COSPLAY FROM ANIME, GAMES & VIDEO GAMES

Cosplay means to slip into other roles with passion. The trend comes from Japan, where manga and anime culture is booming, but has now also reached the USA and Europe, and thus of course Germany.

More and more people are finding fun in dressing up as your heroes from manga, anime, comics, series and movies. Cosplay is even more than just putting on a costume, though.

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BECOME A COSPLAYER

What exactly is cosplay and what does it involve?

The Japanese term “kosupure” is composed of the English words costume and play. Originally, the first cosplayers lovingly and very time-consumingly created and crafted the outfit and physical features themselves. Initially, the focus was on protagonists from manga and anime, but video game heroes and Japanese musicians are also becoming increasingly popular. For western cosplayers, Star Trek and Star Wars protagonists and Marvel Comic heroes were added. In principle, of course, any figure from comics, literature, film and television can be used.

Real cosplayers often lovingly make their costumes in painstaking, time-consuming and rather costly detail work and at the corresponding cosplay events there are attractive prizes to be won for the best costume, which reward the efforts.

However, cosplay is not only about a great costume, but also about skilfully portraying the chosen hero or heroine. To do this, of course, you need to know the protagonist very well and memorize all the characteristics and traits. Because the idea is to not look out of character and put on a deceptively real performance.

“The biggest appeal is still immersing yourself in a different role,” 26-year-old “Modern Japan” student Désirée tells us in an interview. She participated in the World Cosplay Summit in Japan in 2010. Teams from more than 20 countries will compete in the world’s only international cosplay competition. “I’ve really enjoyed working out my performances with attention to detail and bringing my character to life on stage.”

Do you sew your own costumes or buy them?

Even if detail-loving cosplay fanatics spare neither expense nor effort, this is of course not everyone’s cup of tea. In addition to the material for the costume, special accessories such as artificial body parts – e.g. elf ears, horns, gills, noses, etc. – often have to be bought, weapons have to be found or made and wigs have to be purchased. Often these things have to be searched for and bought in different places and that costs not only money, but also a lot of time.

If you don’t want to invest so much time and money in your disguise, you can fortunately order great costume sets on the internet by now and of course buy lots of specialized accessories. This is especially attractive to people with little time or insufficient skill as a seamstress or costume maker.

Where can you wear cosplay costumes?

Especially great opportunities are of course real cosplay events. Trade fairs, such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, Gamescom or similar are ideal. There are also other events such as movie premieres or special parties where cosplayers can stage their grand entrance. Otherwise, the great costumes are of course also suitable for carnival, Halloween, birthday and theme parties.

Cosplays with us in the shop

You will find a lot of great options of complete costumes. These are especially useful if you don’t have time to create, sew and craft a costume yourself. Because for a complete outfit you usually need a whole lot of things. Maybe you don’t have the skill or the patience and needlework is not your thing? Also in this case we advise you to choose one of the great costume complete sets from our assortment.

Of course, cosplayers who like to put their costume together and tinker with it themselves will also find lots of valuable details and accessories here. Especially concerning things like wigs, weapons, masks and artificial body parts we are well sorted and help you to find the right thing for your great cosplay costume.