The Hsinchu County government is planning to hold a national cosplay competition to select contestants to represent Taiwan at the nation’s inaugural World Cosplay Summit later this year.
The national event will consist of several competitions in different categories, the winners of which will travel to Nagoya, Japan, to represent Taiwan at the world-level summit in August.
This year’s world summit will be the first time Taiwanese will have a shot at becoming the cosplay world champions, following the nation’s admission into the summit after a rigorous two-year membership approval process.
Photo: Wang Chun-chieh, Taipei Times
The national competition is to take place during the Taiwan Super cosplay Festival in Hsinchu next weekend. The county is hosting the festival as part of its “Taiwan Comics Dream Park” project and the event is to be held at venues in the cities and towns located alongside Hsinchu’s Neiwan (內灣) Mountain Railroad.
Cosplay is a popular hobby among young Taiwanese and involves practitioners, known as “cosers,” dressing up as their favorite characters from cartoons, comic books and science-fiction or fantasy movies.
In recent years, large cosplay events have been organized in conjunction with comic book fairs in major cities, generating big crowds and booming merchandise sales.
Taiwan Cosplay Promotion Association chairman Chen Hung-ming (陳宏名) said that several international coser stars from Japan, South Korea and elsewhere are to attend various events at the Hsinchu festival.
“At most cosplay events, play-acting is kept to a minimum, but at the national competition, the rules will be different. Contestants will be required to sign up as a duo and must present their characters through an interaction lasting 2 minutes and 30 seconds,” Chen said.
He added that a panel of judges will score the cosers based on stage presence, costume and make-up, role play, fluency of action and entertainment effect, among other things.
The first stage of the competition will be preliminary rounds held at a local level, after which 60 pairs of contestants will advance to the national finals.
The winners of the final round will receive financial support to attend the World Cosplay Summit in Japan.
On Saturday, a cosplay parade featuring many colorful fantasy characters is to be held in front of the Neiwan Railway Station in Hsinchu, Chen said.
On May 10, a romantic cosplay party is to be held at the county’s Hohsing (合興) Railway Station and a day later, the festival’s main event and the national finals will be held at the Hsinchu County Culture Bureau’s Art Exhibition Hall in Jhubei City (竹北), he added.
Beijing could eventually see a full amphibious invasion of Taiwan as the only "prudent" way to bring about unification, the US Department of Defense said in a newly released annual report to Congress. The Pentagon's "Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People's Republic of China 2025," was in many ways similar to last year’s report but reorganized the analysis of the options China has to take over Taiwan. Generally, according to the report, Chinese leaders view the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) capabilities for a Taiwan campaign as improving, but they remain uncertain about its readiness to successfully seize
Taiwan is getting a day off on Christmas for the first time in 25 years. The change comes after opposition parties passed a law earlier this year to add or restore five public holidays, including Constitution Day, which falls on today, Dec. 25. The day marks the 1947 adoption of the constitution of the Republic of China, as the government in Taipei is formally known. Back then the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) governed China from Nanjing. When the KMT, now an opposition party in Taiwan, passed the legislation on holidays, it said that they would help “commemorate the history of national development.” That
Taiwan has overtaken South Korea this year in per capita income for the first time in 23 years, IMF data showed. Per capita income is a nation’s GDP divided by the total population, used to compare average wealth levels across countries. Taiwan also beat Japan this year on per capita income, after surpassing it for the first time last year, US magazine Newsweek reported yesterday. Across Asia, Taiwan ranked fourth for per capita income at US$37,827 this year due to sustained economic growth, the report said. In the top three spots were Singapore, Macau and Hong Kong, it said. South
Snow fell on Yushan (Jade Mountain, 玉山) yesterday morning as a continental cold air mass sent temperatures below freezing on Taiwan’s tallest peak, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Snowflakes were seen on Yushan’s north peak from 6:28am to 6:38am, but they did not fully cover the ground and no accumulation was recorded, the CWA said. As of 7:42am, the lowest temperature recorded across Taiwan was minus-5.5°C at Yushan’s Fengkou observatory and minus-4.7°C at the Yushan observatory, CWA data showed. On Hehuanshan (合歡山) in Nantou County, a low of 1.3°C was recorded at 6:39pm, when ice pellets fell at Songsyue Lodge (松雪樓), a
RSS