Denmark
Of the four Nordic countries, Denmark is located furthest south
At the beginning of November, it rains a lot and the wind blows, but the temperature is still around 13 degrees on fine days. The downtown area of the capital, Copenhagen, was crowded almost everyday. Christmas lights were already up all over the place, and there was a big Christmas tree in the department store. People were buying candles and ornaments for the trees in the shops. The timing is good to hold an event at this time of year because the temperature will drop to below minus when winter truly arrives.
The World Cosplay Summit 2009 Danish preliminary contest was held as part of the “J-Popcon 2008” event for 3 days from 7-9 November. About 3,000 young cosplayers visited the venue in Copenhagen in the costumes of characters from Japanese anime and manga such as Chobits and Naruto. It was exciting all day in the venue. There was a sales corner with anime goods and manga and so on, a demo corner producing anime using computer graphics, and a karaoke contest in Japanese. According to the sponsor’s representative, Adrian, more and more people have participated every year since the year 2000 when the event began, and this year also sold out. He said happily that it will be necessary to get a bigger place next year.
The main event, the World Cosplay Summit 2009 Danish preliminary contest, was held in an event hall in Copenhagen on Sunday the 9th. Forty-five teams entered the Cosplay contest and gave enthusiastic performances. Fifteen teams among them went to the World Cosplay Summit preliminary contest.
Let me tell you about some of the teams that impressed me………
- Entry No. 5: White Chi and Black Chi from Chobits
- Entry No. 12: Reinforce & Hayate Yagami from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha
- Entry No. 13: Suzaku Kururugi & Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass
- Entry No. 18: Kimihiro Watanuki & Ichihara Yuko from XXXHOLiC
- Entry No. 19: Sylphiel Nels Lahda & Lina Inverse from Slayers
- Entry No. 27: C.C. & Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass: R2
- Entry No. 36: Sailor Moon & Tuxedo Mask from Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon
The audience applauded their cute costumes and synchronized dancing. They expressed how much they love cosplay.
This was a dramatic performance, with Hayate appearing in a wheelchair and Reinforce helping to get him up. There was a great shift from calmness to action.
They captivated the audience with their exotic make-up, one of them in a black costume and the other in gold. You could probably say this was typical, but they overwhelmed people by making their own world.
Their costumes were gorgeous and their performance, which had many gismos, had a sense of speed. There were gismos all over the stage, and we were really excited as we wondered what would appear next.
They dealt with a panel doll of Gourry Gabriev between the two of them, and made this comical. The audience was smiling and there was a warm atmosphere.
Their performance had stormy action and put together with their costume changes, a real sense of rhythm. They led us into a real anime world through their actions, which identified with the characters.
Sailor Moon stood up with the help of Tuxedo Mask. The world of the story was reenacted well, but Sailor Moon stood out too much, and their performance became one of a leading part and a supporting character rather than a dual performance, which was a shame.
The judges were World Cosplay Summit 2008 American representative Rene, 2007 German representative Anna, charismatic cosplayer Karen, and 4 TV Aichi staff. After all performances had finished, they energetically debated the perfection of the costumes and level of characterization of each team in both Japanese and English in the judging room.
The team chosen to be Danish representatives for the prestigious World Cosplay Summit 2009 was the team of Ida Kirkegaard as Reinforce and Sigge Tine Ludvigsen as Hayate Yagami from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. Their powerful performance and gorgeous costume changes got the whole venue excited. The two of them like Japan and they are studying Japanese. They are very happy to be able to come to Nagoya next summer.
WCS