Saturday, August 1, 2009

Japanese Cosplay Characters and Costumes

By Lee Michelle

Japanese Cosplay is about the person becoming a chosen character or idea. The person looks and acts exactly like the character they are portraying.

You become a specified character in order to become a cosplayer. The sky is the limit, if you can dream it you can become it. Cosplaying is about having fun.

Japan and most other countries have participated in cross dressing as well as cosplay in the sex industry. This is an age old practice where costumes have been used for sexual practices, and dressing up is used for sexual play which is commonly known as a sexual fetishism.

Browsing the internet you will find lots of pictures of people from all over the world showing off their creations, as well as contests and even lectures on cosplay. Both adults and children take part in cosplay. There is also cross dressing where men take the role of a female character. The Japanese are known for crossplaying. Body suits and masks are worn by the males and they are fully transformed into female characters.

In Japan there are specialized clubs that cater for the sex industry and these clubs are called image clubs. Staff working at the clubs; also dress up as animation characters. Both males and females cross dress while cosplaying.

There are special Japanese cosplay agencies and video game companies that have models, modelling only cosplay costumes. Many film and video companies are scrambling to hire cosplayers. The cosplayers are seen as fictional characters in flesh. Cosplayers have virtually replaced the agency models, as they have the ability to re-create the character they portray with accuracy, and are able to stand apart from standard models.

Western and Japanese cosplayers are taking on the roles of popular movie characters like, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and many others. These people are usually fanatical fans of the movie characters, and they become the character by Cosplaying. Many cosplayers will follow war heroes, science fiction characters even down to the fairies and gnomes are acted out. Japanese cosplay remains more or less original and follows customs and traditions that have existed for many centuries.

However there are costumes worn without any conviction by Japanese cosplayers that westerners would not consider wearing as it would be culturally not correct like a Nazi uniform or any other uniforms worn by dictators in the past. Japanese cosplay does not only cover specified role playing but covers all kinds of obsessive fandom.

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