A fun and exciting weekend for cosplay enthusiasts continued as cosplay.ph’s Cyberzone Cosplay Craze 2015 ran its second amazing day. As one of the biggest free cosplay events of the year, Cyberzone Cosplay Craze 2015 was an extravaganza of cosplay fun and excitement for cosplayers, con goers, as well as for the curious the whole of last weekend at Cyberzone SM North EDSA Annex. Organized by cosplay.ph as part of the Cosplay Mania Road Show series, Cyberzone Cosplay Craze 2015 had lots of games, contests and attractions for all attendees, giving away some of the biggest prizes for any event this year, building up much excitement for the main event, Cosplay Mania ’15, this October 1 and 2. For our coverage of Day 1, click here.
Always thinking of new and innovative events for the local cosplay community to enjoy, cosplay.ph conceptualized and organized Cosplay Craze 2015 in cooperation with Cyberzone as an unprecedented free two-day event with great new games and interesting attractions while offering the best prizes. Besides their program mainstays like TORCH All-Stars, Facepalm the Music, dance performances and individual cosplay competition, fresh new features and attractions like Cyber Sumo, Kawaii Fashion Show, Cosplay Snapshots Photo Contest, Costume Building Challenge, and Cosplay Masquerade gave the community something to be engrossed and be excited about.
Doing a splendid job hosting the event were the team Pablo Bairan and Kat Langomez, who kept the festivities fun and exciting all day.
One of the event’s new and innovative attractions was the Cyberzone Cosplay Building Challenge where teams of two to four members must purchase materials from selected stores at SM North EDSA and use their ingenuity and creativity to craft an impressive costume within a tight budget. The costume must be an original design that depicts a Cyberzonian hero, robot or creature. With each team given a 3,000 peso gift certificate to purchase materials with, several hours to shop and then build the costume worthy of a catwalk, teams worked furiously to come up with their creations.
The contest started as soon as the mall opened, and the teams were in a rush to procure their materials from within the mall and bring it to their workstations at the event area. While crafting, cosplayers, con goers, and curious passers-by were given the rare opportunity to take a look and to learn how veteran cosplay costume crafters make their works of art on real time.
The Cyber Sumo area was also open for contenders as soon as the event opened. It was simple fun with a friend or an acquaintance as both of you wear a sumo outfit and have fun bumping into each other and try to push the other outside the circle. There were lots of cheers and jeers from the audience of course, with all just having a good time.
The festivities for Day 2 kicked off with the Cosplay Parade where cosplayers got to show off their amazing costumes to the public as they went around SM North Annex and then to the main mall.
The parade made a stop at Yoshinoya, one of the sponsors of the event, for some photo ops.
Inside, they were treated to some refreshments as they had fun and photos with the customers and staff alike.
Upon returning to the event venue, the program was underway with guest performers Raindrop got to warm up the audience with a Haruhi Suzumiya-inspired number. I personally loved it by the way.
Fun games are also a hallmark of cosplay.ph events, like mainstays Facepalm the Music and Title Wave where contestants battled with their pop culture knowledge and wit while the audience had fun watching and guessing as well.
Throughout the day, promotions for cosplay.ph’s upcoming events like Meet and Greet Madness, TORCH, and Cosplay Mania ’15 got to update the audience on the latest developments on the biggest events for the year, led by seasoned cosplayer and crafter Guy Singzon.
A Kawaii fashion show then took the stage with amazing doll-like models showcasing Kawaii clothes designed by Alittledecadence with accessories from M’Lady Dark Sweet Soul and Vogue Royale.
Then it came time for the event’s highlight, the Cyberzone Cosplay Grand Prix Ultimate Edition where 10 of the best contestants chosen from the preliminaries during Day 1 battled it out once more. They of course had to impress a great team of judges.
In performances with their own chosen background music and presentation, cosplayers showed off their amazing costumes and incomparable skills to the delight of a large audience.
After their splendid performances, it was time for the contestants of the Cyberzone Cosplay Building Challenge to present their finished masterpieces on stage. They were of course all impressive to have made such creative and functional costumes given their limited allotted time and budget.
There were lots of cosplayers who attended the event, and they were having so much fun with the audience and mall patrons and had shoots of their own as well, like for the Cosplay Snapshots Contest.
The awarding ceremony began as evening came, starting off with Team Bad Boys winning the first ever Cyberzone Cosplay Building Challenge, going home with a big cash prize.
Bolen Lareza was named Champion of the Cyberzone Cosplay Grand Prix Ultimate Edition for her great performance as Liger Zero Schneider of Zoids, winning the grand prize of 20,000 pesos plus securing a slot for the Cosplay Solo Showdown at Cosplay Mania ’15.
Then it was time for the Cosplay Masquerade where registered cosplayers got the chance to win one of 5 great Kata smartphones. Lucky cosplayers had their names chosen via raffle and it was one of the biggest prizes for a raffle at any cosplay event so far.
The event ended with a big group picture with everyone who attended the event. It was really the fun and exciting event that it promised to be: everything was free, there were lots of games for everyone, there new innovative contests, there were lots of huge prizes, and that there was a sense of community from the people who went there to have fun.
Many thanks to cosplay.ph for organizing this unbelievably enjoyable free event for everyone, and we hope to see it again next year. Congratulations to their courteous and hardworking staff as well.
Omake (Bonus):
It was our Public Relation Officer Kaloy’s third anniversary in cosplay that weekend. Yay! We would have had a big celebration for him and a full length feature on him if not for the…
…Jason Momoa Meet and Greet. He said he would no longer be coming to Manila this September because he had been here for a long time already. So there.
Thank you for dropping by, and do visit again for more features here at arkadymac.com.
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