Cosplay (コスプレ)

What would a comic convention be without cosplay?!

I’ll admit it; I went to a midnight showing of Star Wars Episode III with some of my college buddies on the night the movie came out. However, I didn’t bring my own lightsaber, nor did I dress up in a custom fitted storm trooper outfit. While Star Wars and LOTR fanatics are certainly visible in America, and likely camped out in front of the multiplexes weeks before their respective movies hit the theaters, Japan wrote the book on dressing up like a dork.

The Japanese term “cosplay” (コスプレ) is a combination of the words costume and play. Cosplay is the art of dressing up like your favorite comic book, videogame, and movie characters, and traveling in mass to comic book conventions, movie premieres, and parents’ basements to congregate with other social dropouts.

Indeed, Comiket’s own website has the following warning to convention participants written in both English and Japanese:

“Please be aware that cosplay and masquerading have yet to be widely accepted in mainstream Japanese society. Do not come to or leave the Comiket wearing a costume or people will point and laugh at you.”

Okay, I added the last bit about pointing and laughing, but the rest is straight from the online convention materials.

The rooftop outdoor exhibition area of the Tokyo Big Sight was renamed the “Cosplay Plaza” and served as home for the hundreds of people who let their freak flags fly. The best cosplayers do not only wear an exact replica of their favorite character’s suit down to the last button, they have also perfected their character’s trademark poses by practicing them in front of the mirror for hours on end. This is so they can freely strike any number of dramatic poses for a picture when asked by one of the 35-year-old, unmarried, overweight, Japanese otaku fan boys with a Nintendo DS Lite case attached to their khaki shorts via a karabiner.

That’s right, you’re supposed to take their picture – that’s what the cosplayers live for. Once you see some of the cosplayers below, you’ll quickly get a sense for how perverted the whole environment felt. I was secretly giddy as a schoolboy snapping picture after picture (the only thing that slowed me down was the scorching Tokyo sun).

Judging from the people I saw, “hot” costume accessories included band-aids (placed on the face or upper arm), eye patches made out of white gauze, rainbow striped pantyhose, and camouflage anything. A classic accessory that never gets old is the headband with cat ears on it. The traditional sailor schoolgirl suit with knee-high cotton socks appeared to have taken a hit this year. Maids were very popular though, as were pirates (both those who looked like Captain Jack Sparrow and those who looked like Capn’ Crunch).

Like I always say (this might actually be the first time I’ve said it), if you’re going to immerse yourself in a foreign culture, you have to examine all aspects of it, not just the postcard worthy traditional stuff.

I hope you enjoy the pictures below as much as I enjoyed taking them for you, but I don’t think that’s possible.

B.E.W.