The skeleton warriors briefly stumbled backward but kept lumbering toward 23-year-old Zhao Jing as she blasted them with two oversized six-shooters in a battle set to pounding music.
Fantasy and reality blur at ChinaJoy, the country s largest annual video game exhibition, as teams of dozens of young people re-enact favorite video games and Japanese manga and anime cartoons on a game-show-like stage.
It began in Japan, but Cosplay, short for costume role-playing, is a growing phenomenon in China with more than 20,000 people entering competitions this year, according to ChinaJoy, organizers of the national championships.
Zhao s 36-member team from the eastern city of Hangzhou rehearsed three to five hours daily for months perfecting their 12-minute performance of Soul of the Ultimate Nation.
I can t take a stable, full-time job, Zhao said, explaining the degree of her commitment after seven years of competing in Cosplay tournaments from March to August.
Her effort earned her the chance to represent China last year at the World Cosplay Summit international championships in Aichi, Japan, where her team was placed second among 14 national teams.
This year s world championships kicked off yesterday in Aichi.
National champions win 10,000 yuan (about $1,450) while the top international team wins 100,000 yen ($1,050), according to ChinaJoy. The number of national-level competitors rose to 1,000 this year from 600 last year.
Other girls like going to bars at night or shopping… what makes me happy is watching cartoons and playing the characters I like on stage, Zhao said.
But she is far from being the only girl to feel that way. At last week s ChinaJoy tournament female contestants easily outnumbered males. More than half of Zhao s team was female – many playing zombies and skeletons.
Backstage by a mirror and rainbow palettes of makeup, Tian Jing, a 22-year-old arts student from Shaanxi province, said not all her girl friends see the appeal of Cosplay, as she waited for help with her blue wig.
They think it s a waste of time and money, she said, laughing. I tell them you can learn a lot in the process such as patience and how to make things.
Part of Cosplay is choosing your character and then studying the clothes, accessories and mannerisms in minute detail. Each team member creates his or her own finely detailed costume and props, which often match film studio quality.
It s about making a dream world come to life, said Zhang Li, a 23-year-old librarian from Nanjing, who was dressed as a goddess with her hair up behind a fan-like tiara.
I ve gotten addicted to it.
She has competed for five years but until last year kept it a secret from her parents, who are teachers and very strict. But then she teamed up with Zhao and won the Chinese championships and needed their permission to go to Japan.
That s how they found out I do Cosplay. They got angry, she said.
But they were pleased when I came second. Now they allow it as long as it doesn t disrupt my life, she said, before stepping on stage to magically repel sword blows with her bare hands.
In competitions, teams, which can range from one or two people to 100 are judged above all on their costumes, but secondly on props, choreography and audience reaction.
Cosplay resonates in China because the pressure to perform in school means childhoods are often deferred, said Sun Yunwei, a Cosplay judge and an executive with Shanghai Digital Content, an industry promotion agency.
It has to do with our education system. As junior and high school students they don t have time to develop these interests even though they are very interested, Sun said.
When they go to college, every university has an anime club so then university students can invest time and effort and money into it.
