The Telegraph visits Japan's Choko Group mascot school. "When I see a real hand poking out of the costume's hand, or their mask slips, it's very disappointing…," says school founder Choko Oohira. "I want to show the world how to fully become the character and explain that's how to make children happy." (Thanks, Chris Arkenberg!)

Here's a Reuters video from July showing young Chilean protesters cosplaying superheroes and video-game characters in front of the Chilean government in an all-singing, all-dancing, choreographed amazeballs of a demonstration. The students are protesting against cuts to the education system.

Superheroes protest dance (via Making Light)

Here's Roxy Rot cosplaying the alligator tightrope-walker that appears in the Haunted Mansion's stretch-gallery, one of the iconic comic-horror images of the 20th century. She's perfectly awesome in the role, too. She's dressed up for Bats Day 2011, the annual goth day at Disneyland, which is enormous good fun. She notes, "The corset is from here and the skirt and cape I had help with from my old coworker Joy."

Best cosplay so far: the alligator tightrope walker painting girl from the Haunted Mansion (Thanks, Matthew!)

Firefox cosplay by EnjiNight. See full-res at her Deviant Art site.

I'm at Comic-Con for the Pirate Cinema tour. Here's some highlights from yesterday's brief excursion on the floor:

An Occupy Ankh-Morpork protester at Terry Pratchett's signing for Dodger.

---

Star Trek: TOS bathrobes! (Speaking as a serious loungewear enthusiast, I have this to say: PHWOAR). Available from Amazon and ThinkGeek.

Read the rest

Here's a Monkey Jesus/restored icon cosplayer in full regalia. The identity of the person behind the mask is the source of controversy: it was posted to Reddit by OhioUPilot12, whose description implied that s/he was the creator of the costume. However, when Spinjump posted that this had been her/his Anime Weekend Atlanta costume, OhioUPilot12 backpedaled and claimed that the original description was an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Facebook God gave me a halloween costume idea... (imgur.com)

The internet teaches us that there are many forms of cosplay, and many young women who identify as "human dolls." Some become viral-famous-overnight sensations by posting photos of themselves in unusual or provocative cosplay.

One of them is young Anastasiya Shpagina, who's receiving a lot of attention right now over her striking anime cosplay.

Read the rest

Larger sizes here. Boing Boing reader jojo.edtan's Flickr stream is full of wonderful photographs of cosplayers, and he shared a bunch of great shots from the recent PAX Prime convention in our Boing Boing Flickr pool. Here's a "Game of Thrones" cosplayer, as the character Daenerys Targaryen. I'm afraid we don't know the name of the cosplayer herself, but I'll update the post if/when someone identifies her! More of jojo.edtan's Pax Prime shots here; more Game of Thrones cosplayers at that event here. Check out this one incredible shot of a cosplayer as courtesan Fiora Cavazza, a character from Assassin's Creed 3.

Melissa sez, "Here are some of the best pictures as well as a demonstration video of my custom-made portal gun. I wanted the gun to be as accurate as possible, so I used 3D printed parts that were ripped directly from the game files! After months and months of hard work, I was able to make the gun of my dreams! I took it to Comic-Con, and people loved it! I also met another girl who had the NECA gun, and it's easy to see how some of the details were lost from the game in order to make the NECA gun easier to manufacture."

Awesome Custom-Made NECA Portal Gun (Thanks, Melissa)