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 Words of Donald and Goofy: Cosplay
Written by Alethea and Athena Nibley
This time I think we'll talk about a different kind of translation: cosplay. You may ask, “How is cosplay translation?” And I would answer, “Because when you make a costume of an anime character, you translate their outfit from a two-dimensional drawing into a three-dimensional real outfit.” And then you might say, “Oh, I never thought of it that way! That's kind of neat!” Or you might say, “...right. Whatever. (Weirdo.)” But either way, that's what I'm going to talk about.
As some readers may have realized from past columns, we like to cosplay. I think most people reading this already know that “cosplay” is short for “costume role-play,” but just in case there are some people who don't, that's what it's short for. Tadah! We always thought of it as dressing as a favorite character, until it kept coming up in manga we translate, where they were talking about somebody wearing, for example, a generic maid costume, and saying they were cosplaying. This just goes to show that first impressions aren't everything. Or something.
We can't speak for the entire cosplaying population, but we can speak for ourselves, so that's what I'm going to do. I hope people don't mind us indulging ourselves in a trip down memory lane. First, I guess I'll talk about why we cosplay. There are a couple of reasons, actually. When we started, it was pure, simple love for an anime. Our first cosplay (not counting Halloween) actually happened back when we were nine-going-on-ten, when our aunt made each of us one of Belle's dresses from Beauty and the Beast for Christmas. (I got the pink one (from when they sing “Something There”) and Athena got the blue one.) I think that's when we were first infected. A couple of years later, Animaniacs started, and we would dress as Yakko and Wakko Warner (wearing a black t-shirt for Yakko and black pants for Wakko; we're not that crazy). I don't know what it was, but for some reason it was just more fun to dress as a character. We were never into fashion, and we hated shopping for clothes with a mad, unbridled passion. One of our friend's moms told us that we'd get over it by the time we were sixteen, and then we'd love buying clothes. So of course we stubbornly refused to be interested in normal clothes until... oh heck, we still don't care about fashion much.
But costumes were a different matter. The final blow that sent us spiraling into a world of blood, sweat, tears, and sewing happened sometimes before April 1996. Mom was fabric shopping, as she sometimes liked to do, and discovered that they actually sold patterns, in American fabric stores, for Sailor Moon costumes. Of course, we had to deal with the annoying fact that they were designed for little girls, and therefore the patterns didn't make costumes our size, but Mom bought the pattern anyway. The first costume that was made was a Sailor Jupiter costume for our youngest sister. After that, Mom's sewing phase passed, and it was my turn. We wanted to cosplay Sailor Moon so badly (even though we didn't know the term “cosplay” yet) that I took on my first major sewing project, and, with some help from Mom, altered the patterns and finally managed to make a Sailor Moon costume for Athena, Sailor Mercury for me, Sailor Venus for our other younger sister, and Sailor Mars for our friend. It was the beginning of... I'm actually not sure what it was the beginning of, come to think of it.
For a while after that, most of our costumes were different Sailor Soldier (Sailor Scout, Sailor Guardian, whatever you want to call them) costumes. I made a really cute Sailor V costume for our Sailor Venus little sister, but she didn't like it because, unlike the others, it didn't have a leotard, and those skirts are short. We didn't start to branch out until Pokemon came along. We actually wore Team Rocket costumes to school. It was pretty awesome. And then Mewtwo Strikes Back hit American theaters, and we thought what better time to go around in our costumes? Sure a few people made fun of us, but one of the keys to good cosplay is having no shame. And while those few people made fun of us, there were a ton of kids at the theater who loved to see Team Rocket wandering around. We even signed some Pokemon cards! Although now that I think about it, I wonder if we were devaluing them...
That's probably when we first realized that, in the right crowds, cosplay can get you a lot of attention. And we like attention. So when we cosplayed Fushigi Yuugi's Amiboshi and Suboshi at our first Anime Expo, we were ecstatic to get as much attention as we did. If we ran into other Fushigi Yuugi cosplayers, we would be standing there for a good five, ten minutes while people took pictures, but we didn't care--we liked it! Suboshi even became my favorite character, when before I hated him because he was stupid and psycho. (Now I think he's adorable♥)
We also met some friends through cosplay, and that's when we discovered our third reason for cosplaying: it's a fun way to meet and hang out with friends. We've recently discovered that this works best when the group isn't too big. At Anime Expo this year, we ran into some Ace Attorney cosplayers who informed us of the mini-gathering they were having before the giant gathering the next day. We didn't have any Ace Attorney costumes (we wanted to cosplay a couple of characters from Trials and Tribulations), so we couldn't participate, but we went anyway because there was a chance of getting some great pictures. And oh boy, did we. It was awesome, and, because there weren't too many people, anyone could shout out an idea for a certain pose (“All the prosecutors!” for a simple, non-spoilery example), and it wouldn't be long before we had a great shot lined up. We all had fun sharing our love of Ace Attorney, and making some great pictures while we were at it. And that's what real cosplay is all about.
I do have a confession to make about cosplay, though. We're working on getting over it, but we are very jealous cosplayers. That's why we can't go to the Masquerade too often. Either we'll think the costume isn't very good and we'll be all like, “Ha, we can do better!” or we'll see a fantastic costume and be very sad and depressed because “we'll never be that good!” It's even worse if it's a character one of us has cosplayed or planned to cosplay, because we'll be very possessive of that character and therefore more judgmental of the costume. So I want to apologize to anyone we may have offended in our evil costume envy (though you probably wouldn't know it was us...). I really do think we're getting better, though!
So despite our bad bad bad habit of sometimes judging costumes too harshly, we really think anyone can cosplay. Our personal opinion on how to choose a costume is this: pick a character you like! The secret to good cosplay isn't having an amazingly well-crafted costume (although those are awesome), but getting the attitude down. If you have the attitude right, you'll look like the character even if you don't physically resemble them. But even that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is what got us started to begin with: pure, simple love of a character. A wise cosplayer once said that someone can be wearing a costume that's the best crafted costume in the world, or they can be wearing a sign on their back that says, “I love [insert character]!” and it doesn't make any difference. It's the same message either way. (But wearing the costume is way more fun.)
PS: The picture is of us as Donald and Goofy, Kingdom Hearts versions. Tadah!
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