ACParadise Forums

Do you prefer to cosplay as well-known or obscure characters? Well-known characters are quickly recognized, but you may not have a unique costume. Obscure characters may not be known by many people, but your costume is the only one of its kind at an event.

Which do you prefer?

I do like three or four cosplays in one con so I do a mixture of them. I was surprised though with how many people who came up to me saying 'OMG you look fab! Can I take your picture?...By the way, who are you suposed to be?'
I was Mana from Malice Mizer I got the same reaction by I think more people when I was Shuichi from Gravitation for some reason

Something in the middle perhaps? I try to gather a few idea's on characters I would like to be [regardless if it's anime or not], and then sort of 'compare and contrast'.

On one hand, I would like to have a costume that's at least something in which every person won't give me this confused "wtf?" look for. But on the other, it's nice to have something a little different then the 80 thousand Chobits girls running around in a pink ballerina tutu. This does NOT mean that doing a popular character make's a costume less attractive if crafted beautifully. But when I attended Anime Expo, I am not going to lie...it was a sea of mooncostumes.com Naruto characters. There had been very few well crafted costumes for these popular series, which I feel is important to consider when you're aware that the series your doing is extremely popular at the time.

I found that people who where doing more obscure or lesser known characters had put a lot more time into their costume, and out-shinned many of the popular characters. It could be attributed to, the more popular, the more widely available the pre-made costume's are.

But I don't put a huge effort into going out of my way to say "I am going to make something so rare that people will HAVE to give me the attention >:3 MWUAHAHA!", I am not going to carry a 'page views' counter around my neck to judge how 'popular' or 'attractive' I am. The popularity of the character/series is more of a final element when debating between several characters.