Fashion: Japanese Cosplay

Photo from harribel123 on Photobucket

Cristine DOA cosplayer Photo from furanshisuko1

Cosplay (コスプレ) is a Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime and video games, and, less commonly, live action television shows, movies or Japanese pop music bands.
The term cosplay (pronounced kosupure in Japanese) is a contraction combining the words “costume” and “play” which accurately describes the hobby of having fun by dressing up as one’s favorite characters. Besides dressing up for public events such as anime conventions, it is not unusual for teens in Japan to gather with like-minded friends just to do cosplay. Since 1998 in Tokyo Akihabara district there is a large number of cosplay cafes, catering to otaku – anime and cosplay fans. The waitresses there dress as game or anime characters. Maid costumes are particularly popular.
Cosplay has spread across the world in recent years, joining with costuming at science fiction conventions in North America and Europe. The main difference between cosplay and costuming in the United States and Europe is that in Japan people typically dress up as characters from Japanese animated films (anime), Japanese comics (manga), or Japanese video games, as compared to dressing up as Star Trek characters or in Renaissance-era costumes. The other difference is that most costuming in the United States and Europe is centered on particular events such as conventions or festivals.
One such small niche of this field are dollers, the term for an amateur kigurumi player. These cosplayer wear masks to fully transform into their characters.
Cosplayers are often called “layers” and the otaku who photograph the layers are called cameko, short for “Camera Kozo” or “Camera Boy”. The cameko give prints of their photos to the layers as gifts.
In North American otaku culture, cosplayers at conventions often find themselves on the receiving ends of glomps, a type of high-powered hug.
(source: Wikipedia)
Cosplay has been really widespread that it helped Japanese culture to be known outside its boundaries. The Harajuku fashion has been a topic for otakus because of the different fashion young Japanese show on streets.

Harajuku Crowd by cutelittleinu on Potobucket

This fashion seems to be an ordinary fashion of youngsters in Harajuku.Here we can find a variety of cosplayers ranging from the maid outfits like in ppopular manga and anime series kichou wa Maid sama:

harajuku maid cosplayers by glitterdust on Photobucket

the Gothic and Lolita cosplayers

Gothic cosplayers by cutelittleinu on Photobucket

Lolita cosplayer by cutelittleinu on Photobucket

Cosplay is popular even here in the Philippines. The Japanese culture had sipped in and every otaku dreams to become a cosplayer. Cosplayers vary from the different games, series, movies and manga. Alodia, a known filipina cospllayer and Animax ani-mate, has been cosplaying for a long time:

Cosplayer Alodia by cutelittleinu

Cosplay Philippines is an official cosplay group in the country. 
This year they will be holding a national Cosplay competition. checkout their website for more details: www.cosplay.ph
Let's attend this!!! I'm excited.












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