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If I must say anything about myself, it is that I, shamelessly, am an otaku. Otaku generally means a fan of anime, manga and Japanese culture. You get normal people who enjoy all of this, but you also have the super-obsessive ones as well.
A brief selection of terms you may (actually, will) be hearing throughout this blog article:- Manga: the actual art style of the drawings or the printed variant of anime in it's original format. Think Japanese comic books, essentially. The characters are more stylized then their Western counterparts like Marvel and DC Comics.
- Anime: Essentially, "animated" manga. This is what you see on television and, in more cases, film as well.
Most of the people I know first got their taste of anime from shows like Cardcaptors, Sailor Moon, Dragonball Z and others. A lot seem really childish but there are some pretty mature ones out there. Hellsing, Blood+, DeathNote: the list goes on, and anime and manga is definetly not just for children.
Note: Princess Mononoke, seen above, is a good example of major films and a more adult anime styled movie. It's probably one of my favorite films by far, as well.
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Now what does any of this have to do with the chosen subject at hand?
It's merely background to the blog: What Is Cosplay?
Cosplay is made up of two root words: "costume" and "play". Put one and two together and you get Cosplay.
Cosplay is, essentially, dressing up as someone else and acting in character of that being. This is something that is attached to the anime/manga scene as well as the nerd community. Think the crazy people in outlandish Star Trek outfits at Comic Con (not bashing on a particular fandom here, however). It is not limited to this though, as video games, television shows, web comics and even computer voice synthesizer programs (aka Vocaloid, if anyone knows what that is) have all seen their fair share of cosplay maniacs bring their characters to life. The costumes can be as wild or mild as you can imagine. Overly complex or painfully simplistic, finding a good cosplay is as easy as going onto the Internet and typing in the character costume you are trying to find. More often then not, chances are you'll find somewhere in the world selling a costume for any character you can think of, even the obscure ones. You like Assassin's Creed? Chances are that there's an Ezio cosplayer right now hunting down people at conventions as we speak.
However, most cosplayers make their outfits or at least aspects of it: not everyone is handy with a needle, thread and sewing machine, after all, nor is every person good with constructing larger-then-life swords and head pieces. A giant set of angel wings can be as difficult as a complex sewing project with tons of hard-to-work-with fabric. There is even entire web sites devoted to those who cosplay: to show off their projects and offer advice to people who need a question answered on a myriad of subjects ranging on wig styling to how to actully build a six foot tall scythe.
For now, I think I explained it as best as I can. I'll leave you all with some photos to get a better idea on what exactly people do with their cosplays.
(Note, this will indeed correlate to later posts in the blog. This serves as a nice introduction to the next one and others in the future!)
