VisitorOfEmptySpace"]I like the series, but, I really think people who cosplay should be more creative.
It's stupid to see 50 people dressed as Naruto. It's annoying.
It doesn't show variation or creativity.
I wanna see people dress as people from less popular series and less popular characters.
How about cosplaying the Gung-ho Guns from Trigun?
Characters from Fruits Basket? Dragon Half? GTO?
People always choose the most popular stuff to cosplay as.. I hate it.
Me? I'll be dressed as a Team Rocket Grunt from Pokemon. :-p
As someone who is planning on cosplaying as Kakashi, that hurts. Please sit down and listen to my story.
Last year I wanted to cosplay from Love Hina, my favorite series. By the way, I love it because of the character's personality, the storyline, and the character designs (Ken Akamatsu is my favorite manga-ka). Somewhat known anime and manga so I thought a few people would know about it. I thought about going as Keitaro. Problem: He wears normal clothes and doesn't have a distinct costume design. I could be mistaken for some guy walking around not cosplaying. So I decided to go as Seta from Love Hina. Pretty easy cosplay and he has a design that's easy to recognize; lab coat, black pants, black shirt, red tie, and a cigarette.
So I went to KumoriCon as Seta. For all three days, I wore that costume. For all three days,
FOUR people recognized me and two people took pictures. To add insult to injury, most people, including a few of the norms, thought I was a doctor.
I tried being creative, I tried being unique, I tried everything you're suggesting. My advice:
It doesn't always work. I tried, it failed. Does this mean I'm not going to do a cosplay like that again? No. I know quite a few other similar examples that I could mention off the top of my head.
I'm going as Kakashi because I like the character. I would still be going as him even if no one else decided to go as Naruto. We like the series so we're cosplaying as them. We are not cosplaying as them because everyone else is. I'm also planning to go as a member of the Black Gema Gema Dan from Digicharat. Am I going so I can be unique? No. I'm cosplaying as him because 1. I like Digicharat and 2. I think I could pull off the look.
And with all due respect, I know a lot of people who seem to think that by liking something or doing something that few other people know about or are interested in is a way of being cool. I knew someone who acted like that and you know what, I couldn't stand him. He would brag about it all the time in a way like I wasn't doing "the right thing" and I wasn't being creative with some of my interests (I'm 100% sure he isn't on this forum, he doesn't like anime). If you ask me, forcing yourself to be "unique" in every way just because something is popular, so that your interests are all unheard of and you can talk about being like that, is becoming popular.
This is Mahou Sensei Negima,
Class dismissed