Scholars on Cosplay

Laissa Hjorth

In order to understand why cosplaying has become a vehicle for young females to enter the male-dominated games industry we need to comprehend how gender within Japanese technocultures provides alternative spaces for performativity, creativity and expression. Technocultures are never neutral, and like games themselves, are subject to localization, adaptation and translation. The specific role of gender within Japanese technocultures, and specifically gaming cultures, has long been a site for alternative exploration within the global games industry over the last thirty years. But more recently, as the technocultures of Japan have shifted, so too have the gendered connotations and performativity associated with gaming.

- Game Girl: Re-imagining Japanese Gender and Gaming via Melbourne Female Cosplayers


Christopher Bolton on Susan J. Napier's Book "Anime"

The author begins by invoking Joseph Nye's notion of soft power, the political capital that accrues from the appeal of a nation's aesthetic and cultural productions. For Napier this idea not only highlights the global influence of Japanese popular culture, but also the possibility of non-coercive relationships between East and West that involve choice negotiation on both sides. ... [Napier's] conclusions are about the appeal of Japan and the pleasures of fandom as a tool for self-discovery by individual artists and fans.
[...]
The second-half of the book turns to anime and manga fandom, with extended discussions of fan conventions and 'cosplay'... Napier suggests a process of identification through which fans use anime and manga to achieve growth or self-actualization.

- From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West