Talk:Cosplay

Bishomen? Is this bishounen, or some other word? --Betty 17:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I assumed it referred to bishounen and edited accordingly. -- Rodo 18:52, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

You're both correct -- I meant to look it up and come back, and you beat me to it!--Sherrold 19:31, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

I added in a "sometimes here: "cosplaying as characters of the opposite sex is sometimes called "crossplay."" as I've never heard the term before, either in English or Japanese cosplay discussions. --Kyuuketsukirui 00:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Wow, that picture of Forry Ackerman makes me happy. That's fantastic, especially paired with the modern cosplay winner. Thanks, Cosmogyral! --Arduinna 07:49, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure 'cosplay' and 'costuming' are quite synonyms; the former seems to relate mainly to dressing up, while the latter is often focused towards making the costumes. Espresso Addict 02:30, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Eastern vs Western Cosplay

http://blog.miccostumes.com/cosplay-america-vs-japan/ Article/blogpost describing some of the differences between Japanese and American cosplay and the norms around them. -GoldenFalls (talk) 16:21, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

https://kotaku.com/can-the-west-cosplay-with-the-best-of-them-5432053 Article looking at the attitudes towards Eastern vs Western cosplay and how some people view Japanese cosplay as superior to American/Western cosplay. -GoldenFalls (talk) 16:21, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

I added a couple articles about the differences between the two to the talk page above. Not sure how to synthesize them into the actual page, but I figure they could be useful. From reading that, some other articles, and the Kismet rules, it seems like:

• Japanese cosplay is seen by a lot of people as better than Western cosplay
  • There is pushback against that, at least by some in the Western cosplay community and from the Kotaku article it seems like also from the Japanese cosplay community
  • a contributing factor to this might be not the ratio of high-quality cosplay but the culture/norms around photographing cosplay
• it is seen as inappropriate/not done to cosplay in Japan outside of designated areas and times while in America at least a number of people just cosplay out-and-about and it's common to come to cons already in your cosplay
• despite the fact it seems like cosplay isn't as accepted by general culture in Japan, there are actual stores dedicated to cosplay and you can find ready made costumes, accessories, wigs, and other necessary material in physical stores. In the West, it's more DIY
• in Japan, cosplay is any sort of dressing up as a character, whereas in the West it's use may be limited to more specifically apply to costumes of anime, manga, or video game characters, not covering dressing up as characters from Western media (though speaking personally I didn't know this and thought it applied to just the culture of dressing up as any character and going to cons) -GoldenFalls (talk) 16:44, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

On the subject of whether we should split eastern and western cosplay into their own articles: to be honest, I don't think I know enough about the subject to say for sure how seperate the topics are, but we do have at least one user who feels strongly about it so we should definitely discuss.

Mostly, I just don't think that cosplay should be a disambig page, even if eastern/western gets split up, because we'll be fighting a losing battle. Right now we have just under 250 links to Cosplay and looking at a lot of them I'm not really sure how I'd decide which link would be for western and which would be for eastern cosplay. Maybe that'll become clearer if we have full pages on both, but surely there are fandoms that do both and situations where we'll want to refer to both eastern and western cosplay at the same time? So even if/when we split eastern and western cosplay into their own pages, I think that the cosplay page should continue to be an article with something like:

• a broad explanation of the subject including a/some quick definitions and a brief history (both of which will hopefully be less immediately centered on the western/SFF side of things because uh it's kind of weird that the page is like that now!)
• one section each explaining eastern and western cosplay with hatnotes to the main articles
• something about the conflation of the two/how they relate or don't relate to each other, and fan opinions on that if we can find anything — I've never seen it brought up, but admittedly I don't read, talk, or think about cosplay much.
• I guess any other broad cosplay topics, like I think "professional cosplay" was brought up on the Discord and idk where that fits in.

