Hong Kong and Taiwan Enter the World Cosplay Summit!

2014.05.16

Hong Kong and Taiwan formally enter the World Cosplay Summit!

The number of die-hard fans of the Japanese subculture "cosplay" is steadily increasing around the world.
Asian Beat features a range of popular articles in many different languages including interviews and reports in "Cosplayers Laboratory"（China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan Editions）」 as well as COSPLAY SNAPS from all over the globe.

The World Cosplay Summit is charged with spreading the word about cosplay, anime and manga culture. The yearly event runs every Summer, having started in Nagoya in 2003. However, this year, the 12th annual WCS is set to hold its main event, a cosplay championship, at the Aichi Culture Centre Concert Hall on September 2. With the new addition of Hong Kong and Taiwan, participants from some 22 different countries will take part, the most in the history of the event. Already fans are gathering around the world for the preliminaries, let's take a peek!

For Taiwan this is the first time it is formally entering into the competition. The Taiwanese Association for the Promotion of Cosplay is directing the search for a representative and is calling out for cosplayers to give it their all! Currently 60 groups are in the first round of the competition, a web poll (April 10-20), and are being graded by judges. Successful teams will earn a chance to enter the prelimary competition on May 11 where they will give cosplay performances and compete for the lead! The final winner will receive a ticket to go to Nagoya as well as expenses: overall a grant of around one million yen!! This is the biggest prize in any Taiwanese cosplay competition ever.

The truth is since 2012 Taiwan has sent a specially invited representative to WCS. In 2012 the representatives were the husband and wife team Xiaoma and Ran. They cosplayed mecha from the series Mobile Suit Gundam with Ran as a special cute girl gundam costume which caused quite a storm on the net at the time! 2013 saw Cha-guang and Lie-shen take to the stage as Fate/Zero's Beserker and Rider(Iscandar). All the costumes are worth a peep, so click the links below and take a look!