For those of you who have been keeping tabs on the japanese blog you can see that the WCS web page webmaster Kissy went to TNT in Mexico City to see the event and watch the first WCS preliminary round in Mexico. He made daily updates of his experiences. He went into detail about the popularity of pro-wrestling and an awesome "Lucha Libre" 3 on 3 battle that he saw. He then talks about how delicious the tacos are and how much better they are than the ones in Japan. On the second day of the event he talks about the cosplay competition and how it started out with 48 groups. He was impressed by the effort and efficiency put into the costumes as well as the passion of the performance and the size of the crowds. For the final round on day three 15 groups returned to decide who would be winning the trip to Japan over the summer and you may have already seen the winners here!

Photos from the event are not up yet on either the japanese or english side of the web page but you can see some photos in the Japanese blog here! I will let you know when the pictures are up first on the Japanese side and hopefully I can corner the busy webmaster and get him to tell me a little more about how things went.

Judging from the strong response to the last blog entry, Kissy was quite a hit in Mexico. He had the time of his life in Mexico and had a lot of great things to say about his trip, I had a chance to sit down and talk to him recently.

First of all Kissy had good things to say of Kageyama Hironobu (In Japan he is known as the “Prince of Anime song singers”) they spent the entire week together and Mr. Hironobu performed on stage a number of times. He also mentioned one great night singing karaoke with him and others, watching him sing Dragon Ball Z and Saint Sayer was a memorable experience.

It was his first time to Mexico so he hit the tourist sights like Teotihuakan pyramid and the surrounding ancient Aztec monuments and ruins. With the beginning of the event he visited the World Trade Center facility in Mexico city and he thought it was a very beautiful and impressive facility. He mentioned that this year the TNT event would be TNT GT instead of TNT 13 because GT is related to the popular Nissan Skyline. I added that perhaps 13 was not used because it was not a lucky number, he was impressed by that too! If anyone has any information on this please do leave a comment. The official number of guests to the event were 25,000 but the unofficial total was 40,000.

As far as cosplay was concerned there was a great range of costumes and he commented on the uniqueness of costume selection in Mexico. What stuck out for him the most was costumes that could not be found in Japan, he had gone to a pro wrestling match and he loved the great number of people who were dressed up as pro wrestlers. He went on to tell me what he learned about Lucha Libre such as Mistico was the most popular wrestler and there was even a pro wrester from Japan called Ultimo Dragon.

He was fascinated with the make up and costume creation techniques that people used at TNT. After talking to different participants he was amazed at the quality of costumes and accessories which people put together often for a low cost. Latex make up was used on the face of some cosplayers, something that is rarely seen in Japan and showed an influence of the movie industry. Items and accessories had battery packs and flashing lights that took accessories beyond simple decorations. Unfortunately lighting work will not show up well in pictures but you can take a look at the first installment or pictures on the Japanese home page here! In fact you can see Georgia, the individual winner at WCS 2005 and good friend Roberto in the first picture. Thanks for everything Kissy!