Over Done Cosplays in the 21st Century

Cosplay is awesome.  I think it's a fun hobby, and although you have to have some money to do this stuff, it serves a good purpose.  Plus you learn how to make things for yourself.  And if you don't, then you are one lazy ass crack.

I could think of tons of great cosplayers, but they don't have to be shoop famous or have the exact detailed costumes.  Great cosplayers are people who pay attention to detail and put in their best effort.  With that said there are a few who try their best and still fail, but sometimes if you give them a while, they get better.  Not only do people geek out over amazing cosplays but they geek out over fun details, neat innovation, and even over cosplays of people they haven't seen cosplayed before. 

Over the years the level of cosplays have grown enormously in the US.  Not only do we have video game or anime cosplays, we have cosplays of cartoons, movies, characters from novels, comic books, web comics, and in pop culture itself. 

People have also become more harsh on cosplayers.  There are plenty of criticizers about cosplay and if one hem is off by at least a few inches, explodes happen somewhere off the shoreline and a hate war commences shortly after.  Lots of drama happen at conventions, too.  But hey, no matter where you are in a social gathering, shit like this goes down all the time.  It's just human nature.

But while I can keep going on about what cosplay brings to the table for certain groups of people, I would rather consider the following topic: the most annoyingly overdone cosplays.  No offense to people who are in this group, but I like to see variety especially when I go to a bigger convention.  But when I'm at a small convention, it gets me a little annoyed that a particular anime would be getting more hits than that YouTube video of that really annoying guy with that high pitched voice (what's it, Freddy or something?  Guy's like 15; he has no control over himself and therefore shouldn't be famous).  I do have a few friends who will say that they have been cosplaying from this particular list, but I'm just saying that it's annoying to see these done over and over again. 

Axis Powers Hetalia

So what I basically got from this anime is...countries who are...people...and some war...then...I don't know, they have a chibi party or something.  When I first heard about this concept, I was thinking, "that's kinda cool; it's sort of like an abstract or whatever," but after seeing Germany after Germany cosplayers who run around skipping along side of America cosplayers, I get damn confused.  What's so particularly annoying about this particular series is that the cosplay that spawned from this turned me off to the anime entirely.  And that's a damn shame, too, because I don't really enjoy hating something without watching it first, but even looking through the artwork for it seemed too wholesome for me.  I mean really, a blond Nazi guy.  We've seen this before in Hellsing, but at least Hellsing was violent and grotesque.  When I see an adorable animation of a Nazi, I wanna laugh in Hitler's face.  And that guy is a real twisted mother.

Black Butler

This cosplay ruined it.  How many times am I going to have to see girls have an excuse to dress this nice because a boy in the series wore this?  I have no idea what makes it so appealing to cosplayers when they have a chance to be a boy dressed as a girl, but it works.  Bridget from Guilty Gear, Beppo from Gankutsuou (that series kicked major ass by the way), and Hope from FFXIII (I don't care, he's still a boy being a little girl to me), this theme happens a lot.  There was only one time when I saw a really awesome cosplay of this.  Then I realized when I looked online and found a picture of this same exact dress, the two dresses looked too much like each other.  That concerned me since the cosplayer got an award, too.  Then by the next year I saw the same thing but in red and black instead of pink and black.  WTF.  There are bad versions of this, there are shitty vampire what's his name, and there are also terrible Ciels everywhere.  Because of the nature and design of this anime, anyone can put together half assed costumes, a gray wig on, and claim they are Ciel.  And because it technically passes and I see so much of this, I just try to avoid these cosplayers everywhere.  It's really damn hard, too.

Vocaloid

Vocaloid cosplay is pretty cute, but it's really the fan art cosplays make me want to slash tires.  Holy shit, there are SO MANY ARTWORK VERSIONS!  And the worst thing is, they are just ARTWORK.  Nothing else.  One guy who has amazing talent posts one copy of his picture of a bunch of Vocaloid characters in different outfits, and everyone has to post them in their FB "Must Cosplay" albums.  Miku is done way too much, but at least they are kinda cute.  Sometimes people would even cosplay as an alternate outfit.  But what the hell.  People get a group together and follow one of the fan arts?  That's just being desperate.  I'm also going to go on a limb and say that if they are not recognized by at least fifty people, it turns into a moody shit fest like being locked in a room with five menopausal mothers. 

Disney Princesses

I blame Kingdom Hearts for this.  And that's saying a lot from me because I like the series and I really don't mind seeing Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts cosplay all the time.  What really bothers me are the princesses.  It must take so much money to construct some of these dresses, and if I wanted to see a bunch of these chicks, I would just drag my ass to Disney World.  You can call me a Disney nerd, but most of the cosplays that are Disney princess related aren't even of the original princesses.  Lilo is not a princess.  She's just an adorable Hawaiian girl with an awesome alien friend who shots anything he wants to.  There are also, like the Vocaloid cosplays, many versions made for these Disney princess cosplays.  I saw a picture of a group of slutty versions of the princesses.  How nice and classy.  It refreshes my childhood in a way that no one else can.

I would like to state more, but these four groups are ones that I am having the most problems with.  They could die out like the Naruto and Bleach cosplays, but then that means that some other annoying theme will come along.  It's a cycle like how a lion tries to eat an elephant out of hunger, but the elephant impales their asses with its huge tusks of win then continue on their way to never find water and die.  But hey, like I said, it's a cycle.