Many cosplayers and anime fans dream of visiting Japan one day, but at next weeekend’s New York Anime Festival, 60 will have the chance to win a free ride to the land of the rising sun.
The Yume Cosplay Prize will take place on Saturday, Sept. 26 as NYAF’s Masquerade. Out of all the cosplay duos who entered, 30 have already been selected to perform a skit and have their costumes judged for the prize, but NYAF hasn’t released information on who specifically those 30 groups are.
The prize lives up to the contest’s name (”yume” means dream in Japanese). The winning pair will receive round trip airline tickets to Japan, five nights in Tokyo, VIP tickets to Tokyo’s International Anime Fair, and, as if that wasn’t sweet enough already, $1,000 to spend during their trip.
The crowd at last year's NYAF.
The contest will be broken up into the usual divisions: novice, journeyman, and craftsman. It will also include ordinary prizes of 1st 2nd and 3rd place in those divisions. But entrants in all three divisions are eligible for the grand prize. The trip will go to whomever is deemed “Best in Show” by the panel of judges, who will evaluate them based on their craftsmanship, as well as their on-stage performance.
Personally, I can’t wait to see what this contest produces. Entrants had to be cut to get the pool down to 30, so those who did get in are sure to be excellent. The competition should produce some amazing skits and mind-blowing costumes.
I will be there Saturday night to cover the event, so be sure to check in after NYAF (Sept. 25-27) to see pictures from the contest and hear about the winning entry!
For more information, see NYAF’s official Web site: http://www.newyorkanimefestival.com/en/Events/Masquerade/
September 21st, 2009 at 6:47 am
This is going to be such a great event!
Next year its my understanding that this will be combined with the NYCC in October 2010
Not sure how well that will work out