"I've spent my entire life doing nothing but collecting comic books... and now there's only time to say... LIFE WELL SPENT! "
Posted on 10/10/2014 4:58:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Dressing up like Wolverine or Cersei Lannister is probably more fun than scouring the classifieds for menial jobs.
Imagine you're a college graduate stuck in a perpetually lousy economy. That's a problem Japanese twenty-somethings have faced for more than 20 years. Two decades of stagnation after the collapse of the 1980s real-estate and stock bubbles — combined with labor laws making it tough to fire older workers — have relegated vast numbers of Japanese young adults to low-paying, temporary contract jobs. Many find themselves living with their parents well into their twenties and beyond, unmarried and childless.
Then again, they do have plenty of time to dress up like wand-wielding sailor girls and cybernetic alchemist soldiers from the colorful world of anime cartoons and manga comics. Indeed, Japan's Lost Decades have coincided with a major spike in "people escaping to virtual worlds of games, animation, and costume play," Masahiro Yamada, a sociology professor at Chuo University in Tokyo, recently told the Financial Times. "Here, even the young and poor can feel as though they are a hero."
It's hard to blame them. After all, it's not that these young adults in Japan are resisting becoming productive members of the economy — it's that there just aren't enough opportunities for them....
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
O-M-G
Seen some nice ones at the few Dragoncons I’ve been too. There have been some really awful ones too.
2011 was the last one me and my wife went to and I did my best not to waste a shutter click or memory on bad taste.
The Scarlett and Cover Girl ones I’ve seen at DragonCon a time or two before.
http://tysonneil.smugmug.com/Events/Dragoncon-2011/
true. The good news for SK is that the peer pressure and stuff if all in favor of hard work and hard studying.
Silly. If that was Wendy Davis, she would have her pink tennis shoes on.
I don’t agree. There is nothing for people to do that is culturally acceptable to most of these young adults.
they did not grow up in a church culture.
Not the Masons, Elks, Kiwanas either.
they don’t want to spend their time in bars.
Not the Legion.
There is no place really for them. Cosplay is their version of the Legion hall or the bowling team.
Since I know plenty of fine upstanding productively employed folks who enjoy comics and such...I may just have to conclude your opinion is nonsensical.
"I've spent my entire life doing nothing but collecting comic books... and now there's only time to say... LIFE WELL SPENT! "
I preferred CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED, THRILLER with BORIS KARLOFF, and COMBAT. I never cared for superheros although I did like BLACKHAWK, but he wasn’t a superhero.
Yep cosplay will be the death us
Yep cosplay will be the death of us
I looked at the stats in the smugmug gallery and never had a spike like this until I linked that old Dragoncon Gallery.
Some otaku-strength eye bleach now, please.
The nerd community has been dressing up for a long time. There really hasn’t been a rise in cosplay so much as nerd culture has gotten so profitable and large the general public is actually finding out what’s going on.
I know lots of costumers, they run the gamut. Some are rich some are poor, some are libs some are conservatives. The only general statement you can say about costumers that’s true is they wear costumes.
That’s a furrie, that’s different.
They have plenty of places to go. And when they lack one they make one. They make their own clubs, own events. Heck they probably have a stronger community than most of the old “lodge” type places have in years.
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