World Cosplay Summit 2010

The World Cosplay Summit is a government-sponsored event held each year in Nagoya, Japan that has been steadily increasing in popularity from year to year. The focus of the Summit, the World Cosplay Championship, has preliminary rounds in 15 countries that lead up to the final 15 entries (Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Thailand and the US) duking it out in front of an audience of cosplayers from around the world. Each country’s entry in the World Cosplay Championship has two cosplayers performing a skit on stage while fully in character, with each performance being judged by a range of judges from different anime-related backgrounds.

This year, the Summit took place over two days and officially started with the Nishiki Boulevard Red Carpet Parade, where the contestants from each country took to the carpet in their alternate outfits. Later in the afternoon, these contestants joined in with hundreds of amateur cosplayers in the Cosplay Parade inside the Ōsu Kannon shopping arcade followed by lots of photo ops nearby Ōsu Kannon Temple. Popular characters to cosplay as are by no means limited to just manga or anime – videogames were just as, if not more popular than the other two Japanese mediums. Recurring cosplay characters included characters from the synthesizer application “Vocaloid” and its spin-off series “Hatsune Miku: Project DIVA”, Final Fantasy XIII and Pokemon.

Contenders for the World Cosplay Championship had to wear alternate costumes to their competition entries to take part in the Cosplay parade. However, unlike their Championship entries, they did not have to dress as characters from the same manga, anime or videogame. This led to a lot of interesting combinations. Videogame characters in the parade included Zidane Tribal (Australia) and Squall Leonhart (Mexico) from Dissidia: Final Fantasy, William Birkin From Resident Evil 2 (Italy), Rock Adams from Soul Calibur IV (Italy), Riku and Kairi from Kingdom Hearts II (Spain), Luke fon Fabre and Tear Grants from Tales of the Abyss (Denmark), Diao Chan from Dynasty Warriors 6, Rozalin and Adell from Disgaea 2 (Brazil), Snow Villiers from Final Fantasy XIII and, from the Vocaloid series, Kamui Gakupo (Thailand, China & South Korea) and Kaito (China). Whilst other cosplayers taking part in the parade made a valiant effort, the WCC contestants really stood out.

The second day was all about the Championship. Taking place at Oasis 21, a spaceship-like structure slap-bang in the middle of the Sakae district of Nagoya, hundreds upon hundreds of cosplayers from around the world set up shop in and around the area. Photo opportunities seemed less seedy than what I had seen before at Tokyo Game Show, as many of the photographers were cosplayers themselves. As the sun set, the Championship began. The fifteen performances were split into three chunks, interspersed with performances by HIMEKA, SKE48 and Hironobu Kageyama. i had evidently set my expectations low, because both the costumes and performances were much more professional than I had originally envisaged.

Interestingly enough, 10 out of the 15 entries were from videogames or videogame adaptations:

Bayonetta (Spain)
Children of Mana (Germany)
Dynasty Warriors 6 (Australia)
Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (Finland, Thailand)
Final Fantasy XIII (Singapore)
In a Distant Time 3 (China)
Kingdom Hearts II ( Denmark)
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Italy)
Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria (Brazil)

At the end of the day Italy ran away with the title of World Cosplay Champion, and deservedly so:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LyUYrwROwc[/youtube]

So who’s going to take up the challenge of getting a UK team together for next year?