J!-ENT's Cosplay Underground is Back!

Check back on J!-ENT's Cosplay Underground for J!-ENT's Nergene Arquelada's cosplay special pictorial book series. Series 001 is now available. Download the first book here!

2004 Update:

Cosplay Underground is a one-year project site which started back in 2002 while visiting a friend who was a special guest at Fanime 2003. I was amazed to see how much anime cons have grown within the last decade and how the attendance has shifted from a dozen cosplayers to almost 80% cosplayers to 20% normal attendees as it would seem. Back then, cosplayers were around a dozen (as you can see from our old school cosplay photos below) but things have changed a lot since then.

So, I decided for a side-project for the nt2099/J!-ENT website to learn more about these cosplayers, why they do it and to interview these cosplayers to benefit those who are curious about them, for those who want to learn from them and for those who want to be like them. While many photos concentrate on the craft, I wanted to tweak the photos and give them an artsy, dreamy or even a dark and twisted look. Also, challenge myself in tweaking the photos in the quickest amount of time possible.

In less than a year, this project site has been featured on several publications with favorable reviews from magazines such as Newtype USA, has spun off a party called ANI-JAM 2003 and introduced myself and our Cosplay Underground staff to a lot of cool people who we are very grateful to have as friends.

I would like to take the time to thank the many cosplayers who have given us the opportunity to take their pictures, the cosplayers we interviewed for giving us the opportunity to know about them through our interviews and also for the people who enjoyed our trippy photo gallery.

- Dennis A. Amith, nt2099/J!-ENT

Cosplay Photographers in Japan

How crazy can it get for female cosplayers at Comike? Click on the above photo for a larger version.

What Newtype USA had to say about
Cosplay Underground:

"Go to the site! Click on the center links and you will be directed to convention cosplay photos. Tantalizing thumbnails of wicked cosplayer photos will entice you to view the full images. Funky things have been done to the original images to give them a dreamy, sultry Alice in Wonderland feel. Viewers will not be disappointed! If you see a cutie cosplayer and want to get inside their head, view the enlightening interviews! Many questions that are presented to the cosplayer are wacky and atypical. There are tons of other links (a few websites are in other languages) to cosplay websites that will certainly satisfy a fan's appetite for everything cosplay." - Newtype USA, December 2002, December issue.