Cosplay, meaning Costume Play, is something very well known in the anime fandom and even beyond that. Primarily Cosplay is done at conventions, but the term carries over for whenever someone dresses up as their favorite anime/game/comic character. I had originally gotten into Cosplay when I was in 8th grade. Or rather that's when I first heard the term; it was Halloween and my best friend and I were invited to a party (said party only consisted of her, myself and the host, but still fun), since it was a Halloween party we of course decided to go in costume and the character I had chosen was Miang from Xenogears. It was rather simple and not 100% accurate, but back then I didn't care; I had my white coat that was kind of close to Miang's Solarian uniform, black slacks and white high tops. We were going to spray my hair purple, but because the weather was bad and we were afraid of it washing out and staining my coat we went against that idea. That had been the first time in a long time that I had actually dressed up and since it was so much fun I decided to do it the next year as well.
Every year around here we have something called the Pumpkin Festival. And during this event people dress up in their Halloween costumes and walk around town. My best friend had volunteered us to sign in people's pumpkins and thus she mentioned doing matching costumes. At the time we had started really getting to a series known as The Slayers. So we decided to dress as our favorite characters; me as Lina and her as Amelia. What construction there were for the outfits were all done by her; for me she altered a magenta turtle neck and stitched a piece of fabric that was to go across my chest. The other pieces of the costume were bought and for not being 100% accurate yet again, I think we did pretty well with what we had access to. After that I wouldn't cosplay again till 3 years later when she and I decided to dress as our favorite characters from Gravitation; her as Ryuuichi Sakuma and me as Tohma Seguchi. And since we had 2 of the 3 members of Nittle Grasper we got one of our male friends, Casey, to dress in drag and be Noriko. These outfits were a tad simpler (more or less) as we could just take things from our closets. The weather getting in the way again we couldn't spray Casey's hair to match the character, but over all we were pretty damn close to the characters' outfits from the anime.
Since then I had only cosplayed twice; once at Bakuretsu Con as Hisoka from Yami no Matsuei and recently this year at Anime Boston... kind of. I had the inkling of wanting to dress up for the con back in October as I was being inspired by Halloween. I had picked up all the materials needed for my costume and even decided to do a matching outfit with it (more on this later); but everything had fallen through as the sewing aspect got skewed by the machine not working correctly. But I was still determined and since we had just finished watching Kamen Rider Den-O, I decided to cosplay Urataros. Unfortunately I did not have anything that was akin to his normal attire so I went with the next best thing; Yuuto posessed by Urataros.
Again not 100% accurate either on my part. The only things I had, when going off of this image, was the blue streak and white jacket and my top was black, but not a buttoned down shirt. But my brother brought up a good point; so long as I acted like Urataros I could where whatever I wanted as at that point the imajin would have possessed me lol.
With all that being said; there are a number of topics with in the subject of cosplay that come up, so I figure I would share my opinions on it with you all. Shall we break it down?
Should I Cosplay?
This is actually an interesting question and there's a couple reasons why it would be asked. For me though, the reason I asked this was question was due to my size. I am overweight and I worried that people would snicker and make fun of me for the way I looked in the costume. I know I had cosplayed in the past so what was stopping me now? Truth is I am unsure what was stopping me, but I had posted the question to my friends on Facebook and the two who had answered me had valid points. One had simply stated that "It takes guts to Cosplay in the first place" and the other was "Who cares what anyone else thinks? You should do what you wanna do and the hell with everyone else". Both things I took to heart; I was gonna be ballsy and do what I wanted to do.
Now this is where opinions will vary; when I had mentioned I wanted to dress as one of the Sailor Senshi I had gotten kind of mixed reactions. Some thought I would look good and others were very unsure to the point of looking fearful for me. It's a perception thing of sorts and in my opinion as long as you're comfortable in your own skin I say go for it. It goes along the lines of "who cares what others think". As long as you're okay with it, do what you wanna do. I believe it was on Moon-Chase, a Sailor Moon blog, that had stated that it would be an injustice to not dress as your favorite character if you love them that much. And I have to agree. When it comes to height and weight there really is no being 100% accurate.
