How To Cosplay… Correctly.

Something of a cosplay hate group has sprung up on Facebook – disparaging people who cosplay as anime characters, if they are not Asian. You may have thought this would be a blog post about how to cosplay correctly, which it is, but it’s also an important statement.

It’s very hard to cosplay incorrectly.

But that’s not what the “Anti-Western Cosplayers” Facebook group says. No, they expect all people who cosplay to be asian. While, admittedly, there are some terrible-to-look-at western cosplayers, these can be found across any race. Here’s a picture that someone else posted to the group:

Here’s what looks like a pretty good western cosplayer on the right, and a not-as-fun-to-look-at cosplayer on the left. Whether or not the left cosplayer is actually asian, as was disputed in the group, is beyond the point. The fact that not all characters represented in anime are intended to be Asian (Edward Elric and FMA is set in a Germany like setting) is not the point either. The point is: Both people are probably having fun. And that’s what really matters.

And that’s where I get to telling you how to cosplay. The first step: remember that cosplaying is about having fun, enjoying acting as another character, and making friends with people who like the same things. You might not have a ton of time and money to make the perfect outfit. But that doesn’t matter so long as you enjoy doing it. You can cosplay Cid Highwind and look awesome, but even if you don’t look that perfect, it doesn’t matter – it’s still fun.

World Cosplay Summit Winner

And the world cosplay summit 2011 winner is… Brazil! What an interesting result… I would have expected something more like the US or Japan.

The World Cosplay Summit was created to “promote international exchange through the Japanese youth culture of manga and anime.” In short, it’s one giant cosplay competition. The cosplay summit started in 2005, in the third largest city in Japan – Nagoya, and has had official government support since 2008. It garners tons of attention from across the world, and takes place across two days.

Each country gets to be represented by two cosplayers. Costumes are two be hand-made, by the contestants (and possibly family and friends). It’s not clear if this means a sewing machine can be used… probably. Finally, the costumes must be based on anime/manga/video games, obviously.

Brazil also won in 2006 and 2008. What did they wear this year? Diao Chan and Cai Wenji from Dynasty Warriors 7.