Now maybe you go to a big convention and you see someone in an unfamiliar costume and you are all “gosh I wish I knew who that was, but I can’t say that out loud or I will lose valuable nerd cred, and nerd cred is the only cred I have since I came to this convention and all.” So you sit there in silence, drinking your Mello Yello because the convention only has Mello Yello to drink because they ran out of all the other soft drinks three hours ago, even the Fresca, but what is worse than the silence and the vaguely citrusy pop is that you sit there in anguish because you don’t know what those nerds are dressed up like!
Well, never fear. I am here to help you nerds. I know everything that there ever was to know about anime. I know so much about anime I actually know what it will be called next, just like how I knew it was going to start being called “anime” back when everybody else was still calling it “Japanimation.” (I can’t tell you what the new name is, because that is top secret, but I can give you a hint: it will rhyme with a large animal commonly found in zoos.)
ANIME: Honor Of Panda
BRIEF SUMMARY: Kenji Watanabe is a 17th-century ronin with a very unruly student: Popo the panda! Kenji and Popo ride through the countryside, righting wrongs, helping villagers against bandits, defending the honor of beautiful maidens (who inevitably are allergic to pandas) and reading from The Book of Five Rings. Humourously, Popo never quite understands the way of war – he always wants to eat bamboo instead! Silly Popo!
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYERS? “I like dressing as Kenji because he’s tough and cool, but with a good heart. Steve has been looking forward to dress up as Popo ever since he first saw the series. I’m not sure why.”
ANIME: Mercenary Princess Toyoka
BRIEF SUMMARY: Toyoka is a medieval Japanese princess who one day, while picking chrysanthemum blossoms to place in an artistic arrangement to present at court, falls through a time vortex right into the middle of a crazy gunfight: evil yakuza versus Isamu and Seiko, the famous mercenary duo known as the Running Bomb Angels! In their company, Toyoka quickly discovers skills she never realized she had as the Running Bomb Angels get a third member, who is deadly with her delicate fans and sense of right place.
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYERS? “I’ve always wanted to commit horrible acts of violence, but I don’t like guns. Then I started watching Mercenary Princess Toyoka and realized the horrible things you could do with a fan.”
ANIME: Byzantine Fashion
BRIEF SUMMARY: Aglurk, a soldier for the Ottoman Empire, secretly wishes he was a fashion designer. Although bound by his warrior’s code to defend the Empire, this does not stop him from accessorizing in this wacky comedy for anybody who has ever loved shiny things.
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYER? “The sparkles!”
ANIME: Oops! Jun Loves The Dead Girl!
BRIEF SUMMARY: Poor Jun – he finally gets up the courage to ask out Yukie, the girl he has loved all through high school, but on that very day she dies in a freak snorkeling accident. Will Jun ever realize that Aoi, his best friend, loves him very much and wishes to be his wife? Or will he spend all his time pining for dead Yukie and wishing she was alive so he could have sex with her? Find out in the 327 episodes of this fun sexy comedy!
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYERS? “Alan likes it, and it means I don’t have to move around too much.”
ANIME: Zucchini Warrior Z
BRIEF SUMMARY: Z is a mutated zucchini, a cross between vegetable and man. In the future wars of 1993, Z leads the war against Petroglox, a massive corporation bent on control of all the world’s agriculture. Over the series’ six-season run, Z horrifically murders 1,924 corporate goons, each in a completely unique way. Anime Compendium says this series should have been called “Fist of the North Star 2: The Search For More Violence.”
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYER? “I originally just started watching it out of boredom when I couldn’t get copies of Ranma 1/2, but somewhere around the three hundredth death I started wondering if they could keep up the original kill streak. It gets really compelling watching them come up with new ways to rend and tear flesh.”
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Always reminds me of the time in undergrad when I was at the comic/gaming shop and this extremely pale girl expressed her interest to the trash ogre working the till that she was interested in ‘cosplaying’ as Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII. I was hoping never to hear that word actually said out loud.
Also, my favorite onny-maize is Inside the NBA with Ahmad Rashad. If people dressed up as that one I’m sure these conventions would be hella-classier.
Tsk tsk, maligning Mojo Jojo like that….
Man, add some HLA or even implied HLA and I will be all up in watching Mercenary Princess Toyoka…
How sad is it that I know 90% of the actual anime/game characters those people are “dressed” as?
It wasn’t till the last one that I realized you were full of shit.
Horrifying how all of these anime plots strike me as completely reasonable and believable.
I would watch most if not all of these.
I found the first 3 interesting enough to google, and was confused that this website was the only one with the titles. It wasn’t until the last one that I realized you were bullshitting.
…seriously, guys?
Or did you not notice that this was a Flapjacks post? 😀
Is that actually Mojo Jojo or Picolo? Picolojo jojo?
Guess which one of these is made up:
Code Geiss is an anime set in a medieval fantasy world, where pretty bishonens breed special cryptographic geese.
El Hazard is an anime where lesbian nuns rule a magical kingdom and cats are used as a highly effective form of body armour.
Um- animoceros?
If Byzantine Fashion is not made into an actual anime, someone’s going to die.
But if it is made into an anime, then no-one will ever die again, ever. God will have noticed the beauty and perfection of what we have achieved, and decide that it totally makes up for that whole original sin bit, so he’ll recant the “you’re all doomed to die” rule.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand this is why I don’t cosplay.
I knew that straight line at the end of “Oops! Jun Loves The Dead Girl!” was too good to be true…
Well, by the fourth post I was obligated to check the author.
I watched El Hazard and I still don’t believe they actually pulled that off. It was just too full of awesome.
That’s actually a pretty sweet Gabranth next to the panda.
I figured it out when I saw two resident evil characters. Got thrown off my the details, then solidified it with Mojo JoJo from PPGZ.
Honestly, I knew none of these except the last one. I like American comics
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand this is why I don’t cosplay.
That, and because Roxicat won’t lend you hir fursuit boobs?
Dammit!
I totally believed those were real series… after all, those really -are- reasonable premises for manga and anime.
Well played.
Mein Kampf is a manga now. Nothing is offlimits
Of all the freaking Weeaboo’s and Wapanese. Cosplay is horrible. Half the anime are garbage. Emo boy/girl/freak shit.
Arguably, there are ZERO anime costumes presented above (2 FF12, 2 FF9, 2 RE, 1 Dynasty Warriors (I’m reasonably sure), 1 USA Cartoon (PPG)).
I would like to see Mercenary Princess Toyoka. It sounds both hilarious and explosion filled.
are you Australian? ’cause i was at the Animania festival this weekend taking photos… i should upload them. the girlfriend wasn’t too happy about all the scantily-clad anime girls i didn’t recognize
Chaddernaut, come on, they aren’t hurting anyone, and you kind of have to admire that level of devotion.
And occasionally fear it.
At first, I thought, “Great scots, did Japan actually come up with these shows?”
Now I learn that they’re made up, and rather than being relieved, I’m incredibly disappointed.
THE PEOPLE DEMAND ZUCCHINI WARRIOR Z!
Oddly, from my very limited understanding of how ronin work, Gabranth (armored guy in the first one) could be considered fairly close… from a certain point of view.
And if Byzantine Fashion isn’t *actually* anything like Balthier’s story, it’s a perfectly reasonable assumption based on the way he dresses. And he’s *still* got the only reasonable outfit in the whole damn game. Except maybe Larsa, and Vayne. Okay, Archades in general is the Land of People Who Don’t Dress Like Complete Idiots.