--From being a cosplayers and photographer, I have had many strange situations with normal people while out and about in cosplay. Most of this list is from personal experience from staffing Anime conventions as a Medic/security, the numerous events I have been too around the world. And some tid bits from the many interviews I have done for my cosplay documentary.


-Top 20 Things I have learned from Cosplaying. The good the bad and the ugly.

1. Do not cosplay a Tokyo Police Officer and expect the local police to be happy. (I got arrested but that’s another story)

2. When taking photos of Japanese cosplayers always ask or you risk your camera getting smashed.

3. If someone calls the police over your fake cosplay gun, prop or whatever during a photo shoot. When the police show up DO NOT point your fake gun at them and run away.

4. In America thanks to the second Amendment the police are armed to the teeth. They do not know a Solid Snake cosplayers is not a terrorist. Note: Please see next number

5. The American constitution Second Amendment (The right to bear arms) is in place just in case the King of England tries to invade America once more. Foreign cosplayers please take note. (bad joke but its relevant *wink*)

6. Its impolite to buy things while in cosplay at Comic Market (Comiket)

7. Cosplaying is not free at most Japanese conventions many times you have to pay a small fee.

8. No amount of alcohol will erase the image of Sailor Buba from your mind

9. Crowded trains are even more odd and interesting while in cosplay

10. Showing up to Comic Market in cosplay is against the rule and you will be turned away.

11. Hailing a Taxi in Paris is hard while in cosplay (Got this one from the KOEI cosplayers last weekend)

12. Haveing to explain to American customs what all your cosplays are while traveling is interesting to say the least.

13. Excess Camera gear and electronics in your carry on from Akiba will single you out for extra security screening at the airport.

14. A 100-foot start running glomp never ends well. It may cause serious bodily harm to the glompee.

15. Eating three boxes of Pokey is no substitute for a real meal

16. Drinking while in cosplay may cause you to be embarrassed once the pictures go online.

17. Drunken cosplayers are always more fun to treat in a medical emergency. It raises some interesting questions by paramedics while you are loading them into the Ambulance.

18. People who hate cosplayers hate them self’s

19. Its international law that Cosplay masquerades must never start or end on time.

20. The Law also goes on to state that each, masquerade must have dancing robots, many scantily clad girls, no fewer than 20 Naruto cosplayers and excessive fan service.

Well thats all I can think of right now. Feel free to add your own. Let’s see how big we can make the list.

The ones about being drunk made me LOL.

Here go my problems with norms [and children]
- a small child poking my belt when i was in causal roxas, i scared the shizz out of her when i turned around and had HUUGGEEE spikes ^^;

- When i was in a were wolf costume [halloween] a group of lads were following me shouting ''OI OI WOLFYYYY'' and making cat calls for ages

- On a train to london, we had tifa, sephy, yuffie [me] and cloud, and when it got crouded, we gave up our seets, and this woman wouldnt go near me or sephy. xD

- Never put a keyblade in a non big car.

- Police think people with huge spikes in there hair are funny and should be watched

- The noodle people at excel think that girls with no binding are boys cause they have short hair.

I couldd go on forever, but there just a few of mine

Usually, when out with cosplayers, car crashes tend to occur because people are too busy watching us than the road.

Also, I've caught people wondering if a pure white wig was real or not.

Yea when I was Optimus Prime I nearly cause a crash in the car park of the ExCel walking in.

OK, after Midlands expo hanging around Birmingham:

Chav: I wanna see your eye
Me: Ok, isnt is beautiful /sarcasm
Chav: Yeah, I wanna put my **** in your eye.
Me: I wouldnt, you'd get eye goo.

That was such an odd night. And very odd...eye experience.

I was wearing my red contact lens.

The same night some guys were gonna start on us and their girlfriends just told them to back off, and started being really nice to us, and at the end we had to give them some "fingers"

Which involved wiggling ones fingers by theirs.

They also wanted photos of our eyes. That one has happened to me a lot. Also happened at Memorabilia recently, with my Gin eyes.

On Halloween I re-did my Yuki cosplay, and we had some Australians take our picture saying it was nice to see people dressed up. They said we could be Australian.

At Amecon 08 whilst walking back in our FF10 group, a chav by Asda started shouting BLITZBALL at us.

Anymore I will add later xD

-What does BLITZBALL mean? I dont know all the British Slang yet.

-Halloween yet another excuse to cosplay and get free candy door to door.

Blitzball was the main mini-game you played in Final Fantasy 10. The chav must have recognised the characters they were cosplaying.

Ive only had a single experience with 'norms' while in cosplay. I wore my old Roxas cosplay once to a local Rock/Metal night and had a few people who would come and chat to me, recognising the outfit.
I couldnt exactly say norms, as all these punk/goth types are pretty much unfazed by cosplay, probably understand it as a differant style, so you dont get the silly comments/reactions youd get from chavs/regular folks.

while walking to Amecon this year I may have caused several road accidents. Funny that! (it's strange what a LeBlanc costume will do...)

That doesn't surprise me in the least LOL

I've had a few!

