A Guide to Manga, Anime and Video Game Cosplay

By Holly Swinyard

Do you find yourself sat at home wishing you could be in your favorite video game? Or dream of a time when you pretended you were Sailor Moon? Or do you want to embody your Dungeons and Dragons character for real? What’s holding you back? Maybe you need to introduced to cosplay! Cosplay is a phenomenon that is taking over the world. If you haven’t seen it yet, have you not been looking at social media? Cosplay is a mix of exciting craft skills, heady escapism and passion for pop culture that lets you be whoever you want, whenever you want. Cosplay has made its way into TV shows and documentaries, been included as part of film premieres and video game launches, it’s even referenced in the comics, manga and media it comes from! Talk about meta. But what is this super popular hobby? Well, pick up this book, and it’s twin A Guide to Movie and TV Cosplay, to get all the answers. Because it’s more than just dressing up, promise. With a little bit of help from this handy, dandy guide to cosplay, you can get stuck in. Learn about the history of the hobby (it’s been around longer than you’d think!), where it came from and how it got to be the way it is now, get your head around making and designing costumes, find out how about all the amazing skills people are using to make these costumes, and perhaps even try a few yourself. Who knows, you might be rocking out as Astro Boy, Chris Redfield or All Might at the next big comic con! So why not give it a try and play make believe for a day.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9781526775689

Book preview

Introduction

Have you ever wanted to find a magical gem that transforms you into a super-powered space princess? Or wished you could be whisked away to a castle in the sky to be a mysterious wizard? Just found yourself turning a broken branch into a wand while you’re doing your weekly shop? Then you should keep reading this book and take a moment to come into the wonderful world of escapism, artistic crafts and fantastical creations that is cosplay.

Just by picking up this book it says that you, or someone you know, is interested in cosplay. You’re drawn to that little spark of creativity and adventure that it promises. Maybe you are thinking ‘I wish I could try that’ or ‘I loved dressing up when I was little’ and you’re wondering if you can get involved. Or possibly you are someone who already loves the lexicon of craft, media and storytelling that defines the world of cosplay and wants to find more about it. Well, this book, and its twin (A Guide to Film and TV Cosplay), are little portals for anyone who wants to take a look at cosplay and everything that goes with it. Maybe you’ll even decide to stay for a bit.

In the last few years more and more cosplay has appeared in the mainstream, on sitcoms, in the news, in video games and comic books and manga, it’s all over YouTube and streaming services, there have even documentaries about it – but why is it so popular? What is it that draws people in and inspires them to make these amazing costumes?

The thing is, that with cosplay, and costuming hobbies like it, you are opening the door to a whole myriad of experiences, skills and ideas without having to worry about what to do with them or how to apply them to some sort of real-life situation. It’s all just for fun.

You don’t need to ‘hustle’ with cosplay – unless you want to – or do anything more than just add joy to your life for the sake of your own creative expression and the want to do something fun because it’s fun. As adults we can often find ourselves thinking ‘But what’s the point in doing this? Is it productive?’, when we should be thinking ‘Am I having fun? Am I doing something because it makes me happy?’

Zeniba’s Friends – Spirited Away.

There is so much telling us that we have to do things in the right way, that there are certain rules to stick to, that we need to colour inside the lines to make something beautiful, and as more and more rules get placed on us we start to forget that play is important. We can start telling ourselves it’s embarrassing that we enjoy things. How many worry that we still like cartoons or playing board games or enjoying alternative fashion now that we’ve passed our childhood years? But we really shouldn’t do that to ourselves. If something infuses you with a passion, then let it be part of your life. Enjoy it. Fantasy is no bad thing and playing make-believe is just as valid at 40 as it is at four.

There is a reason that nerd culture is on the rise. People are remembering how much fun it is to play Dungeons and Dragons or watch superhero movies. We all need a little bit of escapism. Embrace your inner child and take a deep dive into cosplay.

Dressing up and making costumes is the most wonderful form of make-believe, feeding your brain with creativity, teaching yourself new skills and opening up your space to new experiences. It takes you to places where you can be who you’ve always dreamed of being. Wearing that costume can open your eyes to new things about yourself as well as new experiences. You might just look like Sailor Moon for a day, but you never know, some of that character may well rub off on you in other aspects of your life too. Cosplay can really give you a new sense of self and inner strength. Powerful thing, playing.

Part of the joy of cosplay is that you get to find and define how you want to interact with it as a hobby. There are so many different routes into cosplay, from different media and mediums to different ways to make, wear and be the characters you love, and you get to pick and mix however you want. There are no finite rules that you have to stay within; you don’t have to colour inside the lines to have fun.

Mercy, Soldier 76, and Ana – Overwatch.

What is Cosplay?

So you think you know what cosplay is? You’ve seen it on social media or on TV, and it’s dressing up as your favourite characters, building ridiculous costumes and props, and going to comic book conventions as Captain America, right? That’s it in a nutshell, but there’s a little bit more to the story than that. The moment you take that deep breath and dive past the surface you can see that this is the tip of the cosplay iceberg. There are so many more facets to this unusual hobby than simply being a more extreme version of fancy dress.

Ask anyone involved in cosplay what it is to them and you will probably get as many answers as people you ask. For some, cosplay is as simple as dressing up on the weekends for a laugh, but for others it’s about finding a space to be themselves, even if that means being someone else for the day. For many people it’s about community and connecting with likeminded individuals, whilst for others it is about learning skills and crafts and passing on that knowledge. Some may see it as art, some may be there for competition, and some may simply want a new way to tell and appreciate the stories they love. Each way of thinking about cosplay is correct and valid in its own right, and they all build up to the picture of what cosplay is.

What connects all of this, and each different experience of cosplay, is the love for the characters. The costumes might be what is worn on the outside, but what’s important to cosplayers is becoming and embodying the characters. It’s a way of sticking your colours to the mast and showing people what you care about. It could be seen as wearing your team’s football strip to support them. If you love something, why not literally wear it on your sleeve? That’s what the early pioneers of cosplay thought.

Cosplay as a hobby has been around for a lot longer than you might think. If one were to guess, a lot of people might think it first turned up in the 1980s, and you would be half right. The word cosplay did come into existence then but cosplay itself had been kicking around the pop culture sphere for a good 40 years before the name itself was invented. This is not some fad brought about by the internet, though no one can argue that technology has not been a huge boon to the hobby, but it is a long-standing tradition of those who are a touch more nerd minded.

It’s arguable that it is actually even older, with the first costumes that could be called cosplay appearing at the turn of the twentieth century. But is that even the beginning of it all? Humans have been dressing up and acting as characters for social and communal reasons since there have been humans. We are creatures who love to tell stories and inhabit the characters within them. Think of the carnivals of Venice or the masked balls of European royalty. The costumes that were worn at those events were the well-known characters (or caricatures) of their day. They were the equivalent of pop culture; they were the popular culture. If you remove the blinkers of these taking place in a historical period or a classical setting you can see that there is a very clear, direct link between these parties, balls, or masquerades and the modern cosplay that we do today.

You can go all the way back to storytellers of ancient and prehistoric times and draw lines through every type of mask-wearing, character-inhabiting, fancy-dressing form of entertainment humans have ever enjoyed to cosplay. It might sound a little corny but cosplay is very much a progression of the costuming art.

Cheza – Wolf’s Rain.

Ozymandias – Fate/Grand Order.

One of the joys of all types of costuming from any time period is that you get to be someone else