https://thenerdsofcolor.org/2017/07/03/having-a-ball-at-the-2017-anime-expo-masquerade/

Following the heels of our Anime Expo intro article this year, our first main event we went to last night was the Masquerade, a cosplay and performance competition that has been running for over 20 years. This year’s event was MCed by Ezra Weisz and without a doubt, I can already say that this is perhaps the best masquerade I’ve gone to, solely from the strength of the MC himself.

Going to cosplay masquerades usually is a hit or miss, most of the time being misses as conventions have a bad habit of using hosts that have no experience in warming up crowds or the ability to do stand-up. Regardless of how strong the competition lineup may be, the show will drag into severe boredom if the MC cannot entertain the audience in between the transitions.

Such was not the case for this year’s Anime Expo so serious kudos must go to 3 hours briskly going by, thanks to the MC as well as the performances being extra screened so that there were more competitors with quality, as opposed to quantity.

Out of the competitors that showed up this year, the one that wowed me big time was Extreme Costumes’ rendition of Overwatch, (which won Best in Show not surprisingly). I mean, they got a freakin’ giant robot walking around in here.

This year’s intermission was provided by The Corps Dance Crew, a professional level dance crew that performs at various pop-culture conventions and events, both in and out of cosplay. Suffice to say, these fine men and women did an excellent job weaving the two elements together.

And there you have it! We will provide further coverage of some of the main events as we get to them but in the meantime, you can find Josephine and I cosplaying as Ghost in the Shell characters on the floor.