Cosplay

Last Sunday, I went to an anime festival in Ikebukoro. Anime is Japanese for animation. The animation industry is extremely big in Japan and very popular. For example, the Warchowski brothers, who wrote and directed the Matrix trilogy, were heavily influenced by anime films such as 'Ghost in the Shell'. Other famous Japanese anime includes 'Akira', 'Gundam' and 'Gatchaman'(Battle of the Planets).

You can check out the official site for the festival here.

The festival took place at a huge shopping centre called Sunshine City, which is a shopping and entertainment complex. It also used to be the tallest building in Japan. There were lots of shows and lectures given on anime in English and in Japanese and a lot of famous people involved in anime were also there.

Probably the most interesting thing about the whole event was the cosplay. Cosplay is when people dress up as someone from anime, manga or film. It's a bit like fancy dress in England. Everyone looked very cool. 

You can see the photos here.