Wonder Festival 2012 (Winter) Part 2: Cosplay

This round we've decided the cosplay into three convenient categories:
AWESOME STUFF for original ideas and master artisanship,
NERDY STUFF for the skeletons in our closet,
and PERVY STUFF for what you're all here to see in the first place.

Take a load off, forget all about difficult topics such as nuclear power for a few minutes, and enjoy the show!

AWESOME STUFF


Predator VS possible child predator.


Leopaldon lets loose an explosive Hell Shell.


There was a whole hunting squad of Predators with hand-dyed camo tights.
This one even had a voice transmographier to give him an alien growl!


Sukeban deka is among the highest forms of crossplay.


One of the many things Wonder Festival has over Comiket is an anything-goes weapons policy, hence the extreme craftsmanship seen here and in our next photo.


You can count on the bikini babes to be in the same spot from opening to closing, whereas dudes like this bless the venue with their presence just long enough to get the point across. Get too caught up in snapping shima-pan, and you'll miss 'em.


Say hello to the original Robo Cop, scumbag.


You're not going to get very far into the cosmos wearing aluminum foil booties.


This sort of kigurumi is more than acceptable, it's praise-worthy.


Snake Man Lady.

NERDY STUFF


The youngest in a family of witches. When both of your parents are devout cosplayers, otakuism is no longer a choice, it's something you're born into, like poverty or Christianity.


G-Gundam gets treated like the red-headed stepchild of the franchise, so a Domon and Rain combo in particular makes this hand of mine glow with an awesome power.


Yes, cosplayers will pose with outside props if you ask them nicely.


Not the best Gilgamesh costume of the day, but that asshole scowl made him the most in character.

PERVY STUFF


Let's get this gravy train rolling with Saber from Fate/Extra Large.


That "helping hands" joke is always a guaranteed icebreaker.


The photos and content therein do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of TSB as a whole. (Just Dr. Senbei's.)


Seeing this many allied meat puppets in one place always makes me wonder. Is there an underground kigurumi scene where they plan these gatherings? Do the members interact unmasked? Most importantly, how do you cruise somebody when you both have perma-grins?


Some huntsmen like to get close enough for their prey to smell them, thus eliciting a squeal of surprise, before pulling the trigger.


Normally snapping low-anglers is the cosplay equivalent of spawn-scumming, but the extreme unlikelihood of this scene is more like catching Halley's Comet during a solar eclipse.


Randoseru backpacks are the unmistakable mark of an elementary school student. Just sayin' is all.


Sneak preview of the forthcoming cosplay event SimStim experience to get your neurons spurting dopamine all over your cranial net!

Full album here!

Show's over folks! Time to turn your brain back on and get back to more productive things, like surfing your Twitter feed or checking in on your Googling "shima-pan". We'll be back next time with some actual content, honest!

Wonder Festival 2012 (Winter) Part 1

If Wonder Festival has a fatal flaw, it's being too short. Between the stadium sized dealer's pits and cosplay alleys that snake around the venue, it's a question of either plowing through with a wide net hoping to catch everything that comes by, or hunkering down to dive deeper.

My advice to you is to steal a page from the playbook of the figure connoisseurs all around you, check your shame at the door, and simply be...



There's no room for chaff! No time to stop and admire the second-rate! The following images represent everything excellent enough to warrant pausing in our march for a closer look.



Guitar Dock and Studio Vegas is an all-in-one studio/concert venue/custom shop out in the boonies of Shizuoka that produces functional replicas of anime guitars in their down time.



Vision proves that moe comes in any number of shapes, sizes, and degrees of cellular stability.



It's always time for Silver Age sci-fi when you're Kaibutsuya.



You can rest assured, the blob goo is completely castoffable.



In the mind of Lori Funk JR
, ita-Gundams totally make sense, even in the UC timeline.





Cosmos vending machines are a now defunct national treasure that dispensed borderline legal bootleg toys and candies from the late 70's through the 80's. While the kit maker, Denkai Shisei (電改試製) doesn't seem to have a net presence, you can't find plenty of historical footage on Youtube of people fiddling with cranks and cooking up hot eats that are a quarter century past the sell date.



When most figure makers sculpt resin kits for their alien skulls, Dummy Head
 goes straight to the source and skins the real thing. Just watch out for the leftover pumpkin guts, that stuff will eat right through to the hull.



Jin Koubou invites you to salute the King of Kaiju.



Yuugendou brings us the charming and practical Righty pencil holder...



...as well as an assortment of wearable appendages.




Roswell's sculpts are so good that they make me forget that there was ever a The Thing before or after Carpenter's.



Zoomoth wins the award for Best New Figure Dude with a triple threat of explosive kits (presented here in order of descending threat level) beginning with the Baby Metroid.



The eponymous sorcerer from Fortress of Necros stands poised to once again ravage the countryside! Fortress of Necros was a Cracker Jack box series of toys packed with ramune candy pellets, with the defining difference between it and fellow lunch money thieves Kinkeshi and Bikkuri Man being that they came with a rules card as part of a massive RPG game world.



Biggy Man fans, your day in the sun has come! When your strike zone is as narrow as this, you better believe that every hit is a home run.



Daibadi Production has perfected the art of crafting chunky Famicom cyborgs. The tech developed in creating their Mega Man line does not go wasted here on Samus.



