Celebrating Black History Month At Katsucon 2016!
The are a number of reasons why Katsucon is the best convention at which to make a video honoring Black History Month by highlighting cosplayers of color. First, it is the first big con of the year on the East Coast. Second, it is always held in Black History Month.
But most importantly, Katsucon is one of the most color blind conventions out there. Perhaps it is because it started out primarily with a focus on anime and manga, but mostly it is because of the beauty of the location. The enormous, greenery filled, glass covered indoor atrium provides almost unlimited numbers of climate controlled photo shoot locations that can look like indoors or outdoors. That draws a herd of cosplay photographers and so tons of cosplayers bring out their best costumes.
When you add in the fact that Katsucon has been one of the qualifier cons to determine the USA team competing in the World Cosplay Summit, it means the focus is almost completely on the costume and not the person wearing it. If there is any kind of discrimination at Katsucon, it might be costume quality, not racial. You are more likely to hear “Oh, you didn’t hand bead all that bead work? Tsk,tsk” than “Oh, you shoudn’t cosplay that character, she’s not black.”
So it should come as no surprise that we have a great sampler of the black cosplayers at Katsucon this year, in both a cosplay music video shot by me (shout out to our new video intern Tyler for his excellent editing help), and a photo gallery from Luis, Crash the Photos. Enjoy both below!
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