VIDEO: ‘Growing up is optional’ as sci-fi enthusiasts take over UCC

The young man in a blue morph suit with a squid on his head was eager to discuss the pros and cons of his outfit.

“I’m a character called Inkling from the Nintendo Wii game Splattoon,” Oliver Bygrave, an 18-year-old student from the University of Norwich, said.

“I like my costume, but sometimes it’s hard to see, and I can’t eat in it.”

Welcome to KaizokuCon, Cork’s largest convention for Japanese animation, manga, and culture, which drew a record crowd of sci-fi, fantasy and gaming fans in UCC over the weekend.

Harry Potters mingled with Jedi knights, Pikachus with fairy princesses, on campus as fans of Cosplay (an abbreviation of costume play) aged from four to over 40 used the event organised by members of the UCC Science Fiction Society as an excuse to dress up in colourful, inventive, and outlandish outfits.

Adrian O’Grady was this year’s KaizokuCon director. “I’ve been going to conventions for a long time,” he said. “I go to Eirtakon in Dublin, but we didn’t have anything in Cork. It’s great that KaizokuCon is growing so fast. This year there have been well over 1,000 attendees, which makes it our biggest year yet.

“We’re all-inclusive. Some teenagers with these interests are branded as nerds and end up bullied and can’t connect; Cons give them an opportunity to find people of the same interest.”

“Yes, this is nerd culture,” said Graham O’Halloran, staff co-ordinator for the event. “In fairness it is, what can I say? Nerd culture has been on the upswing for a decade or more; Video games are now the cultural zeitgeist and there’s a growing demand for what we do.”

For commerce student Philip Gusovski it was a chance to let his hair down — chest hair that is.

“This is the time when I’m least shy,” he said, dressed as a bare-chested Warboy from Mad Max: Fury Road.

He shivered a little, goosebumps breaking out under his white body paint as he joked with other cosplayers in the courtyard of the Boole basement, where the weather was sunny but perhaps a little cold for a desert-dwelling Warboy.

Emer McCarthy, 22, from Kildare, got into anime through a boyfriend. She was dressed as a character called Happy from anime series Fairy Tail, complete with curly blue wig.

“Growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional,” she said. “Yeah, be like Emer and do what makes you ‘Happy’.”

Maria McKenna, 19, wearing a bubblegum-pink wig, chipped in. Maria and her sister Lisa travelled eight hours from Belfast, where Lisa is the secretary of the University of Ulster’s cosplay society, to attend KaizokuCon.

A packed programme of events included decidedly quirky offerings such as a “crappy robot competition”, where people bring their own deliberately bad robotic designs to duel it out in an arena, and panel discussions on everything from Japanese Mythology to LGBT Representation in Nerd Culture.

The Korean-inspired “Puppy Party”, where tired cosplayers could have a cup of coffee and cuddle a puppy at the same time, proved so popular that the queue stretched down the hall and out into the courtyard.

Also causing queues was a signing by American voice actress Cherami Leigh, who has provided voices for English-language versions of many popular Japanese anime series such as Fairy Tail and Bamboo Blade.

“This is my first visit to Ireland and it’s very exciting,” she said. “KaizokuCon is amazing; I’ve almost never met staff so welcoming and loving, and the attendees are lovely too. I do some really big Cons and this one would be middle-sized but energy-wise, it feels absolutely massive.”