Link Factory had a goofy Inugami Family lotto setup. Instead of a ticket, you try your luck by plucking a drowned leg out of a lake.



Saber's sweet ride should turn heads as a pinnacle of post-modern art: A full-scale replica of a figure of a bike that doesn't actually appear in the source material? Talk about the copy surpassing the original.

That's all the figures we got for this season! Join us again soon for the obligatory cosplay roundup.

Wonder Festival 2011 (Summer)

Wonder Festival is Japan's largest and semi-annual garage kit market sponsored by Osaka-based figure giant Kaiyodo (the geniuses behind Revoltech, to say the least).

Naturally we don't go there for the limited-edition toys or salacious sculpts. No, the ever-morphing market and unpredictable nature of the crowd alone is well worth the price of admission.



This year’s pamphlet followed the 3/11 zeitgeist and featured its mascots sewing sequins and hot-gluing ceremonial rocks onto a catfish. You see, folklore holds catfish as the harbingers of quakes whose appetite for destruction can only be pacified with the stone of their patron god, Kaname, because... well, it beats me, but the folks at Pink Tentacle are elbow-deep in this stuff if you’ve got a hankerin’ for knowledge.

The rhinestones were presumably added to get more gyaru into noodling this season.



General Observations

-It goes without saying that the Madoka crew made the biggest showing of the day, with the scale tipped inordinately in favor of Mami over Miki. It also provided a loophole for a bumper crop of guys aching to dress up like girls without being transvestites. The crossplay scene is always split between guys letting it all shamelessly hang out and the more conservative full-bodysuit zentai, though they both seem to have been driven out of the woodwork in droves this year. Perhaps the recent otoko no ko trend is blossoming into a full blown boom?

-On the indy side of things, Vocaloid and Toho (or at, least things I can identify as Toho) were pushed out of the pit to make room for the girls of Black Rock Shooter, not surprising considering that the eponymous character is essentially a Player 2 palette swap of Hatsune Miku, complete with an exposed midriff, jet black hair, and firearms instead of leeks.

-The heat and recent double catastrophe didn’t do much to dispel attendees, though there was an obvious disparity in independent booths with a massive gap in the middle of the indy hall.

Enough talk, have at the photos!

Madoka Cosplay


Hey kid, you wanna I give you my grief seed?


QB is the new Pedo Bear it would seem.


Best Homura of the day, hands down.


It's totally not cross dressing if it's cosplay. Too bad the sweat was making their makeup run.

Tiger & Bunny Cosplay


Tiger adopts Ika Musume, who looks to be someone's actual kid. It's times like this where we ask ourselves as a nation, "Where were the parents!?"


Crossplayers like this will make you into a fujoshi whether you like it or not.


Both women and men had to paint on Tiger's facial hair.


Blue Rose goes semi-Ganguro.

Lethally Awesome Cosplay


Acguy with functioning grabby hands and scanball cyclops eye. Notice the little dude riding in the chest!


Tomino and Anno take their shitty garage band from their mom's basement to the streets.


PINCHER HOLD! Pretty tame finishing move as far as perverts go.


Third string Chojin hamming it up.


This respectable lady is like a Masamune Shirow character come to life but I'm drawing a blank. Any ideas?


Captain Harlock doing his own damn thang.


How the mighty have fallen! Long-term and clinically obsessive readers will recognize this gent as the champion of the Famicon underground series from 2010's Famimode.


Creamy Mami is the one magical girl who never sells out, snitches, or goes out of style. Pre-transformation even!

Cosplayers Just Hanging Out


"How many cosplayers does it take to fasten a Kamen Rider helmet...?"


For the first time in his life, Wild Tiger is asked for his autograph.

Pictures of Guys Taking Pictures


And this was the size of the crowd before she started masturbating on the concrete.


Broken ankles are a small price to pay for the money shot.


Wearing a schoolgirl uniform to a convention is like cutting your wrists in shark-infested waters.


This print coming soon to a museum of modern art near you.


Guy taking a picture of us taking a picture of him taking a picture of us taking a picture of him taking a picture of us taking a picture of him taking a picture of us taking a picture of him..

Toys


Totally nutso Rat Finks.



Japanese Gaga fans work fast. This meme only hit the interwebs earlier this month when she visited the talk show host Testuko.


Obama in his natural element, surrounded by whores and the pigs who buy them.


Which is stupider: Black Rock curry or the fact it sold out?


Moshzilla.


Z-movie magazine Trash-Up!! recently staged a Frankenstein Monster- Sanda VS Gaira (AKA War of the Gargantuans) revival at their Bakuon Movie Fest. Here's hoping that Frankenstein VS Baragon is next.


Zombie head sculpts are the only thing keeping a moe-crazed nation sane.


"Ghost of Godzilla" could be retro-fitted to an anti-anti nuclear parable, as in THE SKIN WILL MELT FROM YOUR BONES WITHOUT AIR CONDITIONING THIS SUMMER you goddamn hippies.



Bush goes Over the Top and takes us home.

That's all of the productivity-sapping gruel we have to serve up until the Comiket season, which is coming up on us sooner than I like to think about.

Full Wonder Festival 2011 album here

Our far more ambitions coverage of Wonder Festival 2010 (Summer) can be found here:
Figures
Cosplay