Cosplay is an artistic medium which has spread internationally from its grassroots beginnings in underground fandom culture.1 It is a way for fans of pop culture to express their love and appreciation for their favorite media by dressing up and acting as characters from them. Today, a formal market has developed to meet the demand internationally for costumes, as well as an informal, socially complex market for specially designed and commissioned costumes. Cosplayers invest hundreds of hours into costume design, makeup and studying their characters to effectively portray the characters they choose to play as. Furthermore, cosplay is an established avenue of artistic expression internationally; thousands of people worldwide engage with media involving cosplayers and take part in the cross-cultural social interactions that result. In this universality of cosplay culture, audiences internationally communicate in ways that would otherwise be unachievable, whether due to differences in language or primary cultural contours. This article aims to delve into what cosplay is, modern cosplay phenomena internationally, and how it fits into wider international pop culture expression.
What is Cosplay?
Figure 1. Comiket at Tokyo Big Sight, Japan. (Photograph from Aaron Van Geffen, Comiket at Tokyo Big Sight, Japan, August 11, 2012, Aaron | photos, https://aaronweb.net/photos/2012/08/comiket-at-tokyo-big-sight-japan-2/).
‘Cosplay’ is the practice of dressing up as fictional characters. Arguably, it is a sub-field of fashion or of costuming. To an individual cosplayer, this distinction is relatively fluid. Some cosplayers take design elements from fictional characters and implement them within their own fashion or style, subsuming them as part of an outfit that still reflects their own fashion.2 Others who lean more heavily into the costuming aspect will approach their costume in surgically minute detail. These cosplayers use character design references, advanced prop and costuming techniques, and other methods to recreate their characters. Nicole Lamerichs captures this in her interviews with convention attendees when she says:
He wants to make a new outfit for Tira from Soul Calibur V that will involve latex, which he has never worked with, many separate pieces of cloth, and a complex styling of the wig. He explains that he is interested in the creative challenge, but it is striking that Tira often returns as a fundamental character in his oeuvre.3
The origin of cosplay is contentious among fans and academics who study the topic. Some isolated examples of “proto-cosplay” exist with the rise of mass-printed popular culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Modern cosplay began to coalesce in the 1970s with Star Trek as well as DC Comic properties in America.4 However, the phenomenon would not have its official name until Japanese fans began to pick up the practice within their own popular fan culture. One synthesized account of the term’s origins follows Takahashi Nobuyuki who attended Los Angeles’ World-Con in 1984. Impressed with the convention’s costume masquerades of sci-fi and fantasy properties, he returned to Japan and wanted to encourage his readers to incorporate costuming in their own convention culture. However, he could not directly translate the English word ‘masquerade,’ because a direct translation would not match what he saw at World-Con. He instead used the phrase ‘costume play,’ which was further shortened to ‘kosupure’ in popular usage.5 Coinciding with the rising popularity of Japanese popular culture in the United States, modern costuming and cosplay quickly rose in popularity. Today, modern conventions attract thousands of attendees from different geographic regions. In the United States, Comic-Cons across the country are the most prominently known examples. Within Japan, conventions such as Comiket and the World Cosplay Summit attract thousands both domestically and internationally.
Figure 2. Avalon - Belgium. (Photograph from Axel Clergau, Avalon - Belgium, accessed on March 15, 2025, Europa Cosplay Cup, https://europacosplaycup.com/team-member/avalon).
Cosplay as an International Art
As the medium progressed, cosplay competitions and masquerades quickly developed, building upon existing social blueprints built in early conventions.6 International cosplay contests are one such example of the medium being taken to its professional extreme. Major events such as the Europa Cosplay Cup organize cosplayers from across Europe to showcase their hand-crafted costumes to a regional and international audience.7 These competitions are remarkably fierce. The event itself maintains quality standards with regards to costuming methods and materials used. Not only does the competition explicitly ban prefabricated costumes, but it also regulates the usage of automated methods such as embroidery machines and 3D printers.8
The standards for craftsmanship are held to high scrutiny in these competitions as well. Judge panels are organized from cohorts of proven professional cosplayers within the industry who may have different craft specialties, such as foam. To use the Europa Cosplayer Competition as an example, their criteria is split equally between masquerade performance and build quality. For build quality, they look for mobility, difficulty of construction methods, and fabric choice. Masquerade performance looks at the cosplayer’s acting ability, likeness to their character and technical production of their show.9 All of these technical specifications demonstrate artistic sophistication of the cosplay medium. International competitions like the Europa Cup illustrate a concrete institution behind the art: established artistic techniques communicate with each other. Internationally recognized fan properties
Research into the ethnography behind cosplay demonstrates a universal fan-culture social coding across cosplayers. While research into the subject is sparse, scholars interested in the subject have conducted interviews across the world. Lamerichs’ interviews were conducted with both Dutch and Belgian cosplayers cosplaying as Japanese video game characters.10 In other words, the images and signals that fans recognize in international pop-culture have developed into a phenomena that transcends cultural boundaries. An American fan of Japanese pop-culture would recognize their favorite characters in an international fan and acknowledge them as part of the universal in-group.
