“Costumes aren’t just for Halloween and cosplay isn’t just a fad with teens. Cosplay is on the verge of becoming a major force in American pop culture.”
Cosplay: n. The habitual act of dressing up like comic book or cartoon characters favoured by enthusiasts, nerds and batshit weirdos with a loose grip on reality. “There was an alarming rise in tentacle-rape incidents at this year’s anime cosplay convention.”
– urbandictionary.com
Declared Urban Word of the Day on October 31 2006 by resident logophiles at urbandictionary.com, the term ‘cosplay’ – an abbreviation of ‘costume play’, or kosupure in Japanese – has something of the geek about it. This Japan-centric movie and comic book world, one of giant-eyed heroes and junk worship, was sired by the sci-fi/fantasy universe once synonymous with Star Trek conventions, but seems to be overtaking it at warp speed.
More than half a million fanatics dressed as their favourite anime and manga characters swarm Tokyo’s biannual Comiket fairs, the largest cosplay gathering in the world (the city hosted what is believed to be the world’s first cosplay fair in 1978). In Tokyo’s Akihabara district, cosplay restaurants cater to the imaginatively attired with maids dressed as everything from Pokemon to the Mario brothers. Yuichiro ‘Jienotsu’ Nagashima, one of Japan’s top-ranked kickboxers, makes all his appearances for K-1 dressed as different female anime characters, accompanied by cosplaying girls.
But this renewed dalliance in dressing-up is by no means limited to Asia. In 2011, US webcomic Onezumi ‘Oni’ Hartstein, co-founder of the Internet culture convention Intervention, told The Diplomat that “Costumes aren’t just for Halloween and cosplay isn’t just a fad with teens. Cosplay is on the verge of becoming a major force in American pop culture.” And here in Phnom Penh, a month after the city’s first manga cafe opened in Golden Sorya Mall and five months since the first local cosplay party at the Cambodia-Japanese Friendship Kizuna Festival, cosplayers are readying themselves for a second comic coming.
On July 21, sporting face paint, liquid latex, neon wigs, contact lenses, body modification and outrageous cyber fashion, the truly committed will make their way to Kizuna Hall in the Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre to worship at the altar of the weirdly dressed. But why? “Since cosplaying here is quite new, people might think we are getting crazy wasting money on anime/manga stuff and costumes,” says Rose Zarino, a 25-year-old Cambodian marketing executive and founder of the KH Anime Fanclub page on Facebook, replete in bright green wig and apparently channelling CC from hit anime series Code Geass. “But to us it’s fun because I love photography and being a model.
There’s more. Yumi Anna Ono, CEO/creative director at Chiara Angkor Music Production, is a devotee of Studio Ghibli, her favourite character being Sophie Hatter from Howl’s Moving Castle, British author Diana Wynne Jones’ 1986 fantasy novel. “I’m totally a novice at cosplay because I dressed up for the very first time in February for the Kizuna Festival that the Japan Embassy presented, but since then I had a surprising revelation that it was so much fun,” she says.
“We can exaggerate an existing trait in ourselves and it is indeed empowering to assume the role of a character of our choosing, such as Sophie, who is independent, brave, agile, responsible, confident yet vulnerable and most importantly kawaii (‘cute’) all at the same time! I believe that one of the elements of cosplay that appeals to so many people – and it has turned into a global phenomenon – is that you can really become the character you’re dressed as. And who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?”
WHO: Cosplayers
WHAT: Comic Party
WHERE: Kizuna Hall, Cambodia-Japan Cooperation Centre, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Russian Federation Blvd.
WHEN: 10am – 6pm July 21
WHY: Who doesn’t like to dress up and transform into fantasy land?