features

The female cosplayers of summer Wonder Festival

21 Comments
By Casey Baseel, RocketNews24

Last weekend, it was once again time for Japan’s model and garage kit enthusiasts to gather for the summer iteration of Wonder Festival, held at the Makuhari Messe convention center in Chiba Prefecture. But while the event’s primary goal is to showcase the talents of those recreating anime and video game characters in plastic and resin, you’ll also find plenty of fans bringing their favorite heroes and heroines to life in flesh and cloth, as Wonder Festival has also become a major draw for cosplayers.

But would the soaring temperature during this year’s Summer Wonder Festival keep cosplayers in their air-conditioned homes? Not at all, and we figured if they were going to brave the heat, we would too, so we grabbed our camera and headed for the convention.

You’d be hard pressed to find a more intense fandom in Japan these days than the Love Live! community, so of course the high school idol singers were well-represented.

While there’s undeniably a lot of time and effort that goes into making a costume, these cosplayers proved that it’s not time to relax once the outfit is done, as they bravely posed in the 35.4-degree Celsius heat, smiling the whole time.

Read more stories from RocketNews24. -- The awesome costumed fans of Nagoya’s World Cosplay Summit -- Overall attendance down as number of games goes up at 2014 Tokyo Game Show -- The wonderful (male) cosplayers of Winter Wonder Festival 2015

© Japan Today

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.


21 Comments
Login to comment

I fully support this.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

HD images please, we are not in 1980 anymore.

9 ( +10 / -1 )

Awesome. I think I need to get into this.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

The outfits are always good to look at. This is a great way for people to express themselves without the sole focus being on their own inherent looks.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

I'm all for it if they are having fun and doing no harm. She's hot!

0 ( +5 / -5 )

Smith, you are a bad boy.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

Can someone tell me what is the difference between cosplay and fancy dress? And what is the "play" part of it? Just posing? Or acting?

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

Love those outfits! You can tell they put a lot of work into them.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I don't see any difference between Japanese cosplayers and/or people that dress up as their favorite movie(Star Trek, Star Wars, Superheroes, etc) characters or get dressed up for Halloween, Carnivals, etc.

Said that many of the J-Cosplayers are well known and make a good buck doing it and not just the ladies.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

If/when Japan signs the TPP, these events will be one of the first casualties. The TPP will criminalize cosplay of any copyrighted characters, and these events will be regulated into oblivion.

-2 ( +2 / -4 )

Agreed Smith. Grrrrr!!!

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Meh... not my type.

0 ( +2 / -2 )

The outfits add value but agree that the pink haired girl is not that yum.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Apologies to those who feel offended by innocent questions concerning their choice of hobby but I don't think there is any need to be defensive. Be proud and dress up all you like. But just reveal to us uncomprehending dolts what it is all about and what the pleasure is. I mean I used to dress up fancy dress and go to parties as a student but the dressing up was not the main attraction, though it was fun and we used to make some effort, though not obsessively so. Instead it was all about drinking and partying and dancing and talking rubbish to mates and women and the costume was a bit of a laugh and maybe an icebreaker. So, what is this cosplay thing? Just curious but not curious enough to get myself geared-out as Sailor Moon and rock up to an event.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

dressing up was not the main attraction, though it was fun... it was all about drinking

My name is Moonraker, and I'm a JT poster.

-3 ( +0 / -3 )

Poison from "Final Fight". Sweet :-)

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Moonraker... imagine it's the 1970s and a cereal box has a cut-out mask of Spock on the back. You wear a little blue sweater and you are now pretending to be Spock. Now imagine it's a Star Trek convention and people are dressed as crew and aliens... same thing as that Spock mask. In Japan it's the same thing... people like to dress up as their favourite characters from games, TV, film, anime, etc... it's just the same.

I remember seeing Planet of the Apes masks advertised in the 70s, toy phasers, etc... cosplay has been around for decades in one form or another.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Moonraker is right to ask (and he regoliths rather than rocks imo) I didn't understand cosplay at first either. The first time I saw hundreds of cosplayers in a park I actually stuck around for about 30 minutes to figure out what they were all waiting for... I thought they were there to see some kind of performance or something was going to happen.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Yuk. Look @ her. i saw better legs on table.

-6 ( +0 / -6 )

Got no problem with anyone doing this. As others have stated, `tis no different than Star Wars and Star Trek fans dressing up and going to conventions, as well as some ComicCon fans doing similarly with regards to super Heroes and Super Villains. At least in Japan, the girls --- like the one with the pink hair --- look absolutely stunning...

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Gonna have to get the wife into this asap.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Login to leave a comment

Facebook users

Use your Facebook account to login or register with JapanToday. By doing so, you will also receive an email inviting you to receive our news alerts.

Facebook Connect

Login with your JapanToday account

User registration

Articles, Offers & Useful Resources

A mix of what's trending on our other sites