As the Mexico regional rounds wind down the Brazil rounds are just beginning. The first round to select the participating teams for the finals in Sao Paolo were selected at Sana Fest in Fortaleza, Ceara. The first pair to be selected are Paulo Roberto Lacerda and Mara Suely da Silva Larcerda who preformed Mitsurugi and Ivy, from Soul Calibur 3.

Fortaleze with a population of 2.5 million is the 5th largest city in Brazil. It is the capital of Ceara which is situated on the north eastern side of the country. The city is an incredible 3000 kilometers (2400 miles) away from Sao Paolo where the Brazil final will be held.

Thanks to cosplayers.net you can watch their performance here. (Make sure to watch how Paulo uses his great hair to his advantage!)

You can check out the Sana Fest event web page here.

You can see the detailed point scores and other information about the WCS Brazil round on the JCB web page here.

After a 3 month build up the Mexico finals have arrived. Here is the 9th and final team that will be participating in the finals: Larizza Fabian and Xareni Jimenez. They won their ticket to TNT Expo at the "La Conven" event in Oaxaca, Mexico.

They performed Flandre Scarlet and Remilia Scarlet from the Touhou Project Series, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil. The Touhou Project is a series of PC Doujin games that started out being released at Comiket in the late 90s. Oaxaca is a larger state in the southern part of Mexico close to the border with Guatemala. The state has a population of 3.5 million and the capital city has 250,000 citizens.

Good luck and have fun in Mexico!

The 2011 WCS Mexico finals are upon us.

(Photo by Mario Vargas)

For the past 4 years Mexico has been awarding medals to each team participating in the WCS Mexico preliminaries. Above are all 4 since 2007. (I have one from 2008!) With an impressive series of regional rounds, receiving an award for all of the effort will carry great meaning and bring back fond memories.

We will have a 2011 WCS Mexico team to present at the end of the weekend.

12 Teams were selected at TNT Expo to complement the 9 teams selected from across Mexico. Here are the teams:

Cynthia Olvera Monterrubio and Abigail Mascherpa García (Abigail was the WCS 2009 representative for Mexico!)

Genoveva Hernández Morales and Arturo Olguin Garabito

Guadalupe Buñuelos Hernández and Julio César Rojas Leija

Franco Burciaga Moreno and Itzu Poliz Gaona

Carina Almazan Baltazar and Vianney López García

René Alfaro León and Oscar Barrón Eufracio

Karla Salazar Ramírez and Rubén Chávez Perla

Liliana Islas Estrada and Ivonne González Rojas

Gerardo Pérez González and Karen Rincón de León

José Domingo Castillo Gutiérrez and Lucero Castillo Gutiérrez

Alicia Gaxiola Nares and Alicia Muñoz Silva

Citlalli Dominguez Martinez and César Omar Ramírez Samaniego

Thanks to the WCS Mexico blog for all of the updates!

Cynthia Olvera Monterrubio and Abigail Mascherpa García were selected to represent Mexico at WCS 2011!

From a series of 20 performances at TNT Expo their presentation of Hana Fuda was eerie and violent. The music selection and use of a screen behind did an excellent job of depicting Okama's unique method of drawing manga. You can watch the video here. Thank you Mario and Paula for all of your hard work, plus the video and once again congratulations to Rina and Maskerpa!

Thanks to the team at JBC Brazil we have pictures and introductions of the teams that competed in the WCS Brazil regional at Sana Fest in Fortaleza, Ceara last month. Seven teams took part in the competition and you can see all seven groups below.

1st- Paulo Roberto Lacerda and Mara Suely Lacerda (Winning team, will move on to final)

2nd- Amanda Maria Oliveira and Schynnider Gomes Ferreira

3rd- Luana Brasil Texeira and Rafel Vieira Moura

4th- Francisca Roberta Barros and Emilio Thalles Rocha

5th- Luana Frota de Andrade and Francisco Antônio Teixeira

6th- Humberto Meireles and Marianna Maia

7th- Marcelo Bruno de Almeida and Lorena Brenda Santos

Besides the cosplay tournament, the Sana Fest had workshops, voice actors' lectures, a video games area, dealer booths, tokusatsu room and a performance by Japanese singer Yumi Matsuzaka.

Brazil's finals will take place at Festival do Japão (Japan Festival), the biggest event of Japanese culture in Brazil, for the second consecutive year. The festival takes place between 15th and 17th of July.

I hope I got the order correct, if not let me know in the comments below!

The web page is pretty much the same structure as 2010 but the contents is focused on WCS 2010 coming up this summer. Here is the English top page.

Its got a slick image intro of the teams that have been selected until now including Australia, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, Korea, Mexico and Spain. It looks like the images might be in 3D so you can try out your new 3D glasses. (joking)

You can access the profile information for each team and this information will increase as representatives are selected.

You can find links at the top of the page for the facebook, youtube and twitter feed. Keep an eye out for a Deviant Art link up there soon.

Along the side near the bottom you can see a link for all previous web pages except for 2003 when there really wasn't a web page. The page has a history for the event at the bottom so check that out too.

This year's top page is SNSed out so there are multiple ways to keep in contact regardless of how far away you may be from Japan!

The application for 'Anime 2011' - largest Japanese pop culture event in Holland - has been accepted for participation at WCS 2011! Expect orange clad supporters amongst the crowds watching the championships and supporting the team to be selected in May.

You can check out the Anime 2011 web page here. Most of it (all of it?) is in English so easy to navigate at least for you if you are reading this.

An interesting piece of trivia is that Holland is the first country to join the WCS family that was introduced via a social networking site - namely facebook. It just goes to show that not only cosplayers are ultra-cyberculturists but event organizers too are keeping up with the times.

Anime 2011 already has information on the WCS up on their site so stop by for a visit!