Conventions shutting down across 2020 and 2021 put the cosplay community on ice. However, the medium survived, and even thrived, as it adapted to new challenges. As conventions return, how has the craft evolved, and will things revert to the old standard?
At every convention you go to with a pop culture or anime twist, there are bound to be cosplayers celebrating their favorite characters and showing off their craftsmanship.
It has this magical vibe. Starstruck fans, even kids, walk up to one and nervously ask for a photo. Cosplayers happily oblige, getting perfectly into character like a Disney princess. It’s more than an outfit: they rattle off lines with perfect delivery, and for a split second it feels like you’re immersed in that world.
However it took a global health crisis, and a lack of conventions for two years, to truly verbalize that magic. You don’t really know you miss something until it’s gone. And if it’s difficult for a fan, it was an even deeper cut for the cosplay community which thrived on this physical presence to not just interact and share their love for cosplay, but fandom too.
“To me, it’s a really big family,” Knite, a popular cosplayer from Australia, told Dexerto at Crunchyroll Expo 2022.
“I try to teach people my knowledge and make everyone happy with my craftsmanship. I’ve been given a lot of good opportunities to travel overseas as a guest, meeting so many different people from different countries, experiencing their cultures and style of cosplay. It’s so nice to see that cosplay is a hobby the whole world can enjoy, and everyone does it differently as well.”
There has been a distinct shift before and after the crisis though. Cosplay didn’t just barely survive two years without conventions and in-person interaction. The community thrived, and coming back in 2022, there was an abundance of people paying homage to their icons.
The community continued to expand and adapt, and cosplay is now more accessible than ever. However with a new normal slotting into place, will the medium take on its learnings over the last two years, or will it revert to the old standard?
Conventions are back and so too in-person cosplayers, but things have definitely changed in the space.
A hard stop putting cosplay into perspective
When conventions stopped in early 2020, cosplayers with full calendars for the year suddenly had an abundance of free time. However, it was not all positive. For those who use cosplay as their job, like Knite, it left them in a precarious position of not knowing when their job would return.
“It very heavily impacted my job,” they admitted. “My job consists of working with companies, going overseas, guesting at conventions. Even just working in Japan doing whatever events. That all stopped for two years and really heavily affected my career.
What it did open up, though, was a new perspective. After working so hard on contract jobs, Knite could turn towards personal projects they had neglected and put the ‘play’ back into cosplay.
“The thing with having cosplay as a job is you have to cosplay things you don’t want to. You have to make the costume, do a shoot or wear it at an event. Sometimes that happens and I’m like ‘I’m not enjoying this character’ but it is what it is. The pandemic made me want to start projects I wanted to do for myself.”
The same goes for Vye, another Australian cosplayer, who uses cosplay as a creative outlet outside of their full-time job. Instead of the old tradition of making a new cosplay for every event, they used the two-year gap as a chance to improve their relationship with cosplay.
“I’d do one photoshoot for a character, showcase my outfit at an event, enter it in competitions, and perform in-person,” they said. “Suddenly I didn’t have all that and without all that stuff, I didn’t know what I wanted to make of cosplay.
“The first year, I just did a few makeup tests at home and was finding my feet and what I liked again. I decided there was no end in sight after a year, so I took it as a really good break and I could focus on myself and take things at my own pace. I could schedule all that so I pivoted cosplaying into my own speed and not focusing on deadlines. It improved my relationship with cosplay a lot, the hobby of making things.
“Instead of conventions I did big photoshoot trips and I got to talk to a lot of people and do collaborations. I went to New Zealand for a few weeks when borders opened, exploring and doing cosplay stuff and that was something I never contemplated before. It was a case of making the most of the situations you were in.”
It’s not like conventions and cosplay competitions stopped either. They just moved online. That was a massive boon for the likes of Kirilee, who is based in Perth, Australia, thousands of miles from any major conventions even within their own country.
“We don’t have as many options as others [to go to conventions],” she said. “For me, I’ve had to go a lot online.
“I got really excited because immediately there were some really big conventions in the US to be international because it was all online now. Crunchyroll Expo was one of the first ones to make it international and it was a lot more open and I also got to start speaking to other YouTubers and historical costumers who then influenced me. I was able to explore different sides and different skills I hadn’t been able to do before.”
The social media boom, and normalizing cosplay
With the cosplay community moving online, suddenly there was a much wider audience than before. With Twitter and Facebook once being the homes of cosplayers sharing their pictures, there were now more interactive mediums through TikTok.
The short-form video platform allowed a different form of expression compared to still photography. It also opened up cosplay to a younger audience who were enamored by the style of play it evoked. This led to innovation in the space.
Cosplay, for so long, was just thought of as “costume play” in the literal sense. It had to be true and authentic to the character. However this new audience added a personal twist to the medium, and revolutionized how even the most veteran craftspeople saw their craft.
