Cycling for Cosplayers

Cosplay Mode magazine shows how you, too, can pretend to be the teen road cyclists of “Yomamushi Pedal”!



Cosplay (from “Costume Players”) is the art of dressing up like characters from comic books, graphic novels, role playing games, and other visual media such as video games, and animated and live action television shows and movies. Cosplay is often associated with young women dressing up as weirdly fetishized versions of Japanese schoolgirls, but if you call yourself a “browncoat” while wearing a Western-style duster coat while uttering Chinese language oaths, you might also be an occasional cosplayer.

The Japanese Cosplay Mode magazine shows fans of anime of manga how to dress up like their favorite characters, with tips on makeup and costuming. The November 2014 issue features a group of cosplayers who dress up like the cyclists from “Yowamushi Pedal,” an astoundingly popular manga (graphic novel) and anime (animated series) about teens who compete in a Japanese high school road cycling league. I think it involves fixing your hair and applying eye-liner like the members of a J-Pop boy band, then pulling on bright kit in the colors and logos of the well-funded high school teams portrayed in Yowamushi as you ride your perpetually shiny bike.

If you want to know if this issue discusses what eye makeup does when you put forth the superhuman effort often portrayed in the Yowamushi comics, you can buy this issue in the USA for *koff* $24.

H/T to locally famous lolita-style cyclist Jill of San Jose.

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