"Cosplay in America" Book Release Party (Part 2) - Interview with Cosplayers

Continuing from "Cosplay in America" Book Release Party (Part 1)

On May 23, 2010, we visited Royal/T Cafe in Culver City, CA USA to cover the Book Release party of "Cosplay in America". Since the book is about cosplay, there were many cosplayers and photographers. We shot some interviews of them.

We also shot interview of Ejen, the photographer & author of the book, and Greg and Del from Tune in Tokyo in the earlier report

Eric Sivilich's showing his photo from "Cosplay in America." He flew from NJ to attend the party!

Katz' interviewing Alex, Angel, Heather at "Cosplay in America" Book Release part at Royal/T Cafe in 5/23/2010.

What is "Cosplay"?

The term "cosplay" is short for "costume play". The word was only used in Japan, but later spread throughout the world.

"Cosplay" was originated from the late 1960s. Start Trek phenomena encouranged Japanese fans to hold the costume contest (the same as Americans fans).

Then, one day, a group of Star Trek fans showed up in the certain Star Trek costumes to a party. And other attendees mistakenly saw them as the characters of Triton of the Sea, a manga by Osamu Tezuka. This misrecognition of the character is the known origin story of "Cosplay".

Since then, the more Japanese people started dressing like Japanese manga, and/or cartoon characters in addition to the Sci-Fi stories. [ Wikipedia ]

"Cosplay" is not only about dressing up like anime characters, but also playing like the anime characters.

One of the joys of doing cosplay is to become the manga/anime character that you admire. And you feel like you become stronger, or escape from the real world.

But the most fun part of doing cosplay is to meet other people at contests or comic conventions (comic-cons).

Especially when you find the other cosplayers who has the same character or anime series, you already get to know that you share a common interest.

I first encountered the cosplayers when I first went to a very small comic-cons in Yokkaichi, Mie, Japan in 1996.

At that time, the majority of Japanese people did not have good impression toward cosplayers because of very few criminals, or TV drama, which gave the wrong impression of "otaku" as dangerous and weird people.

The cosplayers were always referred as "losers" in Japan because they needed to dress up as somebody else's character, and they are not confident themselves because of it.

But in 15 years, the Japanese people start forgetting the nagative impact of otaku. The cosplay became popular all over the world.

15 years ago, I couldn't imagine that cosplay became so popular like I saw last Sunday.

Cosplayers' Interviews - Part 1

Anyway, here is the interviews of Cosplayers. (Jessica, Jordan, Matt, Hayley, Justin, Larry, Lisa, and Eric)

Cosplayers' and photographer Interview  - Part 2

This is the 3rd video. We shot the interviews of Alex, Angel, Heather, Mana, Koko, Mikan, and the interview of a photographer on-site, Tony.

Anyway, we had a blast. Thank you everybody for answwering my interviews!

Next, YokosoNews is planning to cover World Cosplay Summit 2010 in Nagoya on July 31-Aug 1. We hope to report as many cosplayers from all over the world!

And we are looking for reporters!

For the interview with Ejen (The author of the book), Greg and Del (Tune in Tokyo), check out "Cosplay in America" Book Release Party (Part 1).

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