For those of you unfamiliar with the term – ‘cosplay’ is a portmanteau of the words costume and play, originating from the 1980s in Japan. It is an art form involving dressing up and portraying various characters which are, more often than not, fictional. It is also referred to as fancy dress for adults or halloween all year round by those who do not understand it. Cosplay in India has been around for three years now thanks to events like Cool Japan Festival and Comic Con, but it is still in its infancy.
I began cosplaying around 5 years ago. I was still in college and I honestly just wanted to sometimes wear clothes aside from my regular black tee, black jeans, and black boots. And, being an oh-so-poor college student on a tight budget, I also wanted to do that within 200 bucks. This was at a time when I was still a loner with my head buried in comic books and anime. Using the internet, I managed to find some people who had the same interest as mine and we formed the Mumbai Anime Club which is now over 3,000 member strong. We had our first cosplay meet up in 2011 where barely 5 of us cosplayed, mostly with stuff we already had in our closets. We had a great time laughing at how “cool” we looked.
Around one year later, we organised the first cosplay fashion walk at the Cool Japan Festival; it was the first of its kind in the country. Simultaneously a lot of other clubs around the country were having their own smaller meet ups and cosplay could be seen over there. It was a new hobby, it was fascinating and exhausting, all at the same time. Considering how small our community was at that time, we didn’t have much of an idea about different techniques involved in building props. Many tailors were chased, cajoled and bribed. The entire cosplay community grew exponentially from 2014 onwards thanks to Comic Con and its very lucrative prizes, which included an overseas trip.
Thanks to my good friend Vijay Sinha, I started cosplaying in a professional capacity mostly as a promotional model, under the psuedonym Syrinx for events like the NASSCOM Game Developers Conference, Video Game Fest, Mumbai Film And Comic Con and Cool Japan Festival. He introduced me to some companies that were looking to hire budding cosplayers. Through Vijay, I also met Surya Sreenivasan of Scythe’s Skunkworks who’s an amazing artist and is responsible for building all of my cosplay props.
I have come a long way in half a decade of cosplaying, and none of it would’ve been possible without friends like Gauri Karnik (Gaurilla), Reetam (Superhero Blues), Prateek Chakraborty (Shiromancer), Ankur Chakravarty (Ankur Encore), Mrinal (Royz art), Rohan (Cosplayer RJ), and Aurelia who helped me build and improve each successive costume. Similarly, I owe quite a bit to photographers like I,Saint Yuvee, Manish Lenswork, Antic Ninja and Pradyz Photography for making my cosplays look good with their photographic trickery. It’s always a group effort.
Cosplay, as a hobby, is only just getting noticed, and while we’ve progressed quiet a bit from when we began, we’re not entirely on par with our European or Japanese counterparts yet in terms of skill and quality. Usually, for gaming and comic book companies, cosplay turns out to be a great way to introduce their characters to the average public. However, in India, this isn’t the case yet. Because of this, not many companies are keen on hiring cosplayers, which makes it incredibly difficult to pursue it as a full time profession. Personally I’ve found it to be much more gratifying as a hobby than a job as I’ve always been welcomed with open arms by cosplayers and fans of comic and gaming world alike.
What I would truly like is for more people to get into cosplaying. It’s an excellent hobby and pushes you to your very limits. Cosplayers around the country will vouch for it and will gladly help you get started – you just have to take the first step. Just do it!
(These are purely personal views of Cosplayer Tanya Shringarpure and AnimationXpress.com does not necessarily subscribe to these views)