It must be real tough to be an average cosplay photographer (or ‘Freelance Phographer’ as this profile indicates) in this country. It’s not enough that everyone accuses you of groping tweeners and taking surreptitious upskirt photos. Now you can’t even have a good laugh at other people’s expense, like this guy who just wanted Ondoy rains and Milenyo winds because it’s pretty outside his window. I mean, who wouldn’t want to go back to killing hundreds and displacing thousands of people, destroying property and livelihood, especially if you have the luxury of watching the whole thing from the distance of a TV screen?

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About a month ago, the day Go Kaisho became No Kaisho, a bunch of people decided that it would be fun to simply show up at the Eastwood Mall instead of waiting for an excuse to cosplay. Since it was also Children’s Day at the park, this led to some rather amusing consequences. Among the cosplay guests at this so-called ImpromptuCon: Jagi-sama (Romeo), Hatsune Miku (Sese), and an off-duty Geisha Girl (Monique).

As I was laughing my head off watching Jagi-sama get thrown off by an mechanical bull, I wondered: Why do people need an excuse to cosplay, anyway? This convention-centric view of cosplay doesn’t seem to be shared by Akiba itself. Every Sunday the main road that cuts through Akiba, Chuo-dori, is closed to vehicular traffic and becomes a stage for cosplayers. No entrance fees, no cramped venues with poor ventilation, just miles of concrete serving as the ballroom for a weekly fancy dress party.

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In the forum post I allude to in the comic Divide By Zero, I get accused of politicizing the cosplay scene when all anyone wants to do is ‘have fun’ — but apparently everyone’s idea of fun is bashing other people while furthering their own agendas for supremacy.

Now, I like to think that cosplayers aren’t dense or stupid. (If you disagree, bear with me, I like my rose-tinted glasses.) So how can people who are deeply immersed in the backbiting and name-calling that pervades local cosplay claim that everyone is one big happy cosplaying family?

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The funny thing is that the writer of the forum post didn’t really seem to have anything against me aside from the fact that I got along a little too well with someone he dislikes. Rival courtier, apparently, for the favor of the lady. Funny considering where the post was. Playing both sides, cheers mate.

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Read Part 1 here! Part 2 here!

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[This is Day 2 of my Ozine Fest 2010 report! Read day 1 here! All pictures are by my friend Ksolaris, as you can tell from the watermark -- not that it's stopped some very high profile scrapers from swiping her pics and posting them on their Multiply without attribution before. And what's with those uniformly crappy captions?]

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I attended an Ozine event (O-zeen? O-zayn? No one I’ve talked to seems to agree…) the year before, but only during the final day. I wanted to get a sense of the entire con this year, so this year I decided to attend all three days of Ozine Fest 2010.

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Someone recently pointed out to me a Malaysian website for the Asia Cosplay Meet (ACM), the Malaysian and Singaporean Final Rounds apparently taking place in July.

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So a friend and I were shooting the shit the other night and he was going on about the ‘Amateurism vs. Professionalism’ clash he observed in the local cosplay community. This particular friend allied himself firmly with the ‘Professionalism’ camp, saying that people who work long hours for low pay in costume are just as deserving as the ‘Amateurs’ of the term ‘cosplayer’.

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It’s Friday night at Little Tokyo, and I’m hanging out with friends, some old, some new, all involved one way or another with the otaku scene. Cosplayers, anime and manga fans, gamers and GMs.

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