Skylerwalker wrote: ↑24 Feb 2025, 20:06also really need to split the competitions between children and adults, it’s all cute to crown a child a winner because they were brave and went on stage but this is then unfair once again to actual cosplayers who spend months upon months and piles of money to make their costume only for a child to win simply because they are a child, most of those children don’t even want to enter the championships while those of us who actually cosplay do but won’t ever get that chance. You either need to have two separate competitions one for adults and one for kids or you need to have separate winners for each category ie one for performance and one for craftsmanship or you need to allow everyone an equal opportunity to actually win, I truly believe that anime league conventions can be very good and fun but there needs to be more thoughtfulness and organisation put into these events, particularly the more bigger and busier ones such as London, tho the cosplay competitions definitely need a complete revamp at all anime league conventions in order to not only be fair to everyone but also to stand on par with cosplay competitions at other conventions across the UK.
Hi there! Thanks for your feedback. Honestly yes, Saturday with the overcrowding for context from staff point of view the crowd was flowing normally as we expected and for the first time in ages something unexpected happen and a huge number of attendees just turned up at once at 1pm and thats when it happened and we were too late to act fast on the overcrowding. We did the best we can at the time, but we know we could've pre-empted this better and already working on a solution for next time.
Regarding the Cosplay Masquerade, I, myself am usually there for running the Cosplay and judging as I do understand your point of view I don't agree just because it is a young person who is there just to get on stage should win. Personally, on Saturday I let the rest of the Stage team run it as I was busy sorting something else out that needed my attention more. I will speak to the Stage team on who won and why those decisions were made as I know the judges for London do usually do pre-judging so a costume may look store bought but it may of actually been handmade.
The reason for choosing your own music and others having generic which we have done for many years. If you sign up online that means you are planning far ahead for the Masquerade and it does take time to download music and is more for timing issues. I can look at refining this in the future, but from a personal stand point on how I personally judge cosplays it comes down to three points:
1. Was the costume handmade (boost in points)
2. Was the performance good
3. Audience interaction
I always stand by if you have handmade a cosplay and you are on stage for 5 seconds at most that is not helpful. You need to be on stage for a reasonable amount of time even if you don't have your own choice of music.
Again I will speak to the stage team and get more information on their decisions for the Saturday Masquerade as personally I wasn't there and speak to them to how we can moderize the masquerade as I do agree we do need to change it. We have been thinking of adding a separate prize just for people under the age of 16/18 so we do have a "Well Done young cosplayer prize" so to speak.
Really do appreciate your feedback and will take it on board. Any of suggestions you can speak to me here or on Discord which my ID is @LikkleMel
