Cartoon Characters Come Alive

Last Saturday people from all over Sydney came together to show that cartoons aren’t just for kids. At the Citigate Hotel, Sydney, adults dressed as Japanese cartoon characters to compete over who would represent Australia on the international stage of the World Cosplay Summit.

Among the competitors was 20-year-old Hayley Williams, who wore a red hand made Victorian-era dress, complete with matching bonnet, green bow and long stockings.

Ms Williams won the female runner up prize in the preliminary round of the competition, after having spent six months and $370 making her costume.

Short for ‘costume-play,’ cosplay is a subculture in which people dress as characters, most commonly from Japanese manga (comic books) and anime (cartoons).

The costume character she chose was Shinku, a Victorian aristocrat from the anime series Rozen Maiden, about a group of dolls that come alive and compete for supremacy.

Many of those competing describe themselves an ‘otaku,’ someone who is obsessed with Japanese anime.

Many ‘cosplayers’ are in their early teens to late twenties and spend much of their time reading or watching Japanese anime and collecting associated games, comics and figurines.

The Cosplay Championships encourage anime fans from across Australia to create, dress and compete as their favourite anime character. In addition to making their own costumes they are asked to perform a skit or scene in front a judging panel and audience often in the hundreds.

“It’s a way of exploring our personality while also having the opportunity to be someone different,” said 20-year-old Anita Lun. Her competition partner Ailee Webb, 19, said she just enjoys “making people smile.”

The stakes for Cosplay can be high, with the winner of the Australian competition being flown to Japan to compete in the World Cosplay Summit, where they will face competitors from all around the world, a live audience in excess of 12,000 and a Japanese television audience possibly in the millions.

2008 Australian competition winners Gabriella Lowgran and Catherine Lee, who are part of the 2009 judging panel, described the competition as intense, with many frayed tempers and often a few tears.

Thousands of anime fans will watch the Cosplay Champions as part of the 2009 Animania Festival, a series of conventions which brings together anime fans from across Australia. Among the events included in the 2009 festival are anime screenings, video game competitions, drawing activities and karaoke.