In this way, I think the cosplay page could function as a very broad overview of the topic because, well, it sounds like it really sucks that eastern and western cosplay are talked about like they're the same thing when they're not, but I think directly addressing it on the page will be more useful and intuitive than just having a straight up disambiguation page and will save us a lot of time/effort fighting back against the tide of links to the cosplay page and give us a natural place to address the conflation of the two. Of course, this is all without even knowing the first thing on the subject of the east/west split, so possibly I'm extremely off base and this won't work out. No matter what this page does definitely need a serious clean up, though. - Hoopla (talk) 16:01, 27 April 2019 (UTC)

Assuming Japan = "Eastern" is kind of worrisome here. If we have adequate materials to talk about specific cosplay situations in specific countries, then country subpages seem reasonable, but I feel that doing "Eastern" and "Western" and then taking Japan for "Eastern" (and probably mostly the US, Canada, and the UK for "Western") creates very large concerns about editorializing and generalizing. If you go to the most popular cosplay photo site for Japan, you will see cosplay for western media sources, as well as for live-action sources. Related concepts like Lolita also seem like they would get ignored or swept under the rug by such rigid categorizations. This seems like a large step to take based on one blog post and one article in English. -the old briar pipe (talk) 01:40, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Most of what I've seen has been specifically talking about Japanese vs American, but I didn't want to use just those terms because some discussions also bring up Chinese and Korean cosplay. For example, this forum thread about Japanese vs American cosplay has a post in it here: "I really don't think this can be properly judged. One of my friendss idolize this other chinese cosplayer, because her costumes are amazingly well done and accurate, and she looks exactly like that character she is cosing. Also, I was looking at korean sites yesterday, and I found a group of cosplayers that were awesome, and a photography website I was blownh away by. I think it all depends on what you are looking at, and through what perspective." So I didn't want to exclude them, and it seemed like the cosplay in other Western countries such as Brittain is more in the traditions of the American cosplay than the Japanese and other Eastern ones. I'll admit, I don't have much first-hand experience with this so if other titles would be more appropriate, I'd welcome the changes. Maybe Japanese, Chinese, and Korean Cosplay? Not sure what the Western Cosplay could be enumerated to though. -GoldenFalls (talk) 01:59, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

Other blog post describing the differences between Japanese and American cosplay: https://hibarisensei.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/hibari-senseis-guide-to-cosplay-japan-vs-america/

I've been cosplaying since the 90s, which doesn't make me an expert on all cosplay everywhere, or even all cosplay in the US, of course. If you follow cosplay sites and blogs, you'll find that there is a variety of cosplay in most places where it's common. While "cosplay" wasn't the term used in the earliest SF&F circles in the US, it had thoroughly permeated the conversation by the late 90s/early 00s, so it's the commonly accepted term in the US now for all forms, not just animanga fandom characters. This was true for the entire period I was active. Kotaku is Kotaku, and they're quoting only Galbraith on the idea that non-animanga isn't cosplay. Was he even living in the US in the period when he was quoted? Can he be considered an SF&F fan? Sure, historical reenactment and the SCA don't use that term, but they also aren't usually dressing up as specific characters; the SF&F side has pretty thoroughly adopted the term, such that someone dressed as Bucky or Leia would generally be said to be cosplaying. (And Galbraith doesn't even mention reenactment.)

The problem I see with "Eastern" cosplay as a conceptual framework is that even if Korea and China are casually mentioned, the assumptions if we use mostly these sources would be that Japan forms the model that its neighbors follow by default. It doesn't. ("Western" has the same problem - plenty of influence on cosplay is local, and plenty has permeated into non-East Asian countries from places other than the US, and there is Japan-US cross-pollination as well) Each place has its own cosplay styles and social expectations and rules and traditions. I think it would be less presumptive to have separate articles on Japan, Korea, and China if you can find the material for them, rather than lumping them and assuming they are the same. And the same for other countries. For that matter, assuming all of Japan's cosplay is handled identically to Comiket's rules would be risky as well. I think it would be better to do a page about Japan and say things like "Here were the rule for Comiket in this year," rather than a broad-brush "Here is how cosplay works in Japan."

Mostly, I think that if you want to talk about cosplay in Japan, or in China, or anywhere else where English is not a primary language, I'd recommend looking at articles and posts in the native language. There's a lot of filtering and bias and "look at these fascinating foreigners!" that goes on in the English-language blogosphere when it comes to Japan in particular, and I'd hate to see us fall prey to limiting ourselves to that perspective. -the old briar pipe (talk) 06:23, 28 April 2019 (UTC)

(P.S. Omg, GF, so sorry for the text blat!)