Alright, I’ll admit it. Ever since actually attending Eirtakon this year, the whole act of cosplaying in general has always been on my mind (even at the worst of times…). Perhaps it’s one of those things that I never really had a chance to care for until actually doing it myself. I’d even consider booking myself a one-way flight to the Harajuku area in Tokyo and staying there for the rest of my life, engaging in all the cosplay events there. Well, if it weren’t for three major issues: lack of money, lack of Japanese, and lack of any sort of skills when it comes to costume creation

If your first instinct right now is to scroll right down to that comments box and ask me “Why?”, I’m just going to say right now “Why not?”. There’s not much different to a normal fancy dress or costume party (especially when it’s one of Elly’s!) – you’re just being someone from anime, manga, video games etc.. It’s along the same lines as LARPing (Live Action Role Playing games, for those of you who are uneducated), just not with a game in mind, only fun. So I’d like to see you turn around and tell me it’s not normal.

I’ve already started planning for next year’s anime convention schedule, so that I can hopefully go as part of a cosplaying pair or group, and possibly even have skits prepared for some of the more major cons. Why start planning so early? Well, everyone else seems to be doing so as well. Plus, the more time I have available, the more time I have to actually get something made for it, and that doesn’t look like crap. Or so I can just continually go on about how much time I have left, only to procrastinate and realise two weeks before the con that I’m royally fucked. The latter option is very likely to happen, unless those who I’m cosplaying with start beating me with sticks to get me to get stuff done.

I would start arguing about why should things like this be limited to conventions, but the main thing about that is the point of view of the public, who may not exactly consider this sort of thing to be normal or acceptable behaviour. Yes, this is something probably best kept to group meetings with like-minded people who are actually into this sort of thing. Doesn’t mean that meetings can’t be arranged though. Several times throughout the year I hear of cosplay photoshoots wanting to be held, that would interest me, again if I was actually half-decent at costume creation so that I’d look good on camera – and if that one decent picture of me I found from Eirta this year is anything to go by, I sure as hell don’t!

And if you think I’m already off my rocker with all this, I’m probably going to make me sound even more insane to you right now – I’m even thinking about having a cosplay party for my 21st. Yes, consider me sad if you will, but I would certainly enjoy a party where everybody is in a character not them. Sure it’d probably alienate a fair few of my friends and would probably be just eirtaku peeps attending, but all I’d say to that is that anyone not being there would be missing out big time.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off back to deviantArt to go gawp at people…