Anime, a Japanese style cartoon media that has been gaining more and more popularity over the years. Cosplay branches from anime and has also been gaining popularity overtime.
Cosplay is the dressing up of a character from any particular media. Before the Internet, during the early 1980s, fans had to buy hs tapes of anime or wait for it to come on the television.
People may choose to dress up because they enjoy a certain character so much. They can take this enjoyment and go to cons such as Comic Con.
Cosplay and anime have gained even more popularity with the help of social media apps like TikTok. With the feature of recording, fans of anime can record videos of their cosplay and use specific sounds from the anime their cosplay is from, sharing their content with many other fans and getting support and love for their passion.
“I found out about anime through TikTok after a friend sent me a video of Jujutsu Kai-sen,” Sophomore Nina Lombardi said, “I’ve fallen in love with it ever since.”
Currently, some popular anime consist of Dragon Ball Z (1989), Naruto (2002), Bleach (2004) and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995). Many fans find joy in cosplaying certain characters from these anime shows, like Naruto Uzumaki from Naruto or Asuka Langley Soryu from Neon Genesis Evangelion. There are no bounds to who someone can cosplay.
Some fans even role play at events such as Comic Con. Comic Con is an event where fans hangout and share their love for the characters by cosplaying and selling fan-made merchandise. It is a place to meet friends. Originating in 1970, at first it was hosted by small groups of people who enjoyed the same types of comics. Now it is not exempt to any particular kind of media. Fans can have booths where they can sell self-made merchandise to other fans and earn money. There are also booths with official merchandise from different anime.
A popular anime since its release in 1995 is Neon Genesis Evangelion. It surrounds a boy who must fight in a mecha against angel monsters to make his dad proud. There are other supporting characters that fans have come to love and make the show more enjoyable. Fans have been able to find deeper meanings in the show by doing their own research and analysis.
With merchandise being made of specific characters of anime, fans can now collect and even hoard their favorite characters. Some fans take it to the next level and consider themselves “yume-joshi” which stands for “dream-ing girl” but is just a girl who self ships with a character they like. Self shipping is similar to regular shipping which is just taking two characters and imagining them in a romantic sense with each other. The male counterpart is “yumed-anshi.”