Otacool 2 Cover Cosplayers Revealed
When top otaku culture blogger Danny Choo needed cosplayers for his upcoming photobook, Otacool 2: Worldwide Cosplayers, he didn’t seek them out in the traditional way. He didn’t set up geographically limited auditions or prohibitively expensive photoshoots. He didn’t fly in cosplayers from around the world or conduct time-consuming local contests in various countries. No, he didn’t indulge in any such offline prefiltering.
Being a tech industry veteran who’s worked with the likes of Microsoft and Amazon, Danny did something smarter, something more scalable, something more disintermediated, something that completely bypassed geographic cosplay cliques. He leveraged the Internet for crowdsourcing.
Danny made a public call for cosplayers to post photo entries on his hobby site, Figure.fm. Thanks to Danny’s considerable fame within his niche, hundreds of entries piled up in a matter of weeks. Some of the world’s top cosplayers even contributed to the blogger’s book project. Click here to continue reading “Otacool 2 Cover Cosplayers Revealed”…
Alodia to Serve at Ozine Maid Cafe
“The greatest among you will be your servant.” — Matthew 23:11.
Maid cafes are a particularly popular class of cosplay restaurants, where waitresses dressed in fanciful maid costumes soothe the hyperactive minds of otaku patrons. Through a combination of endearingly deferential customer service and aesthetically pleasing service outfits, these establishments provide a unique kind of mental wellness for tired geeks.
The world could clearly use this cutesy sort of soothing: since the first maid cafe sprung up in Akihabara in 2001, the phenomenon has spread as far afield as China and the United States.
Permanent maid cafes have yet to rise in the Philippines, but temporary maid cafes have emerged at Philippine anime events. The Ozine Maid Cafe this weekend, an activity at Otaku Expo 2010, ups the ante with a special guest maid: Filipina cosplay queen Alodia Gosiengfiao.
If you’re in Manila this weekend, kick back and relax while being served by fantasy maids at Megatrade Hall 2, SM Megamall, Ortigas Center, Pasig City. Alodia herself will serve patrons from 12:00nn to 3:00pm Sunday, GMT+8.
One of the maids on the roster, Filipina gamer-cosplayer Charmaine Akari, has previously been featured on this blog. If you get her as your maid, have her smile like Konata Koizumi from the anime Lucky Star. Charmaine’s rendition is not only incredibly accurate, it’s absolutely adorable. :3
