After a three-year hiatus, the cosplayers are back at Japan’s largest summertime otaku celebration.

For decades, Comiket, Japan’s biggest gathering of interpedently produced manga/anime art creators and fans, was the highlight of every summer for otaku in Japan. Unfortunately, a scheduling conflict with the Tokyo Olympics in 2020 meant that year’s summer Comiket was bumped up to the spring, only for the start of widespread coronavirus infections in Japan to cause the event to be cancelled entirely.

With the pandemic continuing, the organizers didn’t ever try to hold a Comiket in the summer of 2021, but last weekend, for the first summer since 2019, Comiket returned to the Tokyo Big Sight convention center.

Despite the first day of the event coinciding with a typhoon passing through Tokyo, roughly 10,000 doujinshi circles (as the artist groups are called) and some 85,000 attendees showed up on Saturday. Comiket isn’t just a comics marketplace, though, but also Japan’s highest-profile cosplay venue, and here are the most impressive cosplayers we spotted on Day 1.

As the first summer Comiket since the start the debut of the Spy x Family anime, as well as its source-material manga, we fully expected to see characters from the heartwarming espionage series at Big Sight.

▼ Spy x Family’s Yor Forger (cosplayer Emilia Sakurai)

With precocious esper Anya stealing just about every scene she’s in, the youngest member of the series familial unit was also in the cosplay crowd, along with her stuck-up classmate Damian.

▼ Anya (Chayao)

▼ Damian (Rena)

This was also the first Comiket since the premiere of the My Dress-Up Darling anime, a series that is itself about an aspiring cosplayer, meaning we saw cosplayers cosplaying as a character who cosplays as other characters.

▼ Marin Kitagawa (Nittatanichi)

With so many people having lived a heavily stay-home lifestyle since the start of the pandemic, it’s understandable that there’s been a surge in popularity of virtual YouTubers. Looking around the venue, we could see that VTuber cosplay is now firmly established as a pillar of the hobby, alongside anime and video game characters.

▼ Lilyel (Hina)

▼ Sara Hoshikawa (Kirino)

▼ Koyori Hakui (Mellda)

▼ Sakura Miko (TaKaNa)

Heading back to anime characters, there’s a risk inherent with dressing as a member of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure cast, as it’s inevitable that someone will eventually ask where your Stand is, as the series’ supernatural companion entities are called. If you don’t have a cosplay partner willing to dress up for a team effort, this is probably the best alternative.

▼ Rohan Kishibe (Ruya) and his Stand Heaven’s Door (an illustration)

On the video game side of things, we saw continued interest in some of the most cosplay-friendly franchises.

▼ Fate/Grand Order’s Ereshkigal (Rutapi)

▼ Genshin Impact’s Yae Miko (Sakiccho)

▼ Princess Connect! Re:Dive’s Pecorine (Amakami Mochi)

▼ Kusari’s Akeno Orihara (U-chan)

And last, evergreen hits don’t get much more enduringly green than One Piece, so of course we encountered a member of the Straw Hat Pirates.

▼ Boa Hancock (Kotsuha-chan)

On a side note, thanks to the way Comiket numbers its iterations, last weekend was officially Comiket 100, and while not everything is completely back to normal just yet for the event, at least the cosplay felt just like old times again.

Photos ©SoraNews24
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