Despite the potential barriers in both primary culture and language, fan culture and cosplay provide a universal avenue in communicating the personality and feelings of individual cosplayers. In the performance of a character, a cosplayer interacts with the signs and signals of their chosen fandom, creating a distinct ‘code.’ Matthew Hale describes this in the following excerpt:
“To pick up with our earlier hypothetical example, a cosplayer dressed as Batman might also speak in a low and raspy tone, recite notable quotes, and imitate the character's gestures as he was depicted within the Batman textual universe.”11
Furthermore, perceived commitment to the quality of both the costume and the cosplayer’s performance can become a measure for acceptance within fandom coding. A. Luxx Mishou mentions the dual nature of this recognizability by noting that it, “entails compliments, photo ops, and public appreciation for the maker’s art, but it also means interrogation, being aggressively grilled in material minutia to defend a cosplay…”12
Figure 3. Photoshoot: Saber (Photograph from Vékony Csaba, Photoshoot: Saber (Fate/Stay Night – Brigichiyo), April 30, 2018, A kisördög és a bagoly Entertainment, https://cosplay.hu/photoshoot-saber-fate-stay-night-brigichiyo-20399.cp)
Conclusion
Cosplay is a universally recognizable form of artistic expression. It forms a synthesis of both an individual cosplayer’s relationship with their fandom as well as with the dominant coding of the base fandom.13 An individual eschews the coding of their primary culture and assumes an alternative identity, steeped in the performance of their chosen character.14 Furthermore, out of a survey of 168 respondents, Mishou found that roughly 25% of cosplayers cosplay characters from fandoms they themselves are not fans of.15 The ubiquity of this fan code demonstrates cosplay’s universality —two fans who do not speak a common language could recognize the same visage of a cosplayed character. Social media is one of the primary means of this cross-cultural conversation. Popular cosplayers internationally promote their cosplays and techniques for reproducing them. These highly skilled cosplayers even function as individual businesses, promoting products such as sewing or foam patterns.
Works Cited
Clergau, Axel. Avalon - Belgium. Accessed on March 15, 2025. Photograph. Europa Cosplay Cup. https://europacosplaycup.com/team-member/avalon.
Csaba, Vékony. Photoshoot: Saber (Fate/Stay Night – Brigichiyo). Apr. 30, 2018. Photograph. A kisördög és a bagoly Entertainment. https://cosplay.hu/photoshoot-saber-fate-stay-night-brigichiyo-20399.cp.
Europa Cosplay Cup. “E2C General Rules.” Accessed Mar. 3, 2025, https://j-tsoon.ee/cosplay/e2c/.
Hale, Matthew. “Cosplay: Intertextuality, Public Texts, and the Body Fantastic,” Western Folklore 73, No. 1 (2014): 5-37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24550744.
Lamerich, Nicolle. “Embodied Characters: The Affective Process of Cosplay.” In Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures, 199-230. Amsterdam University Press, 2018. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv65svxz.14
Mishou, A. Luxx. “Retcon: Revisiting Cosplay Studies” In Sartorial Fandom: Fashion, Beauty, edited by Elizabeth Affuso and Suzanne Scott, 190-202. University of Michigan Press, 2023. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.12315327.17.
Winge, Theresa. “Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay.” Mechademia 1 (2006): 65-76. University of Minnesota Press, 2006. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41510878.
Van Geffen, Aaron. Comiket at Tokyo Big Sight, Japan. August 11, 2012. Photograph. Aaron | photos. https://aaronweb.net/photos/2012/08/comiket-at-tokyo-big-sight-japan-2/.
Theresa Winge, “Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay,” Mechademia: Second Arc 1 (2006): 65, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41510878.
Ibid.
Nicolle Lamerichs, “Embodied Characters: The Affective Process of Cosplay,” in Productive Fandom: Intermediality and Affective Reception in Fan Cultures (Amsterdam University Press, 2018), 224.
Winge, “Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay,” 66.
Winge, “Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay,” 67.
Winge, “Costuming the Imagination: Origins of Anime and Manga Cosplay,” 68-69.
Lamerichs, “Embodied Characters: The Affective Process of Cosplay,” 203.
“E2C General Rules,” Europa Cosplay Cup, Accessed Mar. 3, 2025, https://j-tsoon.ee/cosplay/e2c/.
Ibid.
Lamerichs, “Embodied Characters: The Affective Process of Cosplay,” 200.
Matthew Hale, “Cosplay: Intertextuality, Public Texts, and the Body Fantastic,” Western Folklore 73, no. 1 (2014): 9, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24550744.
A. Luxx Mishou, “Retcon: Revisiting Cosplay Studies,” In Sartorial Fandom: Fashion, Beauty Culture, and Identity, eds. Elizabeth Affuso and Suzanne Scott, 190-202 (University of Michigan Press, 2023), http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3998/mpub.12315327.17.
Lamerichs, “Embodied Characters: The Affective Process of Cosplay.” 226.
Lamerichs, “Embodied Characters: The Affective Process of Cosplay,” 203-204.
Mishou, “Retcon,” 198.