On my way to the Naruto DVD launch in London, a group of Japanese tourists shouted "ERO-SENNIN!" when I was in my Jiraiya costume and there were a few giggling girls LOL It was kinda cute!

The best one ever was when Elsa and I were driving to Telford (Midlands MCM) in our Orochimaru and Jiraiya costumes...one man at a junction seriously almost crashed, he stared as he went past and starting leaning into the wrong lane o_O

Was funny as hell though! Oh, and at one point Elsa and I pulled up to a red light and we were headbanging to...I'm not sure, might have been Cradle of Filth or Deathstars...but the people in the car next to us were WELL freaked out LOL

If cosplay ever had a practical purpose, this is it! xD

Not really cosplay related but still odd yet funny.

When I lived in Japan, I was coming out of Mc Donald’s and a bunch of Japanese schoolgirls getting off a bus swarmed me. It was like something out of a cheap 80’s rock movie.

They kept calling me Elvis and Cowboy San. I guess it is the first time they seen an American.

Very true that.

And I would have loved to see that happen Sean, the fact its in a car just seems to make it better.

I Suppose the weridest time was the first time when i cosplayed at a recon in plymouth when i did Bayukya Kukchi from bleach i had so many people staring at me and my friend who was also cosplaying

i havent had any bad experiances with the normal folk who dont understand but i guess you would get some werid reactions out of people

I'll never forget when we were out in Trafalgar square and Ryaoki (back when he was a wee noobie cosplayer) got mobbed by about 100 Italian students wanting to have their picture taken with 'Kakashi Sensei'.

Traflagar Square is where all the tourists go to celeb spot because its where all the big premiere's are, so a load of girls screaming and waving their cameras drew quite a crowd and in the middle of it was Reece, bright red above his Kakashi mask XD

LOL It was pretty epic! And BTW Jiraiya wig = BEST HAIR TO MOSH WITH EVER!

Plus Elsa had put her makeup on before we got in the car, so she was paler than a ghost...LOL

I know someone somewhere has pictures of the reaction of norms to cosplays. I have come across a few taking photos, some good and some bad.

Post em here! Should be worth a laugh or two.

*Was the Wakka in the group* Yes, they did! And they didn't say it nastily, we thought they were going to start on us from their body language and suddenly they just shouted out "BLLIIIITZZZBALLL" gleefully!

LOL, I asked one of the girls if she was having a good night and she just gave her boyfriend evils and went "NOT. REALLY." haha.

That same evening some emo/scene kid told me he loved my hair ...which was quite an obvious wig. Oh emos. Tee hee!

At one cosplay event as Kaidoh (snakey tenipuri boy) I was chatting away with this one Kikumaru cosplayer and mid way through they stopped me and went "ARE YOU A BOY?", LOL!!! I was so happy haha!

And so far my very best cosplay experience with a non cosplayer was... the little boy who ran up to me out of nowhere and wanted a photo together with me as Kaidoh because he was his favourite character!! I was so honoured, I could cry! We both did a snakey pose and hissed!! Fshhh!!!! Thank you little boy, wherever you are!

My favourite experience was catching the train to go to Expo while me and Nocturnal were in our Battle Royale costumes. Covered in blood, with weapons wrapped in bin bags (just so we didn't get arrested!) on a Sunday morning. Yeah... it was interesting.

Hehe, we had to walk past a church and they all gave us the most bizzare looks, and when we got on the train and wandered through the station and whatnot everyone just avoided us like the plague - though some took a look at my contacts, made a noise of 'ugh!' and quickly hurried away. I actually felt pretty bad and tried to keep looking at the floor so I didn't scare anybody. There was a woman who came on the train with a pram full of 3 kids or something and had another two hanging off her arm, she took one look at us both, said "Oh God" and quickly hurried through to the next carriage. ^^;

THough one guy was really nice, we were sitting on the underground just chatting and he was sitting nearby, he then scootched over and asked us if we were going to some sort of comic-book event. It was really nice and we had a good chat, explaining about Expo and everything and who we were cosplaying and whatnot, and he was really intrested. He even took a photo on his phone and said that his mates would never believe what he saw on the train that morning. It was really funny. ^^

I think this applies to any cosplayers haha! I mean, it's only polite to ask for a photo, right?

In Japan at conventions-

The Japanese are very fussy about pictures. There are only two places at Comic Market where you are allowed to take pictures of Cosplayers. If you are, a photographer in the picture area one of the rules is you must ask first. Even in the picture area, the cosplayers can still say no to the picture.

Like I said....It's polite to ask, and it's fine if they say no, it's their choice to make. Asking seems obvious to me but hey ho

I always ask before taking a picture, even when I am doing a candid shot, I will ask before taking the picture. I once fallowed a Bunny Girl around taking candid shots with her permission before hand.

People will respect you more asking then if you dont.

Ahaha I love these xD

I havent got any interesting ones... Asides having Japanese tourists take photos of me in my Marluxia costume xD

While in Tokyo I got stoped by a Japanese person for a photo. I was not even in cosplay or any thing, he just wanted a photo with an American.

I got that too - I visited Yoyogi park with a couple of friends, then wandered out into Harajuku, and got all these photographers asking me for pictures. Very strange.