Cosplay Spectacular by Victoria

Cosplay Spectacular, or masquerade, is regarded as one of Fanime Con's biggest events. Cosplayers from all over the Western region compete amongst each other in a grandeur display of craft, design, and drama (on the stage). This year was very competitive. While we have not covered a Fanime Con masquerade in years (time conflict with Black and White Ball), the competition was very fierce. There were entries from Soul Calibur 2, Idolm@ster, Kuroshitsuji: Noah's Ark Circus, Ranma ½, Fist of the North Star, Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu, and others. We had a good variety of anime and video games represented.

The show was divided by walk-ons and masquerade acts. Masquerade veteran host, Darryl Hwang, hosted the walk-on section. Tadao hosted the performances and variety hour section. The judges were cosplay and costuming veterans. Wayne of American Cosplay Paradise was one of the judges. We also had a judge who has worked for the San Jose ballet. The show opened up with a Wing Chun demonstration and the karaoke contest winners. There were a handful of walk-ons. Following the walk-ons, we had close to 30 acts on stage. The show lasted until about 10PM. We had an entertaining show. Good job to everyone who entered masquerade; the competition was really tight!

Videos of the cosplay show can be seen on Anime Cosplay Paradise. Here is House of Scarlet's masquerade act, American Idolm@ster, courtesy of ACP:

Black and White Ball by Jared

One of the traditions of Fanime is the ballroom dance. This year the dance was held in the Parkside Hall which was a much larger venue than in previous years. Parkside Hall is adajacent to the civic center and the Children's Museum. Therefore, it made it easy to attend masquerade and hit the ballroom dance afterwards. While this was a nice change, the music was not that great. Also, the exhibitionists took too long leaving those who came to dance bored sitting in chairs. We arrived during the time the demonstrations were taking place. The demonstrations nearly lasted 20 minutes. While it was nice to watch people dance, we felt like dancing the night away. Stan and Deb also complained that they were unable to get a romantic slow dance in. While the music selection was much better. The event felt like a poorly handled prom rather than a well done ballroom dance. We decided to leave once Victoria recieved an urgent text on her iPhone.

Masquerade Award Weiners by Victoria

Thankfully, Parkside Hall was literally next door to the civic auditorium. I received a text message from a friend that I had won an award for Honorable Mention Individual Presentation. The big winner of the night was We're Not Twins Cosplay's Kuroshitsuji group. Other big wins of the night were the Ranma ½ group's "Man or a Muppet?" act, 2D Cosplay took home Best Dramatic Presentation for Fist of the North Star, and the Sailor Moon group took home a judges award. For more information on the list of 2012 Cosplay Spectacular Winners, you can read them on the Fanime Con forums.

Each winner took home a trophy, a One Piece figure, piles of free flyers, and back issue of Cookie, a monthly shoujo manga serial. Cosplay Spectacular was done before 10PM at the civic auditorium. For celebration, a group of friends and I decided to go for a victory round of garlic fries at Original Joe's with good friends.

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