But I wear glasses? Am I limited to characters who wear them too? Oh hell no. True the outfit might look a little off, but that's not something you can control. I myself wear glasses and refuse to get contacts. Anyone who says something about it is really stretching for a nitpick anyway. There are just some things that you can't control and it will never be 100% accurate.
Is accuracy important?
Well yes, to a point anyway. The more accurate you are the more people will; a) stop you to take your picture (sometimes to the point where you might not be able to move for awhile lol) and b) recognize who you are trying to be. But there have been a few instances where the person has been missing key things and I have still been able to pick out who they are.
The most commonly "missed" piece (at least that I have seen) has been the hair. Wigs for anime/game characters can actually get quite expensive, but the price you pay is for the quality. So if you are willing to shell out the money for it good for you, but there are some who just can't budget it out and that's okay. Sometimes it is the hair that can make or break the costume (depending if it's a defying trait; like Sailor Moon's), but that's not to say that they don't function without it. When I dressed as Lina, I actually had to remove the wig for awhile as it had a horrible smell to it to begin with (whatever it was made out of) and on top of that we had sprayed it orange/red so it would be the correct color and that smell was just awful. But I still functioned as Lina Inverse even though I didn't that the hair.
Some people would argue that the Sailor Senshi outfits are the easiest for a cosplayer to accomplish. That's a matter of opinion really. The most identifiable piece of the Sailor Senshi would be the Sailor Fuku; and what's on the sailor fuku? The big, colorful bow of course. I have seen some Sailor Senshi cosplayers only have ribbons in place of the front bow. I admit it looks rather odd since its not as full as the bow should be, but again it's not to say it doesn't function.
Using Sailor Moon as an example again; the shoes for a good portion of the cosplay outfits are a huge challenge. And I have to say only about half of the Sailor Senshi cosplayers I saw this year had the shoes for the costume. Some used something that was close to it and others just used their normal shoes. Again they did look odd with the rest of the outfit, but its not to say the costume looked bad.
Over all you do want to be as accurate as you possibly can, but don't go outside your means to do. Do the best with what you got!
Where should I start?
This one is always a loaded question. Ultimately it comes down to WHO you wanna dress up as. So to help this along I am gonna give some examples (from my opinion of course) of the least complex to the most.
The least effort in cosplay would be what is known as "Closet Cosplay" where you throw a costume together from clothes in your closet/no to minimal construction needed. My costumes of Tohma and U-Yuuto were just this, as well as Hisoka. Even if you have to go out and buy pieces for the costume; closet cosplay is the cheapest way to get in on the fun.
For midrange I would have to say it's something that is considered one dimensional. The sailor fuku falls under this because it's very simplistic in design and shape. For those like me who actually don't know how to sew and want to learn, cosplay is great incentive to do so.
The "OMG HOW DID YOU MAKE THIS?!" range, well that would be a number of characters. But the best examples of this would be the "mascot" costumes. Mascots are usually creatures from series such as Pokemon. But another example of things that could fall into this category would be things like the Master Chief's armor from Halo, any Tokustatsu character and much much more. At Anime Boston 2008 there was a suit that actually lit up.
Obviously the more you do the more your skill will advance. I one day hope to get to the "OMG" point.
That's pretty much it for now. I will return to this topic every once and awhile as I make progress on my own cosplay outfits, even if only goes piece by piece. But for your enjoyment here is a list of the characters I would love to dress up as;
Sailor Moon:
Eternal Sailor Moon
Sailor Uranus
Sailor Pluto
LUNAR:
Luna
Lucia
Xenogears:
Elly Van Houten
Billy Lee Black
Final Fantasy VI:
Celes Chere (Opera gown)
Final Fantasy XI:
Dancer Relic
Gravitation:
Shuichi Shindou
Fullmetal Alchemist:
Riza Hawkeye
Disgaea:
Flonne
Rozalin
Black Butler:
Ciel Phantomhive
Kamen Rider:
Shotaro Hidari
Kamen Rider Den-O Gun form
Ryutaros
And many many more lol. I would also like to dress up as Tohma and Lina again with improvements over the original costumes. There is more I would like to cover on this topic, when it comes to designing the costume that is, but that shall wait for another entry. See you all next time! ^^/
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