So you think you can Cosplay-Skit

Written by Emerald L King for Colin Magazine Edition 6

It’s been a month since Amy and I appeared on stage at the World Cosplay Summit Australia Preliminaries at SMASH. Back in 2018, before I’d even left the World Cosplay Summit Championships in Nagoya, where I’d been working as a volunteer interpreter and translator, I sent Amy a message asking her to meet up for a coffee. My plan was to lure her into doing an Akira skit with me in the 2019 WCS Australia Preliminaries (Akira? For July 2019? Groundbreaking). Amy claims my pitch to her was simply ‘hey, do you want to lose WCS Australia with me?’ - and our cosplay adventure began.

Founded in 2003 as part of the events and celebrations leading up to, and forming a part of, the Nagoya World Expo in 2005, the World Cosplay Summit is a weeklong celebration of cosplay, Japanese popular culture, friendship, and networking.

In addition to the Championship performances which take place during the last few days of the event, Teams from over forty countries take part in various tourism, local government, and national government-sponsored events. They visit sponsors such as Brother and famous landmarks in Nagoya such as Meiji Mura outdoor museum, and the Aichi Arts Centre.

2023 is being billed as the first full, in person event since 2019. Team Australia 2023, Marmalade and Mangalphantom will be representing Australia with a reprisal of their Promised Neverland skit.

In 2019, we had great fun being grotty teenage bikers in our Akira bike skit. Four years and a pandemic later, we decided to give WCS one last shot. This time we went in the other direction – from Lynx body spray scented jeans and t-shirts to ball gowns, vestments, lights, and armour. Our Magic Knight Rayearth skit showcased out twin obsessions of sustainable, historically plausible costumes and beautiful audio.

Magic Knight Rayearth is a 1990s manga, anime, OVA, and game series by CLAMP. It is a groundbreaking magical girl series which took the colour coded magical girls of series like Sailor Moon and put them in giant mecha from series like Mazinga Z or Gundam. Three middle school students are transported from Tokyo Tower to the magical world of Cephiro. We soon find out that at the heart of Cephiro is the Pillar – a quasi-religious figure who maintains the balance through prayer. The series begins when Princess Emeraude, the current Pillar of Chephiro, summons the three girl to rescue her from her abductor – her former High Priest, Zagato. But all is not as it seems …

Princess Emeraude’s beautiful white gown had always been a dream costume of mine. With our heights though, it soon became clear that if we were to do these costumes, it would be Amy who would be Emeraude, while I would take on the role of the sinister (and much taller) Zagato. In making these costumes, we wanted to be as sustainable as possible. We bought new Assist wigs, contact lenses, and resin, but all other materials were things that we already owned or sourced from local tip shops. Amy’s luxurious Thai silk gown, with its 20 metres of hand-finished hems and boned bodice, began life as curtains that we found in a pile at the Hobart tip shop. In working with EVA foam for Zagato’s armour – a combination of foam I received a research grant to buy from Lumins Workshop and nasty second-hand camping mats – I learnt that heat sealing can also rejuvenate old camp and yoga mats. 

We also had to combat Tasmania’s cold climate. There was no way that we could get a good paint finish on our foam, so we covered our EVA components in Yaya Han four-way stretch fabric.

While I was busy sewing, Amy learnt how to make moulds, cast resin, and wire LED lights. That was when we learnt that Tasmania is the state where resin never cures.

The main drawback with trying to be sustainable in this way is that you need a place to store fabric, foam, paint, and glue as well as your tools like heat guns, glue guns, and airbrushes, not to mention a sewing machine and an overlocker. And those are just the basic toys that we play with! Trading and gifting fabric and other materials with your friends and family can also help reduce your cosplay footprint. Careful patterning with zero or limited wastage can also help – the Princess Emerald bodice is a three-piece bodice based on 17th-century stays which limits the amount of fabric wastage.

In competitions like WCS, costumes only make up a part of the entry. The other part is the 2-minute 30-second skit. WCS skits in Australia and at the Championships in Japan have included everything from quick changes, sword fights, and dancing, to comedy skits, magic, and tragedies where everybody dies. While you are not required to provide stage props, audio, or video, all of these elements can be combined to make amazing short plays.

For me, a successful skit needs different acts with high points and low points. Amy is insistent that there needs to be constant motion and sound.

A silence needs to be meaningful and intended.

A scream needs to be real and primal.

While my background is research in Japanese literature and popular culture, Amy is a classically trained musician and sound technician. While we both knew how our skit would end (canonically, Zagato dies – there was no other possible ending), it is Amy who created the soundscape which brought our skit to life. The dialogue and key plot points in our Magic Knight Rayearth skit were taken directly from the English translations of the anime and computer games. We called on our friends and family to provide vocal talent. We ended up with enough polished material for a ten minute radio play, which Amy managed to cut down to the 2 minute 30 skit. Amy then spent hundreds of hours composing and recording a suite of music that would go from the tragedy of Emeraude and Zagato, to the excitement of a battle in space, and finally the world shattering transformation that Emeraude goes through after the death of Zagato – her captor, her priest, and her one true love.

Amy’s advice for clean audio is to start with the best microphone you can afford and to use a spit guard. Write your script so that you will have enough material to mix together. Use as many takes as you need and experiment with tone, mood, and emotion. Before you start recording, try to clean the background of all noise – put your phone on silent, remove your pets, and turn off any fans. If you are going to scream – scream out loud (if you live in an apartment building maybe let your neighbours know what you’re up to). You need to make your dialogue make sense for your skit. It needs to be real.

When creating your final audio mix, make sure that there is constant noise (or meaningful silence). If you listen to your everyday, hearing people experience a constant hum of background noise and surround sound.

Amy’s final piece of advice, and one that I agree wholeheartedly with, is that we learn something new every time we make or create things. We are always learning and refining our skills and our craft.

Amy and I both went on exchange to Nagoya as part of our Japanese degrees at university (although there were several years between each of our trips!). We are both incredibly excited to head back to Nagoya and represent Australia in our adopted home city in Japan. We hope that we can do everyone proud.