Academic research on anime and manga has increased in recent years, providing a deeper understanding of the cultural, historical, and social significance of these mediums. This research helps to legitimize anime and manga as legitimate entertainment and art forms, making it more appealing to a wider audience.
Scholarly research
Cosplay has become an increasingly popular hobby, with fans from all over the world gathering to celebrate their love for their favourite characters. With so many characters to choose from, it can be overwhelming for beginners to know where to start. In this blog post, we'll look at some of the most popular cosplay characters, and what makes them so iconic.
Traditional cosplay is the most common type of cosplay, and it involves dressing up as a character from a specific source material. This could be a character from an anime, manga, comic, video game, or another form of media. Traditional cosplay is all about accuracy, and cosplayers often put a lot of effort into creating costumes, props, and accessories that are as close to the original as possible.
I get how daunting it can be, I remember around 2013 I was invited to go to a convention with some friends and wasn’t even sure what cosplay was at the time, I ended up deciding to cosplay a young Erza Scarlet from Fairy Tail, as I was a big fan at the time, my mum made her dress, I created her sword and shield out or cardboard, duct tape with paint and then bought her wig and eyepatch online.
To start there are a few things to think about; are there any characters that you love or something that you are into recently? For example, an anime series, Warhammer, a video game, etc. What type of cosplay would you like to do? Do you have the skills/resources to achieve this? How simple is the design? Can you afford this? Would you need to wear contact lenses? Are there any existing tutorials for cosplaying the character? Would you feel comfortable cosplaying this character? Can you practice styling wigs?