Collection Exhibition Miri 2016

The 2016 “Collection Exhibition Miri” (CXM 2016) commenced today at the ground floor of the old wing of Bintang Megamall. The exhibition, hosted by Bintang Megamall in partnership with Naja Enterprise, is attracting big crowds and will end tomorrow.

The exhibition is great news to fans of cosplay, anime, comics, Gunpla (Gundam Plastic mechanical module) and everything related to Japanese culture. Over the 2-day duration of the event, there will be various contests, toy exhibition, live music performances, interactive workshops, meet-and-greet sessions, sushi-making demonstrations, photo sessions and other activities.

Fans of Cosplay will have the opportunity to meet prominent Cosplay celebrities, have photos taken with them and get autographs from them. Participating in the event are Rinoa Kanzaki of Japan, Koyuki Yukihime of Thailand and Malaysia’s Hakken.

Cosplay (コスプレ kosupure?), a contraction of the words costume play, is a performance art in which participants called cosplayers wear costumes and fashion accessories to represent a specific character. Favorite sources include manga and anime, comic books and cartoons, video games, and live-action films and television series.

The rapid growth in the number of people cosplaying as a hobby since 1990s has made the phenomenon a significant aspect of popular culture in Japan and some other parts of Asia and in the Western world. Cosplay events are common features of fan conventions and there are also dedicated conventions and local and international competitions, as well as social networks, websites and other forms of media centered on cosplay activities.

The term “cosplay” is a Japanese portmanteau of the English terms costume and play. The term was coined by Nobuyuki Takahashi of Studio Hard while attending the 1984 World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon) in Los Angeles. He was impressed by the hall and the costumed fans and reported on both in Japanese magazine My Anime. The coinage reflects a common Japanese method of abbreviation in which the first two moras of a pair of words are used to form an independent compound: ‘costume’ becomes kosu (コス) and ‘play’ becomes pure (プレ).

Children will be fascinated by ‘mascot mania’ which features life-size mascots of many popular anime, cartoon and superhero characters.

 

Fans of Cosplay, Gunpla and Cardfight Vanguard can take part in competitions that offer prizes worth up to RM3,000.

If you are a fan of Japanese culture, make sure you visit the exhibition. It is open until tomorrow evening.