Research leads to cosplay world championships

Turning research into action is taking lecturer Emerald L King all the way to the Olympics of cosplay.

Humanities academic Emerald and partner Amy King recently won selection to represent Australia at the 2024 World Cosplay Summit Championship in Japan.

As Japanese characters Zagato and Emeraude, the pair took out the Australian title at the SMASH Anime and Manga Convention in Sydney and will compete against a possible 60 countries next year.

Cosplay most often involves dressing as an anime, manga, book, comic, or film character.

“In Australia there is a strong link to Japanese anime and manga characters, but people might also dress up as Marvel, DC or Star Trek characters,” Emerald said.

“Some people cosplay for fun, others make a living from TikTok videos, and some people compete.”

For Emerald, being a hands-on cosplayer is an extension of her research, which began with Japanese literature and went in a new direction after she gave a talk on the country’s pop culture.

“I made some amazing friends and kept on cosplaying,” Emerald says. “As a serious student of Japanese literature, I was determined to keep my cosplay hobby separate, until I was introduced to Dr Kotani Mari, one of the first cosplayers, and realised that I could pursue both literature and popular culture.”

Since then, Emerald has created more than 40 costumes, won awards, run and judged events, and volunteered as an interpreter and translator at the World Cosplay Summit Championships.

For their two-and-a-half minute Sydney skit, Emerald and Amy chose to play the doomed lovers Zagato and Emeraude from Magic Knight Rayearth, the first anime series to combine magical girl protagonists with giant robots.

Emerald spent four months sewing the costumes, using materials partly collected from the Hobart Tip Shop, while Amy, a University of Tasmania alumna, composed, recorded and mixed their soundtrack.