What better way to mark Halloween than to get into costume? Cosplay and Halloween go hand in hand, so it should be no surprise that one of Tokyo’s biggest Halloween and public cosplay events are one and the same, as crowds descend on the city for Ikebukuro Halloween Cosplay Festival.
Despite the popularity it has since gained this is not an event with a wealth of history behind it. The first such event occurred in just 2014, and with online-only events over COVID has yet to even reach its 10th in-person celebration. While it has made the return to in-person festivities in prior years, this is the first year since the pandemic where the event was held at maximum scale and capacity, taking place for three days in the heart of the east side of Ikebukuro itself.
Even if you weren’t going to the city for the event itself, provided you were in the area on the weekend, you’ll have stumbled upon the festivities.
The event is the organizational brainchild of Dwango in partnership with their own Nico Nico Douga video sharing service and the city of Ikebukuro itself. This year the typical 2-day weekend was expanded to include a Night Party on the Friday before. While it’s possible for much of the public to enjoy the festivities free of charge as areas like Ike Sun Park and the shopping center of Sunshine City become large gathering spots for cosplayers to take photos and talk, cosplayers will need their own ticket in order to use the changing rooms, a near-necessity considering it’s not necessarily accepted to just ride the train and turn up in cosplay right off the bat. Cameraman tickets are also available and necessary to use some perks and access some sponsor booths.
With corporate and city-wide support, alongside the support of businesses, the event has quickly managed to establish itself as a major cosplay hub for everyone from professionals to hobbyists to turn up and enjoy. For a city increasingly becoming an anime hub to replace Akihabara with last year’s opening of the country’s largest Animate and the long-standing otaku havens of Otome Road, this weekend truly transforms the city into an anime world as cosplayers become a two-day inescapable presence. It never stops being novel witnessing Frieren herself navigating vending machines.
But what can you expect if you turn up to the event hoping to participate? For cosplayers, that requires first buying your ticket and getting ready into cosplay. Space is set aside in an event hall above Sunshine City for this, from which you can disperse into a few key spaces. In Ike Sun Park a bit further out from the center of Ikebukuro itself, this is the main location where cosplayers gather. A large open green just a short walk from Sunshine City, a few corporate sponsor booths have been set up on one side of the park from camera companies like Canon that allow free rentals of cameras and lenses for ticket-holders while others from Kadokawa to Beyblade showcase activities.
In reality, however, beyond the Canon booth which was sequestered with its own cordoned area for more famous cosplayers to turn up at random intervals for photo opportunities, most of the park was free space for cosplayers to gather.
Whether you have a cameraman ticket or not, its possible to photograph any cosplayer on the booth, providing you follow the rules. Most of these are common sense - cosplay is not consent, so don’t go snapping photos of people without asking them first! - but provided you get permission (and additionally note their social media to credit them if sharing online) and perhaps wait in line if a more popular cosplayer has a few people wanting to take a photo, they’ll be more than happy to pose for photos. Everyone is here for the fun of the event, with elaborate hand-crafted cosplayers and more casual enjoyers standing and chatting side by side, united by shared passion.
A similar photo area, more secluded and free from corporate sponsors, was also open in a smaller park just alongside Sunshine City. Finally, returning to the center of the city itself in Naka Ikebukuro Park, in the shadow of the city’s new gargantuam Animate stood the event’s main stage. While there were cosplayers here, many weren’t necessarily here for photos. A Livedam karaoke booth let you sing in character to anime songs, while the stage itself presented cosplay catwalks livestreamed for the world on Nico Nico Douga.
This is where we first ended up on the morning of day 1 of the Ikebukuro Halloween Cosplay Festival, where at just after 11am the first cosplay catwalk of the day took place. Rather than being a pre-selected roster of name cosplayers, the welcome aspect of this event is how much it was fueled by the passion of the cosplayers in attendence. To enter the catwalks on the main stage simply required a registration earlier in the day, with some lotteries taking place if spaces were oversubscribed. The result was an eclectic range of faces, and some more unusual cosplays taking the spotlight.
As these cosplayers took the stage, the comments from the Nico Nico Douga livestream would play along the top, at times even being reacted to in real time by the two MCs for the day, MC Masa and cosplayer Shirahashi Natsumi. With one Splatoon cosplay of a rare salmonid, questions turned to asking viewers at home whether they recognized the character, to an enthusiastic response.
That being said, some stages did have pre-arranged showcases of cosplayers. The World Cosplay Summit stage featured cosplayers from around the world, many based in Japan, to bring a more international flair to the event and showcase global talent for the craft. Alongside promoting some future events, of course. That being said, this was one of the most impressive shows, with variety and swagger from all participants that felt like true embodiments of the characters. A certain Jujutsu Kaisen Nanami cosplayer caused a few excited screams in the crowd as they adjusted their shirt on-stage.
The stages showcased a healthy range of activities throughout the day, including a kid-focused cosplay showcase that was as cute as you would expect. All aspects of cosplay culture beyond just the finished costumes made an appearance, with a welcome space offered on a late-afternoon stage to photographers to discuss equipment and tips for photographing cosplayers.
The appeal of the event is less in the individual shows and the activities of sponsors but the community excitement. Even if you’re not actively involved or don’t even care for cosplay or anime, simply getting the opportunity to wander around and see excited people of all ages in extravagant costumes taking in the sights of the city is a joy. Various businesses partnered took advantage with coupons to encourage ticketed attendees to visit them alongside the show, a clear boon for those in the area, with photo studios offering some free sessions and places like Round One and GIGO allowing cosplays to take photos in-store participating in their games.
Nowhere does this feel more apparent than with the spectacle event of the weekend, the cosplay parade. Registered cosplayers can sign up to take part, and doing so allows them to catwalk down the main pedestrian-only Sunshine Street shopping street. As tourists, families and interested parties of all walks of life waited, everyone got into the spirit. Cosplayers were playing up their characters for the crowd, interacting with kids, and there was not a frown to be found in this crowd.
Even if you’re not a cosplayer, the already-bustling Ikebukuro never feels more exciting than at times like this. Turn a corner and you’ll see Luffy with his pirate crew buying Mister Donut, Monogatari cosplayers playing Taiko no Tatsujin in an arcade, Hazbin Hotel cosplayers singing Hoshou Marine’s viral PaiPai Kamen song while others support them with franetic wotagei. Everyone’s having fun, and for some cosplayers another fan from the same series cosplaying a character you like can start a friendship.
It’s good for friends to meet like this, an alternative to the fun-but-intense Shibuya Halloween that itself is under constant failed attempts from local governments to disperse the event once and for all. If you ever end up in Ikebukuro as October reaches its end, make sure to turn up. You won’t regret it.
