Unit 74
　　Are You a Cosplayer?
　　-- What is a Cosplay?
　　"Cosplay" is an event which people dress up as their favorite character from cartoons, animations and video games and can take photos with them. The word is a compound word made up of "costume" and "play".
　　-- History of cosplay
　　Cosplay's history can be traced back to the 1970s, when merchants selling Star Trek comic books dressed up as Capt. Kirk and Mr. Spock as a marketing ploy at the ComicMarket convention held in Tokyo each year.
　　The idea slowly caught on with customers, and now thousands of costume players crowd into ComicMarket every year.
　　Throughout the country there are believed to be around 50,000 costume players.
　　-- What are players' reasons for cosplaying?
　　"Cosplay to me is a way for me to make great new friends with the same interests as I have, improve my sewing skills, creativity, and let me use my imagination to help bring an amazing characters to life. I also really enjoy the challenge of making a good costume. I know a lot of people ask me why I cosplay, so these are a few reasons on why I spend so much time and money cosplaying."-- Angela
　　"Have a few reasons why I currently cosplay. I enjoy the challenge of creating something with my bare hands, discovering new ways to design and duplicate complicated outfits and accessories, and finally putting on the final product. While I enjoy wearing the costumes, I enjoy making them even more. Secondly, I typically cosplay characters that I myself care about. I've grown to love these characters for different reasons, but nevertheless, I care for them like you care for a character in a novel you love, or a movie you enjoy. I want to kind of 'pay homage' to these characters by re-creating them in the best way I can. As an actor, I enjoy the element of occasionally being in character as well. Finally, I enjoy the people. I've made a lot of friends through this hobby, and every few forms of social gathering can compare with the true Cos experience! As it is, I can say that my reasons for cosplaying haven't really changed all that much since I began... and I like it that way. I'm here to have fun, and I hope that never changes."-- Matt
　　The reason I started doing this was, well, I've been looking for an "analog" hobby for a while now. I mean I do a lot of things with computers and electronics. I work at a computer company and I am on the computer most of the time in my off hours.
　　I got bored one day so me and a friend went to Fanime, an anime convention in San Jose. There we saw a lot of great costumes from anime that I recognized and from video games too. I sort of wanted to tackle a costume, and that's where it all started. -- Dennis
　　I first heard of this phenomenon when I moved to the USA three years ago (from Germany). I joined an anime club and we planned a group trip to the biggest anime convention here, Anime Expo. The idea of dressing up as a drawn character fascinated me and I started planning a costume. After wearing it to the convention I was completely addicted.-- Christina