"Heroes of Cosplay": Final Thoughts

Jinyo was my favorite cast member,
and he wasn't even officially a cast member.

It was really difficult for me to not post about every single episode, because every episode brought up new topics and points of interest. I stand by the points that I made in my first post about the show, it's still a pretty accurate portrayal of the cosplay community, or at least the darker side of it. I do wish that the show highlighted the more enjoyable aspects of it, of course namely the actual craftsmanship and the comradery. I imagine it would be near impossible to show how easy it can be to talk to new people at conventions with the cameras everywhere and the legal side of things (having to have everyone on-camera sign a waiver), but that would have been cool to see too.

As for the people on the show, I'm going to try not to go on too long about them. They did not come across as good people, except during their backpedaling at the end. Of course a lot of that could be the editing, but editing can't put words directly in people's mouths, they definitely said some unkind things. That said, we all occasionally say mean things, especially when we're upset, but a majority of people make up for it either directly by apologizing or indirectly by being good people otherwise. It's very possible that a majority of the cast's good moments and good qualities were edited out. Ultimately, because I don't know the people on the show and have never interacted with a single one of them in my life, I'm completely indifferent to them.

All of that said, "Heroes of Cosplay" taught me some things, both about cosplay and about life in general:

• If these knuckleheads can crank out those amazing things in a week, I can do something better in several months.
• Procrastination never pays off.
• Communication is key, they showed us how easily things can be taken out of context.
• Cosplay competitions are not as scary as they seem. Again, if these knuckleheads can do it...
• Don't let yourself take advantage of people who care about you.

I'm sure there's more, but that's just off the top of my head. For any non-cosplayers that bothered enough to watch to the end, it did wrap-up with a good message, "Cosplaying is for fun, and it's for everybody." It's pretty obvious that this was some backpedaling damage-control, but it's true nonetheless. In a perfect world, that's what people would take away from the show, but of course it's not. The takeaway is that the (competitive) cosplay world is a ruthless, cutthroat community that's ready to tear apart anyone that doesn't fit into the ideal of a "good cosplayer". In some cases that's true, but it's not the norm, and hopefully the show won't scare away too many new cosplayers.

Again though, I do stand by what I said in my first post, if anything, this show has brought the existing cosplay community closer together under the premise of, "Well at least we're not like that."