France

JAPAN EXPO, Europe's biggest Japanese culture festival, was held in 2011 as well as in the previous years to introduce a wide array of current popular and traditional cultures of Japan. On the final day the WCS2011 France Final Preliminary Round was held on the main stage of the exhibition hall. Thirteen teams participated, who were all strong competitors from the country boasting the second largest consumption of manga comic books after Japan.

The participants made presentations for costume review on another stage, and then ten out of them made final performances in the main hall.
All the participants used large and small props very well just as in the original works, and their performances including quick costume changes and pole dances using spears like in Kabuki and oriental dances using veils made us feel as if we were seeing spectacular films.
The pair who won the last year's championship attended this contest as special judges. They joined in another cosplay contest in a group setting, showed line dancing steps dazzling enough to outshine those of professional dancers, and took second place, from which you can tell how high a degree of skill they have attained.
This contest trended toward playing characters in manga comics rather than in games and characters in gothic works rather than in fantasies. Black Butler (Kuroshitsuji) was a good example. Another distinct feature was that many performers chose works using vampires for their subjects, such as Vampire Hunter D and Trinity Blood.
The team by the name of Shibeez who played the characters of Sen-hime and Kimikiku in Hakuouki Shinsengumi Kitan chose Japanese music for BGM, which impressed us with the difference from danceable Western music that the other teams chose. More and more of such Otome Games or Maiden Games have been adapted to stage production and other media in Japan, and we realized that they are coming to the fore.

The winner was Ayalaure, a team who played the characters of Clarissa and Mizeria in Doors of Chaos (Grenzen Tur), unique manga reverse-imported from North America. It was a theatrical performance based on the story that twin sisters were swallowed by a large door and torn apart into the two sides of the door. We can say that this pair's performance has thoroughly expressed the image of this comic's world.
Generally it was amazing to see the cosplays of so many games and manga produced in Japan spread out all over the world, overcoming linguistic barriers.

We will look forward to seeing the wonderful performance of the French team again at the World Cosplay Summit Championship in Japan.

The original works and characters by teams are as follows (in the order of their performances)