Because of our late arrival on Friday, Michel and I decided to not go to Valby until Saturday morning, after doing some touristy bits like visiting the Little Mermaid near Copenhagen's Osterport and getting some typically Danish groceries to take back with us.
Once we got our VIP-badges, Nils of the J-popcon Staff was able to meet with us and have a little chat on the way to the venue where the Cosplay Competition was going to be held.
Cosplay is a major part of the festival, not in the least because of their participation in the preliminaries of Japan's prestigious World Cosplay Summit; basically the world championship of cosplay. The next WCS will be held in Nagoya, August 2010.
The competition is being held in a separate venue, since Valby's Kulturhus isn't large enough to hold it in, not by a long shot.
We talked to some of the tech crew, and got to see some of the rehearsals, which were quite pleasant to the eye. ;)
As the afternoon progressed, everything came together and once the crowd was let in, the competition started.
I managed to take heaps of pictures, but had to resort to a high ISO-setting, due to the fact that flashing isn't allowed, and the lighting was less than perfect. Thats why you will see some noise here and there.
The jury consisted of four women who all had earned their marks in the cosplay scene. Nadia, a cosplay artist from Italy, 2008 candidate for WCS; Andra Tan, a cosplay artist from Singapore; and two WCS candidates from Germany (their names have slipped my mind, sorry).
Andrea Tan kicked everything off with a song. She's a really good singer.
This Full Metal Alchemist-act was really good:
As were these two ladies. They had their skit pre-recorded, but they had practised so well that it was hard to note the difference
This Wedding Peach-act was very good as well; lovely dresses:
And lovely battle outfits as well:
Metropolis:
Some things I didn't recognise, sorry:
Magic Knights Rayearth: Mokona ate all the chocolate and will be facing the consequences
Revolutionary Girl Utena also packed some heat:
A girl with big cigarettes:
This was an act played fully in Danish. Couldn't understand any of it (neither did the judges, so Morten of J-popcon Staff did live translations), but they were funny as hell, if the laughter and applause is anything to go by.
It got them a prize as well.
This act started late due to technical problems, but they didn't lose their concentration.
This Mononoke-act missed out on the trip to Japan by only a tiny bit. They got Best Cosplay instead.
Ranma 1/2
Quite a few acts.
Halloween version of Kingdom Hearts. They plucked the WCS candidacy away from the Mononoke act by only a tiny bit, according to the judges.
More acts.
This act was quite original; an argument between WWII-versions of Germany, Poland and Italy.
Final two acts:
Now, due to size issues, most of the pictures had to be cropped through HTML, so I invite you to the
J-popcon Cosplay gallery for better versions.
Let me tell you; the acts were really amazing. I rarely see such dedicated amateur performers on a cosplay stage. Their English was splendid, their timing as right on the dot and the outfits were stunning.
A joy to watch.
That said, it was a long ride. Due to the large number of contestants, the fact that the jury needed over two hours to reach their verdict and the lengthy award ceremony added to the mix, the whole event lasted well over four hours, which is much too lengthy for my tastes, and I guess I wasn't the only one.
However, I wanted to see Trio de DS10, which would perform after the cosplayshow, so we had to stick around.
Trio de DS10 is a group of Japanese producers which make their music on nothing else but seven Nintendo DS-es with the Korg DS-10 cartridge.
Sadly, the venue was nearly empty when they started to play; I kind of felt sorry for them.
The three of them do, however, make a mean bit of house music, and we eventually had to go and eat something, otherwise we would have stuck around a bit longer.
We ran into our friend Kai back at the Kulturhus, so we invited him to a late dinner (it was close to 22:00 at that moment) and talked a bit.
After we helped him put together a video room for the next morning, we decided to go back to the hotel and get some rest.
Cheers, K.