Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Best Anime & Cosplay Sites Online

One of the fastest growing trends in the USA is cosplay. Since the first true instances of cosplay originated in Japan, the trend of dressing to mimic the appearance of manga or anime characters has taken to online portals. Where you can enjoy 3D virtual cosplay by designing and dressing up virtual avatars at places like Frenzoo, IMVU and Meez, the following list contains some of the best and most active cosplay sites you can find on the web.

1. Cosplay.comcosplay site

Cosplay.com is one of the largest and most noteworthy sites dedicated to the world of cosplay. Containing a marketplace, very active forums and even a cosplay calendar (USA). The best social feature of this site is the ability to buy and commission costumes!

cosplay japan2. CureCos

Cure Cosplay Community is a Japanese/English site that does a great job and utilizing user interactivity. The interface is easy to use and gives cosplay a great location to hang out and share photos of their best and favorite costumes.


3. Cosspacecossplay social network

Cosspace takes the MySpace approach to networking, giving a strong community with many different features enabling cosspace to involve users much more. There are costume ratings (by other users) polls, video submissions, quizzes, expansive forums, and the ever popular gallery. Cosspace is simple in design and supports 3 languages (English, French, Spanish).

4. Cosplay Walker

japan cosplaySpeak Japanese? Perfect! Cosplay Walker is mainly in Japanese, but offers a fun space for the cosplay fan to share designs, and if you get rated the best out of other fans on the site, you get a front page mention! If only I spoke Japanese fluently so that I could get a front-page mention!



5. Cosplay F
orumfrench cosplay

We're keeping it international for this site too! This forum is all in French, but there is a very large presence in their discussions- and for good reason! The environment is very festive and has thousands of active users! When any cosplay forum has a group dedicated to this cos theme: Groupe Walker Texas Ranger : Japan Expo 2009 – you can count me in.

Want to share your favorite character or anime pic or even how you think stories should have ended, etc... Anime online has a large forum community backed by their own RPG game and Arcade online. The coolest feature is the 'Watch & Discuss' where you can.... watch and discuss shows with other people (Sorry its USA only). Which means for us in Asia we don't online animeget this feature. The gallery has a lot of user content, and it is a good time to get ideas for upcoming cosplay events and even to design new gear.

7. AnimeNewsNetwork

The ANN is a great site for upcoming events/shows/anything! The first page when you see when arriving at ANN is the newsfeed, which is constantly updated keeping us in the know! How great is that! There is an Encyclopedia to give you a refresher course on your characters/shows and there is also an editorial wiki page to let you share your opinions. But don't forget the huge forum that is always buzzing with activity.

8. Daz3d

If you are in to ultra-realistic Anime & Manga design, Daz3d is a downloadable tool that assists in 3D design. I still don't know how to work it, but once I do I may actually make something worthwhile. Check out their 'Hall of Fame' for unreal photos!

9. Cosplay Meetup

An honorable mention, cosplay meetup is a site made on meetup.com, which different cosplay groups from around the globe have listed their location for other cosplay fans of anime and manga to join in with a large group!

The world within Cosplay fans of Anime and Manga is large and expansive, and we can't wait to dive into the different sites here and get to know more about our fellow Anime lovers! Enjoy and share often!

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