Cosplay For A Cause: A Happy Green New Year

Posted on January 21st, 2011 by chylle

Naruto Cosplay Philippines in cooperation with SM Marilao and their green bag project is running a civic event geared at cosplaying and Kpop culture to help raise funds to help the restoration project of Meycauayan River. Additional support from members of Bulacan Cosplay Mania were also employed in helping with the event.

The event hosts an individual cosplay competition divided into Levels 1 and 2 depending on costume intricacies and complexity; a group cosplay that will feature skits; as well as Kpop dance contest that features dance crews dance it out in the tune of popular Kpop songs. Good praise is well deserved for the even organizers to host the biggest event, so far, in Bulacan since the Cyber Geeks event in SM Baliwag. With onlookers flocking the small even area, one can say it was a success.

People from Manila ventured out to the developing municipality, a good in-joke since most events forces convention goers from the provinces to go to the metropolis, and took up the good cause to cosplay. The event area was small for an unexpectedly large number of people who would be participating, not counting the guests and onlookers who witnessed the event.

Still, the event encountered several organizational problems as well as set-backs in set-up, music, arrangement, and the like. Far from a perfectly organized event, but being a first to handle such a large event, one can see plenty of areas for development in the organizer’s team. Entertainment was still a plus for the event bringing along several small skits and minor programs, like a raffle and games, for the audiences to enjoy themselves.

Winners of the event can be found in their Facebook Page.

Hopefully, another successful event will grace Bulacan as well as the other parts of the Philippines as the culture expands.

Prawnt’s POV

The venue was a bit far for me but then again, many of the people I know who cosplay come from Bulacan and they usually go to Manila for conventions. Looks like it was the other way around this time as I went to SM Marilao to participate as one of the cosplayers to “Cosplay for a Cause”. Basically if you cosplay, your registration fee counts as a donation for the rivers of Bulacan which are in bad shape, and here I was thinking that the river Pasig was worse when I saw the Meycauayan River with my own eyes! Eventually we arrived at SM Marilao and got ready to cosplay. This is also my first time to enter an actual cosplay competition.

I think that not all of the organizers were prepared for this event, considering this is their first time, and I will agree with Chylle that there are plenty of areas for improvement. The organizers themselves said that they were open to constructive criticism so I believe that’s a good sign on their part. As I registered for cosplay along with Peashooter Guy and Coach Anzai (you all love him.) , we were pretty much surprised that the online registration system they had was rendered useless in the end, as we had to provide our details again at the booth. A few areas were brought to our concern such as the reference pic for the judges when during online registration, we already provided a link to the reference pic and yet they were asking us for one. Eventually this was disregarded.

Many cosplayers didn’t bring a custom BGM (background music) with them (myself included) as some might have overlooked it in the guidelines, but in my case, it read “Cosplayers can bring their own background music.” which means cosplayers CAN bring it, but I didn’t know we MUST bring one. Luckily, the mall had wi-fi and Kakuzu was kind enough to download my BGM from the internet. (Thanks a bunch, Kakuzu!) My accompanying music was then queued into their playlist.

At first, everything went smoothly and there were a lot of people watching the Level 1 Cosplay Competition. I literally felt the hype as I shouted my character’s lines on stage, with the other cosplayers were being cheered on as they put on their respective performances. After the Level 1 Cosplay, we were all expecting the Level 2 category to go next but the organizers said they would go on stage later.

This is where it started to go downhill. Sometimes there would be some dead air between competitions such as that gap between the J-Pop/K-Pop Dance Competition and the Group Cosplay Category. I started to see the crowds slowly dissolving as people got fed up and went home. Many of the Level 2 Category cosplayers were starting to get fed up as well; their body language was showing it. After a small raffle session then came Level 2 Cosplay!

The main concern this time was the accompanying music for most of the cosplayers in this category. Though some really brought their own BGM with them, others didn’t and random music was played. Imagine a happy tune playing as War Machine fires his guns; that’s how it looked like, as well as for the most of the Level 2 cosplayers. The transition from one BGM to another was also rather abrupt. Peashooter Guy was greatly disappointed by the fact that his music cued in late and barely anyone was there to see his “thriller” routine. The crowd, or what’s left of it sort of lost its hype compared to the Level 1 Category that took place earlier.

Nevertheless, the event was alright and was deftly handled despite its shortcomings. You don’t see many cosplay events like these that actually help the environment for the sake of Bulacan’s rivers. One last thing, it was rather ironic that many people (cosplayers included) left their trash around the event area. Talk about helping the environment! It is quite saddening.

That’s my take on the event. Until next con, cheers!

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