Italian Winplay – Lucca Comics & Games 2008

We saw several unspectacular cosplay photo collections centred around events in Helsinki, Berlin and Kassel, which gave a somewhat unfavourable impression of European cosplay; fortunately, we now have the chance to rectify that, with a look at some inspiring Italian cosplay, from the Lucca Comics & Games 2008 event held a few weeks ago.

Quite a wide variety of cosplay is featured, including some non-anime ones, so there’s plenty of interest…

This costume is spectacular:

My personal favourite:

Well done to all those who participated!

There are over 1,600 images in the pool at Flickr, of which these are a small fraction, so you might like to check them out.

Thanks must go to Yusaku Godai for introducing us to this, and selecting most of the images; Italian speakers can join him on the Otaku no Rishi forum. I notice Sako also took the superb top image of Motoko and Togusa, so paying a visit to Ferricorp is also a possibility.

Many of you (actually mainly the Finnish contingent for some reason…) made quite reasonable comments to the effect that taking atrocious photos of cosplayers in dark conditions at a non-specialist event, and then comparing them to heavily photoshopped pro-cosplayers at major Japanese events, was unfair.

Whilst nobody could deny an impugned national pride may be at play here, there is certainly an element of truth to this – the courageous amateurs are in certain respects more impressive than idols reliant on pro-photographers and Photoshop antics to achieve a stunning effect.

That said, nobody could deny the stunning effect is highly sought after, artificial or not…