Cosplay Day at Kinokuniya Bookstore

This past Sunday August 17, 2008, the Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City was holding a Cosplay Day in honor of the USA representatives for the 2008 World Cosplay Summit (the Olympics of cosplaying). Also, anyone who cosplayed received a discount on merchandise within the store. Sweet! It was honestly one of the most entertaining things I’ve done in awhile (other than AM Classic the previous day).

The event started at 10AM but I didn’t arrive till 3PM which was when the USA reps were giving their interview. Before I even walked in the store I was giggling like a little girl. I was really excited since this was my first cosplay/anime event that I’ve ever been to. The store is 3 stories and the event was held on the highest floor. It had the most amazing view of Bryant Park but that’s not important.

The store was already packed with people and I was lucky to be small enough to get through the crowd. Even though the interview had slightly started, I got a seat up front with the rest of the photographers. Haha! Take that tall people! The US reps were 3 girls (who were cosplaying). They qualified to attend the WCS after placing first in the preliminary rounds held in NY. Their interview mainly consisted of their experience at WCS, judging, preparation and other funny stories. It was interesting to get a more details on the wonderful world of cosplaying especially since I didn’t know jack.

But that’s not all that was happening at the event. Although they had various interviews lined up, many people had attended the event to (drumroll) cosplay. So the majority of my time spent was going through the store taking pictures of them and there was a lot! There was a variation of cosplayers from all different animes such as the famous Naruto and Bleach in addition to games like The World Ends with You. I could figure out the majority of them but I felt really newb when I didn’t know one. /cry!

There were so many well dressed cosplayers but my personal favorite was a Beat and Rhyme from The World Ends with You. They weren’t together but they looked just like the character and they were both extremely cute. Sidenote: on the train ride to NY, I was playing TWEWY on my DS to pass the time thus why I liked them the most.

The interviews ended by 5 but people were still straggling along asking question, buying merchandise and just hanging around. Even after everyone left the store, they all walked in groups or as David likes to call cosse (cosplay+possee) across the street to Bryant Park. They continued to take pictures and run around which is when I grabbed more pictures of everyone. They were all nice enough to pose in character for me while I took 10+ frames of them and some of them even thanked me.

Overall it was a really fun and interesting day. I really can’t wait to do it again. Even though I didn’t cosplay this time around, I’m thinking of doing a Miku Hatsune next time. Ha!

To view more photos, click here.