With the increase in number of platforms that’s been given to cosplayers in India, there’s been a surge in the number of cosplayers coming up and dressing up as their favourite fictional characters. With events like Comic Con India, Video Game Fest, Cool Japan Festival and many more the Indian cosplay scenarios is taking an upward turn and is growing at an exponential rate. Comic Con India has been a major contributor as cosplayers get a chance to not just showcase their cosplay (costume play) skills but also get a chance to win ticket for international Comic Cons. And now, Comic Con India is set to once again give a larger platform to the cosplayers and encourage local cosplayers to go professional with their initiative, ‘Indian Championships of Cosplay’.
Talking about this new initiative, Comic Con India founder, Jatin Varma said, “I am extremely excited to start our new initiative to promote cosplay in India and provide an international platform to Indian cosplayers! In addition to being the grand prize winners of our city-wise cosplay contests, the 10 finalists are in the running to become the national champion and represent India at our sister show, Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo 2016! We hope to continue expanding this championship further each year and grow the cosplay community in the country”.
This first of its kind ‘Indian Championships of Cosplay’ will witness 10 cosplayers from across India who have won the grand prize of Cosplay Contest at Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai Comic Cons 2015. Each one of them will be competing against one another on a single platform and the winner will represent the country at the Annual Crown Championships of Cosplay at Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo!
The nominations have been announced and votings are open at comicconindia.com/ICC, where fans can vote for their favourite cosplayer. Fans can find a pitch from each finalist on the website, in the form of images, videos and write up about the finalist to know each contender better.
The cosplayers include the winners from Bangalore Comic Con Nabil Khan, Nadir Hussain, Reetam Majumder; Hyderabad Comic Con Jeet Molankar, Ramsankar Unnikrishnan; Delhi Comic Con Abhishek Chaudhary, Anjali Das, Vidhi Pareek and Mumbai Comic Con Sohail Grover and Mandar Mhaskar.
Once selected, the Indian champion qualifies directly into the championship round of crown championship of Cosplay at C2E2 2016 where the Indian Champion will represent Comic Con India as a regional champion against champions from US, Australia, Europe. The C2E2 Crown Championships of Cosplay will take place on 19 March, 2016 which will be the final stop in the ReedPOP’s 2016 “Quest for the Crown” global cosplay competition circuit.
The voting lines for the Indian Cosplay competition are open till 24 January 2016. As we opened the website to see how the voting system works, we observed that one can cast their vote to ‘all the cosplayers’ with a single email ID once and also through random email addresses (including the non existing ones that one can create in their head).
To understand how the voting counters work and if there’s anything in place to verify the email ID’s, we spoke to Jatin Varma who said, “There’s no flaw in the system. Even if one enters wrong email addresses, we cross check the database before counting the final vote. This is applied even during Comic Con India’s registration. We send back a verification mail to check if the ID is genuine or fake. As for one email ID casting votes for several cosplayers, we don’t want to limit a person in casting their vote for their favourite cosplayers but at the same time they can’t vote the same person once again from the same ID.”
Though we are still waiting for the email ID verification, we suggest everyone to avoid using inappropriate methods and may the winner be chosen fairly. The winner will be announced on 26 January 2016, on the website and all social media pages of Comic Con India.
