Cosplayers (from left) Kyotaek Son as "Kimihiro Watanuki", Jessica Ung as "Megurine Luka" and Jenny Wu as "Hatsune Miku" top up with some real-world currency before returning to the New Zealand Anime Convention. Photo by Gerard O'Brien.
The New Zealand Anime Convention brought dozens of "cosplayers" and their alter egos to the University of Otago Castle complex on Saturday.
Cosplay is an abbreviation of "costume play" and is a type of performance art in which participants don costumes and accessories to represent a specific character.
The characters are usually drawn from Japanese and American cartoons, popular fiction and science fiction. The two-day event included film screenings, chess matches using people as pieces, workshops on voice acting, how Japanese anime is adapted to English and a cosplay.
