Part 1: Brother and WCS

Those who have been to a number of cosplay events will know that they there are many different ways that an event can be organized. Many cosplay events are held at Anime/Manga convetions that vary in size. Often you will need to pay for a ticket to enter the general event location. There are some strictly cosplay only events which may have fewer attendants overall but people who come are only there for cosplay. You may or may not have to pay for entry to these events depending on its size and formality. Events which have cosplay can span from a small informal gathering of friends who do cosplay all the way up to multi-day Anime/Cosplay events where up to hundreds of thousands of guests may attend.

The World Cosplay Summit is a unique event that is completely free for guests and participants. In fact most portions of the event are done in public locations and those in attendance are not only cosplay fans but also general inhabitats and curious passersby. The only way that this sort of event can take place is through strong backing from sponsors and Brother company has been a solid supporter from the early beginnings of the WCS.

Even though I have been involved with the WCS from the start, I was not familiar with Brother until we did a tour with the 2006 WCS participants of the "Brother Communication Space" a kind of mini Brother museum/presentation center near Brother Head Office. In a 4 part series I will introduce some things at Brother that the other cosplayers and myself found pretty interesting in our tour.

Part 2 will be about how Brother company began.