Cosplay Comes of Age: An Ethnographic Investigation into a Youth Based Fan Phenomenon

The paper will examine the contemporary practice of Cosplay - the trend for young adults in Hong Kong and South East Asia to dress up in themed costumes often assuming the persona of characters from Japanese mediated sources as a means of exploring the motivations behind this activity. Social interaction theory will be used to examine the complexities constructing this rapidly globalizing phenomenon from the players’ own perspectives and further questions why changing appearance is used as a catalyst for escaping the boundaries of self by acquiring multiple identities. The outcomes of an empirical study will be presented based on interviews and focus groups with Cosplayers. Findings will suggest that this tendency to articulate identity, belonging, difference, gender and sexuality can be found in Cosplay activity involving a cast of players in various roles highlighting the sociological theoretical turn in using ethnographic and reputational approaches to generating research data. Research findings suggest that visible, adherence to a tribal collective or fandom seems to fill an affective void offering solace from the pressures of urban life and moral panics. In doing so Cosplay in practice takes on a range of localised cultural appropriations and hybridized agendas across geographic spaces and places.