITXZFE&feature=related
http://youtube.com/watch?v=GyAWuqIkyvU&feature=related

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