“I know that the community on TikTok is something I’ve never seen before,” Knite said. “They’re very different cosplayers. It’s more creative. They just do whatever they want with the costume. It doesn’t have to be picture-perfect like the character. They put their own twist on it, add accessories, glamorize it, and I find that so cool.
“It is a hobby you can do entirely from home and that’s why it got so big on TikTok because people can do it from their bedrooms,” Vye added. “Especially for some people who don’t want to take the first big step of going out in public, it’s a great introduction into making yourself comfortable in that world.”
Cosplay can mean a number of things now. It can just be make-up tests to look like a character. It can be a simple voiceover or a wig, done up for a vertical video and shared to millions. No longer is it just the extreme of doing everything as a one-to-one replica, it’s more open.
The rise of cosplay’s popularity on social media has also led to the medium becoming more accessible. It’s now easy to go onto websites and buy cosplays of popular characters. Sure, it doesn’t equal handcrafting it, but it gives those without the handy skills a way to express their love for a character or a fandom without being gatekept.
“A lot of people were introduced to cosplay through social media and companies caught onto that and mass-produced costumes,” Knite continued. “It’s much more accessible to get cosplays nowadays.
“For me, I’m very mix and match. 90% I make my cosplay and the other 10% I buy, but a lot of people don’t have the skills yet or don’t know how to make costumes. Knowing they can buy everything online, it’s very intriguing to a lot of people because they’re like ‘oh I don’t need to make a costume, I can buy it and wear a wig.’”
𝐻𝑜𝓌𝓁’𝓈 𝑀𝑜𝓋𝒾𝓃𝑔 𝒞𝒶𝓈𝓉𝓁𝑒 💧This is a special project I have wanted to photoshoot for more than 10 years. I travelled to beautiful Switzerland, it’s really a dream come true!Howl Pendragon | @KNITEcoser Photo | @Shunsukecos pic.twitter.com/lftID948pk
— ナイト (@KNITEcoser) September 4, 2022
All this comes at a time when cosplay is more socially acceptable. A decade ago, or even just prior to 2020, it would have been a rare sight to see someone dressing up in public like that. Now it’s just a thing you see, and people don’t turn their nose up at it.
“It’s really acceptable now for people to embrace their inner nerd and run with it and have fun with it and there’s no judgment,” Kirilee said. “Even people who are older than me — and I’m mid-30s — see things like The Big Bang Theory and media in general showing it, they’re like ‘oh that’s what you’re doing’.
“When I first started people were like ‘are you dressing up? Are you going to a party? Is it Halloween?’ They couldn’t fathom why I’d spend hundreds of hours working on a costume, but now they’re like ‘yeah I can see how much you did today.’”
Will everything return to as it was?
Now as conventions return, the big question looming over cosplay is which path does it take? The community has its roots in massive meetups and conventions where everyone can share their craft. But the global health crisis showed it could survive, and thrive, online.
Which is actually better depends on who you ask in the cosplay scene. Almost everyone agrees a hybrid model will allow the space to continue growing. But the direction it’ll take is still an unknown quantity, and one cosplayers are grappling with as they plan their schedules for 2023 and beyond.
“For me personally, I’ve been involved with more international online competitions, and I loved that experience,” Kirilee said. “I want more of that, but with conventions, there may be a push to go back to the status quo of what it was and I’m like ‘we’ve come so far, let’s try and continue this inclusiveness that’s international.’”
“There’s good and bad with both situations,” Vye added, “and we just need to assess what is good and reinforce that, and improve what we have had in the past. It’s very difficult [with] both sides having their benefits, and it’s difficult for people who have now built these two platforms and ways of doing things to try and get across the idea of mixing them.”
Cosplay has opened right up. There are more opportunities now than ever before, and borders have been shrunk as things moved online. Everyone, from fans to companies to cosplayers themselves, has a deeper understanding of what the medium of cosplay actually is. Even the money full-time cosplayers can earn is going up.
It’s also no longer this one broad concept of costume play. There are different facets to the craft, people can specialize in certain bits, and ultimately express themselves in the way they are most comfortable with.
“There’s so many opportunities, even as someone who doesn’t have it as a full-time career, they’ll reach out to smaller people,” Vye said. “They also compensate way better than they used to which is a big step forward for the industry in general, that people are getting recognized for their hard work and that’s gratifying for me.
“When I talk to companies who want recommendations for cosplayers to hire, I have to ask what situation is this going to be? If you want booth work, you want someone with an ‘out there’ personality. If you want a judge, you’ll want something else.
“It’s rare that someone falls into all categories, and it’s really good in a way because it creates more opportunities to find their hobby. They don’t have to do everything which was the expectation back in the day. You had an expectation to fit every box and now it’s fine to pick and choose what you want to do.”