b'T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2019-20These photographs act as a social currency when they arein costume that that creates when he is viewing himself distributed in the digital space, and they receive a returnin costume retrospectively, and with a critical distance. on their investments of time and money through positive attention and social prestige, perhaps allow individuals toStriking poses for photos is great and you look back but its kind become something of a celebrity. They achieve fan capital,of surreal, its kind of out of body like my screen saver on my phone which circulates within large, online networks outsideis me in my green ranger outfit but its also kind of the green ranger the consphere. Therefore, online communities such asrather than me, whereas for the 3 minutes of masquerade, its not just Facebook, Flickr and Instagram play a massive role inabout striking a characters pose, I get to bring that character to life. the identity of the cosplayer. (My interview with John, 2020)Cosplayers play with the tension between the self and theIt is possible that Japanese cosplayers downplay their fictional character. How far the cosplayer should identifyemotional attachment to their chosen characters due to and take from the character they cosplay is hotly debated. the stigma they may face for taking play too seriously by Some cosplayers in Japan play with the kigirumi fantasy:wider society. Japanese cosplayers try to avoid being seen that there is no-one inside (Truong 2013: 40). To achieveas subversive and prefer to emphasise it as mere play in this, they do not talk in case their voices do not match thesome cases rather than having a deeper effect. According character they play, and they make efforts to distance theirto Truong:own identities from that of the character. However, when one is transcribing the character onto ones own body, it is,When asked to explain why they started to do cosplay, participants indeed, inevitable that through these playful explorations,often began with general statements such as it was a fun pastime, but cosplayers will find their identities affected and acquirequickly moved to a more specific desire to become the characters they aspects of identity from the characters they choose dueliked and a desire to change. (2013: 19)to cosplays transformative effects on the sense of self. Truong describes the fluid identity that Japanese cosplayersHowever, through costuming cosplayers may find experience as not simply framed as everyday life, nor werethemselves accessing forms of identity that are usually they actually thought to be the fantasies that were played.resigned to fantasy, such as this super-human sense of They were framed as something in between, the mundaneconfidence I have described. This is something that is enchanted through other ways of understanding, doingwidely accepted as the main reason that one will cosplay, and being (Truong, 2013: 40). among my interviewees and other case studies.Dima described the feeling of being imbued with theGn writes that the cosplay performance should first be confidence of a character through embodiment: understood as an expression of emotional attachment to the animated body (2011: 589). Susan Napier suggests I definitely feel a lot like um myself but a very confident self causethat the flexible nature of anime specifically lends itself yeah like walking around dressed like someone whos killed like fiftywell to fantastic representations because it is inherently people just by like kicking them really hard [laughs] youre kind ofnon-referential (2007: 160). Due to there being no human like, yeah, Im a bad ass, Im gonna like go have some cheetos andactors to set the standard for how the character should drink in my hotel bed [laugh]. (My interview with Dima, 2020) look in the material world, cosplayers can create a more effective illusion of reality. It is interesting, then, to unpick Dima was far from the only cosplayer to mention thehow rendering the unreal body as real helps the cosplayer transformative nature that costuming entails, and almostplay with their identity.every respondent reported feeling a lot more confident in costume due to the persona they are taking on and the admiration of others.John here describes the merging of his own identity with the identity of his chosen character during the performance that must occur in order for him to effectively bring that character to life, and it is interesting to observe the fluid sense of his identity 10'