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Parents guide to cosplay

By Denise (29 comments)

This guide looks at what cosplay is by going into detail about what is involved, what anime is, and what the social media TikTok is. There is a section on the pros and cons of cosplay and a video interview giving a child’s perspective. There is also a section that explains our own experience with Faith getting into cosplay and anime. The post finishes with tips for parents with children who want to cosplay. Please note that this post may contain affiliate links. For more information about what means, please click here.

What is cosplay?

Simply put, cosplay is when you dress up in a costume of a character from a TV show, film, book, or game and act like the character. I personally think of it as an extension of acting or performing arts. Dressing up and roleplay has been a hobby for many different people for many years. However, access to the internet and mobile phones has made it much more accessible and therefore more popular over the last two decades. The Japanese anime and manga craze has also made cosplay much more popular in recent years, especially for young people.

Getting into character

When a person has decided on a character that they would like to cosplay, the next step is to find the right costume, hair, and make-up. Cosplayers take a lot of time and pride in perfecting their look. They can often make items or customise their items to make sure that they are completely happy with their finished character.

Another variation on this is when a person takes a character and changes something. For example, a character known as a male can be cosplayed in a female version. A character who is normally sweet or a hero can be cosplayed as a villain.

Cosplay language

Cosplayers also have their own language which you may hear your child saying when they are talking about cosplaying. For example, canon means to act as the character would in the official storyline of the anime show. So, you could hear someone say ‘that is brilliant, it is so canon’. There is also ‘fanon’ which means something that is not official in the storyline but it is widely accepted by fans to further develop the storyline of the characters.

What is anime?

Anime is Japanese animation and it has become extremely popular in recent years. Netflix has a large selection and there are also many sites on the internet which children can use to view different anime shows. A word of warning though. As a parent who is not familiar with anime, you could easily see your child watching ‘cartoons’ and think that it is aimed at kids.

However, most anime is actually aimed at older teenagers and adults. On Netflix, there are age ratings on each show. I just popped on to see what the age ranges were and there were only a couple rated parental guidance. The rest are all ’12’ and many are ’15’ and there are even a couple rated ’18’. If your children are young then you may need to help them find suitable shows to enjoy.

Danganronpa

I recently started watching an anime called Danganronpa. My daughter had become a fan and kept talking about it. She had brought a bear at a con that we had been to and I thought the bear looked quite cute. So you would think that it would be aimed at younger children, right?

Imagine my surprise when we sat down to watch it. It turned out that the bear is actually an evil character. He has locked a group of teenagers in a school and told them that the only way that they will be able to leave is if they can successfully murder another student and get away with it, laying the blame onto someone else!

It probably sounds worse than it actually is, as being anime it is all bright colours and loud sound effects. The blood is pink and the psycho bear still looks cute to me so I don’t mind Faith watching it.

However, you can see how easy it could be to let your child watch something that you are not happy about. Lucky for Faith I am much more relaxed about things like this than other parents! Plus Faith is much more mature than her age which also needs to be considered when allowing your children to watch certain things.

Fanfiction

Anime also has a lot of fanfiction. Fanfiction is basically stories written by fans of an anime show using the characters from the show. My daughter loves reading fanfiction and she has also written some of her own which is great. She is reading and writing stories, so developing her educational skills without even realising it.

Our story

For us, it was well over a year ago that Faith first got into cosplay. I remember when she asked me to order her a wig from eBay. I was so confused as I had no idea that she was interested in cosplay at that time and I had never been asked to buy a wig for one of my kids before! However, I knew that she had been struggling to make friends and at this time she was still attending regular school. She was in year six at primary school but very quiet and a bit withdrawn. So, I brought her the wig and to be honest, thought it was just a one-off thing and didn’t really think much more about it at the time.

However, Faith really enjoyed cosplay and it wasn’t long before I realised that she has a real passion for it. It was nice to see her get excited about something, so I started asking her questions about it. Through discussions with Faith and a bit of my own online research, I discovered that there is a whole community of cosplayers.

Why is my child different?

Some parents are not happy with their child doing something unconventional like cosplay. I think that a lot of this is because they do not understand it. Or they are embarrassed as it is not the ‘normal’ teenage hobby. However, if it interests your child and makes them happy then surely that should be a good thing?! Are we not supposed to teach our kids to make their own decisions rather than be a sheep and follow the crowd?

I would much rather have a child who spends all their free time styling wigs, making costumes, and cosplaying. Rather than being out on the streets getting up to who knows what!

Original article