ON TOP OF THEIR GAME: Qatar Cosplay get together, right after the event. Photo by Anand Holla
By Anand Holla
What’s the coolest tribute that a fan can give his or her favourite video game, movie, manga, or anime character? Dress up as the character, become the character, and pull it out from the two-dimensional world of fiction into the three-dimensional realm of reality.
Cosplay makes this happen. A portmanteau of the words Costume Play, Cosplay allows one to doll up and pretend to be any fictional character one chooses. With the popular hobby having burgeoned into a global sensation over the past decade at all sorts of fan conventions, led by Comic-Con, it was only a matter of time — and a long wait at that — till it would reach Doha’s youth.
The country’s very own home-grown group, Qatar Cosplayers, made a big splash at the IGN Convention, which recently enthralled hundreds of youth — comprising mostly teenagers — at Qatar National Convention Centre. As the Qatar debut of the Convention — which has earlier rocked Dubai and Bahrain — buzzed with the young energy of the nation’s video game, film, and comic community, Cosplay clearly stood out as its highlight.
Given how Cosplay has become an integral facet of Japanese pop culture over the past two decades, it’s interesting to witness the younger generations here passionately embrace this hobby.
At the Convention, soon after winning the crowd by roaming the stage dressed as Resident Evil’s Nemesis, Khaled Ghassan Abdoh, a Palestinian born and bred in Qatar, told Community why he felt compelled to kickstart Qatar Cosplayers.
“When I went to a few Cosplay competitions at fan conventions back in Bahrain and Dubai, it cost me a lot of money; the air tickets, the hotel expenses,” he recalls, “Then I asked myself: Why should I keep travelling abroad when I can bring the whole phenomenon here?”
In just 13 months, what started as a passion project of a group of four has grown into a Cosplayers community featuring 90 members, and of which around a third participate actively in Cosplay events.
“I started out at the first edition of the Ajyal Film Festival in December 2013,” Abdoh says, “I went dressed as a portal character, and a friend tagged along. That’s the day it started for us.”
Not only did Abdoh’s group Qatar Cosplayers win the competitions at both editions of Ajyal, its members also won a lot of prizes at the recent IGN Convention. “From manga to anime, I am a big fan of everything related to Japan, and Cosplay is one of those things,” he said.
For Abdoh, it started off as it would for most — like a hobby. “Now it’s so much more; it’s a lifestyle,” Abdoh said, “Cosplay has become such a huge hit across the world and understandably so. You choose a character that you like and you can become that character — what can beat that?”
Admittedly, Cosplaying isn’t as easy as it appears. Since creativity lies at the core of a successful cosplay, one must be willing to go to any lengths to put together the costume one has in mind.
Removing his face mask, Mahdy, who is also part of the group, said, “In Cosplay, it’s important to be able to create our own costumes. So we make our weapons, dresses, jackets, and trousers. Like, we had five costumes fully stitched and accessorised from the local tailors here for some of our League of Legends costumes. Sometimes, if we can’t find materials, we order it from Ebay or Amazon.”
“We have spent a whole lot of money on putting together the costumes, because we care about the nuances, the details,” Abdoh points out, “For instance, to build the costume of Bumblebee (from Transformers) for one of our Cosplayers, we spent a lot of money, time and effort in placing orders for those parts online and importing them.”
Dressing up in full-fledged comic book-inspired costumes has been happening long before the annual Comic-Con propelled it into the mainstream. However, it was reporter and manga publisher Takahashi Nobuyuki who first used the term ‘Cosplay’ after attending Worldcon in Los Angeles in 1984, and encouraged his Japanese readers to partake.
Through the 1990s, Cosplaying skyrocketed in Japan and by the turn of the millennium, it even hosted the first World Cosplay Summit featuring four countries in 2003. Meanwhile, Qatar had its first brush with Cosplay in 2012 when the local group AnimeQTR held a cosplay event at the Virginia Commonwealth University.
Having been in the thick of the Cosplay craze for most part of his life, Abdoh feels the key is to know your character. “You can’t just get up and say I want to be Scooby Doo! You must know exactly what the character is, and what its peculiarities are,” he said.
While he agrees that cosplaying is all about having a ball, he also insists that his group is very serious about it. “If we didn’t take ourselves seriously, we would have died out in the first few months,” he points out, “Cosplaying, of course, is for everyone but not everyone can do it. You need the right attitude, a good amount of courage and a lot of mental strength to pull it off well. Some people can put you down with criticism, but you can’t let that affect you. You must take it on the chin and move ahead.”
At the IGN Convention, Cosplayers entertained screaming, cheering fans by turning up as everything from Naruto and One Piece characters to Heisenberg and Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad.
Abdoh’s collective, though, brings the action down to wherever they get invited to. “Next, our group will be cosplaying for the launch of a new store at a multiplex,” Abdoh said, “We keep attending as many Cosplay events of the Middle East as we can.”
Clearly, it’s a young community that thrives on building and improving. “We meet at least twice a month and we stay in touch over our Facebook page and Instagram page, so that if somebody needs help in creating a costume, we all pitch in and arrange for it,” said Abdoh.
His fellow members share the same upbeat spirit. Maria, a Grade 11 student, has been Cosplaying for four years. “I started out back home in Greece. When I came to Qatar, not many knew what it meant. But now that people are getting interested and we are getting popular, it feels great.”
Sara, a Grade Eight student, said that she had always wanted to be “somebody else” since she was six. “Two years ago, at Ajyal, I turned up in this really shabby costume because I wanted to try it out. It wasn’t great but a few people wanted to take my picture and I felt nice,” she said, “At the last Ajyal, three months ago, it was much better. It made me feel amazing, like here, at the Convention.”
Another teenaged Cosplayer Moaz believes that Qatar and other GCC countries must encourage anime, manga and Cosplay-related events. “These things are what so many of us love. So why not?” Dressed up as The Joker (Batman’s villain), Salman al-Hannadi said, “I truly wish to see Qatar’s gaming and Cosplaying community expand in Qatar.”
