FOOD BLOG: EOY Cosplay Event

EOY 2007 : Trinity Blood team cosplay

First off, what is "cosplay"? In short, it means "costume play", where "cosplayers" (participants cosplaying) dress up in the costume and accessories of a particular character. The normal cosplays seen in Singapore are mostly Japanese-influenced (example: characters from Japanese animation, manga, J-rock, gothic, lolita, games, etc), and cosplay in Singapore is considered somewhat as a subculture that is growing increasingly popular as Japan continue to take over our media networks.

EOY, which stands for "End of Year", is one of the anually-held cosplay events (the biggest event being Cosfest, usually held in June/ July) and hosted at Singapore EXPO. As you can probably guess it, this event is always held in December every year (latest was 13th December 2008). Basically, this is an event where people of similar interests would gather, and cosplay, rent booths to sell Japanese-related art and merchandise, take picture of cosplayers, or simply just to enjoy everything as a whole.

The little set back about this event would probably be the entrance fee of $12 for non-members of the organizing association. So what I've been doing the past two year's EOY, is attend the event as an event helper. We don't get much time to view the event as we have working shifts, but we get free entrance.

Viewing another blog's post about EOY 2008 (http://nanasoutenshiki.com/2008/12/eoy-part-1/), I would have to agree and disagree on some of the author's thoughts on the event: "I feel that this event is quite a good place for cosplayer to showcase their skills and the hard work. Also, not sure whether the reason is me arriving late to the event or some of the early birds has already gone home, I found out that in this event, the cosplayers are able to give alot more focus to each cameras.".

In my opinion, yes, EOY is a good event for cosplayer to showcase their skills and hard work. However, for the "skills", mostly new and not-very experienced cosplayers dominate the population of cosplayers who attend the event (might be due to EOY being not as big as Cosfest; not noticed so much in case the cosplay is bad). So for those who have attended both Cosfest and EOY, might note a significant difference in the cosplaying grade. Of course, the popular cosplayers who attend EOY always stand out from the new cosplayers.

EOY 2008 : Jesuke, a very popular cosplayer (in my opinion she's the best in Singapore currently), cosplaying "Rai" from Lamento

Photographer: Shiro Ang, http://shiroms08th.deviantart.com/

For those interested to attend these cosplaying events, I'll post up notifications of upcoming cosplay events in this blog whenever there is any approaching and that I know of.

EOY 2007 : Famous Indonesian cosplayer from the Indonesian cosplay team, "Endless Illution" cosplaying "Cain Nightroad" from Trinity Blood (won the Best male cosplay category for EOY 2007)