Anime and the light novels or manga, from which it springs, have long been a source of cosplay inspiration. One thing to keep in mind, with this type of entertainment, is that it has many genres and subgenres; much like movies.
The general opinion of anime is it is all robots, tentacles and high school girls (which is strictly designed for adolescent boys and perverts) this is actually quite far from the truth for the bulk of anime. There is, in fact, a great deal of anime and manga that does not have any of these elements and instead focuses on strong characters and stories.
While these animes have produced many great characters (that people have used for cosplay) it is not these types that we will be focusing on. Instead we’ll be looking at the hentai and ecchi genres.
Now first let’s cover what those words mean.
Hentai is anime that is strong in sexual content, such as in La Blue Girl. And I don’t mean characters just doing it, the term ‘hentai’ has come to mean ‘bizarre or perverse sexual act’ (although originally it meant metamorphosis). And the creators of hentai anime go out of their way to live up to that label with graphic sexuality and entire plots being of a sexual nature.
Ecchi is a lot milder, but with sexual undertones and innuendo; such as in High School DxD. This anime form is well known for boobs, butts and panty shots, although the depiction of sexual acts is very toned down; if shown at all.
While many hentai characters are often depicted as regular people it is in ecchi anime that we see massively busted women in skimpy costumes.
So rather than our usual focus on individual cosplayers this time we thought we would present something a bit more with an explanation of the idea behind it.
However, don’t expect to see a lot of these types of cosplays at many conventions. While some of the larger cons do have rooms and sections for these types of cosplays, many events have strict rules about these types of costumes.
However it doesn’t mean that cosplayers don’t do photo shoots for fans to enjoy.
John Goodale is the author of ‘Johnny Gora’ (available through Amazon.com), and a number of articles here on TMRZoo.com. His monthly column ‘Indy Comics Spotlight’ appears here and through his blog Indy Comics Spotlight
