As with last year February and March have little in the way of direct WCS preliminaries to report on however things will be picking up as we head into May. Right now Brazil is beginning its regional rounds for WCS 2010 and Australia has already started making moves in its selections for 2011 as their national preliminaries are held soon after the WCS championship is held in August here in Japan. In the upcoming days I will have reports on those events for you.

On May 23rd the Korean preliminaries for the WCS will be held in Seoul with an interesting twist this year. Singapore will be sending a number of cosplayers to hold their own regional round at the Wonder Cosplay Festival.

I am also pleased to announce that Igor Inocima will be back again this year as organizer for Brazil! Igor began as organizer for Brazil with the countries entry into the WCS in 2006, he is active in the Brazilian Nikkei community and you can follow him on his Twitter feed here!

The regionals for WCS 2011 have begun already in Australia and we have results from Melbourne for you.

It looks like there were a lot of fun activities like a mass cosplay twister game and goods galore!


Animania Melbourne took place on April 10th and 11th and they had a special guest this year from Andrea Tan representing Singapore at WCS 2009.

She presented a performance on stage for everyone and participated in the judging. One team was selected to move on in Melbourne, you can see a photo of them below in costumes from Card Captor Sakura.

Thanks to Neil Creek for the great pictures, click on the link to see many more.
Coming up very soon for Australia is the next regional round in Brisbane!

With the largest Japanese community outside of Japan, Brazil maintains strong ties with the island nation. Manga and anime are popular with youth and as far as cosplay is concerned every year there is a number of events that hold WCS regionals throughout the country finishing at the national preliminary in Sao Paolo. The regionals are well on their way now and I have a report for you from Belo Horizonte which is inland north of Rio de Jeneiro.

Cosplayers Gabriela de Lima Birchal and Nathalia Lelis de Moura came out on top of eight teams to earn their way to the finals of WCS 2010 - JBC Brazil Stage. The selection took place in Belo Horizonte City, on April 11th.

Gabriela and Nathalia performed as the characters Velvet and Odette, from the game Odin Sphere. The presentation mixed dance and performance.

Grasiele Fink da Silva and Augusto Gustavo Melo, with their performance came in second place presenting their interpretation of the game Valkyrie Profile.

Besides Gabriela and Nathalia, other two pairs have already chosen to participate of Brazilian finals: Geraldo Cecílio and Renan Aguiar (Brazilian champions in 2009) and Maurício e Mônica Somenzari (winners of Anime Yuu selective).

Besides the cosplay tournament, Anime Festival had quizzes, discussions with anime voice actors and shows by anime song bands.

Thanks a lot to the JBC Brazil team for providing the information and check out their web page here for the latest information on the Brazil selection!