Cosplay in Baku: from Trump to Mad Hatter

As the regulars put it, AzeCon Cosplay Festival has reached a new height this year. Once a matey party for a narrow circle of comics and anime fans, it has now become a large-scale costume event.

What is cosplay?

Cosplay, literally a costume play, where individuals dress up as a specific film, book or comic book character. In short, dressing up as anyone you wish and making such costumes. It’s a very popular hobby worldwide.

The best cosplayers achieve an ideal congruence of costumes and makeup with that of the original; the amateurs may order something cheaper and less sophisticated in online-stores or confine themselves just to a few details.

Generally speaking, cosplay is a social event, a pretext for finding pals with common interests, another way to give vent to one’s creativity and, at the same time, be noticed and appreciated.

What has changed since the last festival? First of all, a more swanky venue – the Holiday Inn hotel. Secondly, the participants have increased in number – no less than 500 people attended the event this year. Thirdly, almost everyone was wearing costumes, and there were even a few who came ‘just to see it’.

 

Luffy and Chopper from ‘One Piece’. It’s an anime about pirates, and today they are hosting the party, because ‘One Piece’ turns 20. It was decided to name the festival ‘The Pirates of the Caspian’, and to underline a marine theme, in general.

For those who haven’t watched the ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’, it’s just suffice to know that this guy is capable of sending ablaze the entire neighborhood just in a snap of his finger (if you watched it, you’ve surely recognized him anyway).

Aang from the Avatar’ and Blackbeard from ‘One Piece’. Both of them maintained their images the whole evening. Aang was sitting in the center of the hall, meditating in all seriousness.

Left - Kurumi Tokisaki from ‘Date a live’; right-Yuri Plisetsky from ‘Yuri on ice’, a relatively new anime about the figure skating and romantic relations between the athletes.

When a witch turns 13, she is sent to another town to live independently for 1 year.  By that age the witches usually make up their mind on the major. As for Kiki, the only thing she knows is just flying on the broomstick.  ‘Witch Delivery Service’, a film directed by Hayao Miyazaki, is a never-dying classic.

A bit of politics. That’s probably for the first time in AzeCon’s history that the President has moved to the cartoon characters category. On a side note, crafty Trump was distributing flyers with his slogan to all those, who were taking photos with him.

Mad Hatter from the latest screen version of ‘Alice’ is probably the most thoroughly worked out character at the festival.

And you’ve surely recognized this couple from ‘Pulp Fiction’. Naturally, they couldn’t do without dancing to the overall ovations.

Khal Drogo had to represent the ‘Game of the Thrones’ single-handedly, but he managed it.

And this a patriotic version of Captain America - Captain Azerbaijan.

Madara Uchiha from ‘Naruto’ and Rin from the ‘Blue Exorcist’. It’s all clear with Rin, he is just a son of Satan (but perish the thought, he himself is kind). As for Madara, he is an ambiguous character. He founded a powerful clan and was so cool that he outlived many generations of that very clan. Madara did a lot of bad things and much more was committed on his behalf. So, it’s hard to guess, what his blame is and what is not.

The young lady is cosplaying Kaneki from ‘Tokyo Ghoul’, a popular anime about hard life of the mystical cannibal-creatures.

Experts say, there are animes absolutely about everything, be it sports or cooking, not to mention religion and mythology that hold particular place in the Japanese people’s life. Thus, gods animes vary from the canon ones, where everything is ‘according to original storyline’, to the game-genre animes, with gods eating pizza and wearing tracksuits. 
Anime ‘Nice to Meet You, God’. A Bloody King, notorious Yokai (spirit, demon), who has been living over 600 years.

Cleopatra, a character who will be cosplayed for centuries.