The 2010 Philippine Cosplay Convention was held last 27th March 2010 at the Robinsons Midtown Mall Atrium. HOBBIWORX and COSPLAY.PH once again played host to a large number of anime, manga, gaming, and even historical cosplayers. There was also an extensive selection of retailers’ booths selling cosplay items, J-pop and K-pop collectibles, and toys. I was asked to judge the cosplay competition and did not have a lot of time to browse the exhibitors’ booths, so this report will cover mostly the convention’s culminating stage events.
With over one hundred entries, the individual category was whittled down to twenty competitors, who all had to withstand intense scrutiny from a panel of four judges. Some of my favorite costumes of the night was a Sister of Seraphim from Warhammer 40K — who was a table-top RPG player on her first cosplay event, a hardworking young professional who stayed up late after work to finish her Noguchi Machiko costume from Predator Versus Alien, and a mother-and-daughter pair who worked on the little girl’s Al Azif costume and song number respectively.
The programme was generally fastpaced and filled with activities, and everyone had a great time. I did notice though that there was a rather distracting propensity for the hosts to mispronounce the names of the characters being cosplayed. I was also a bit disappointed by the anime and cosplay auction where merchandise was sold off to bidders, but some of the starting prices were so high it did not encourage prospective buyers to place their bids. Anyway, those are minor things that did not detract too much from the event, so you guys should make it a point to join us next year for PCC 2011 🙂
Thank you very much to the PCC staff for the invitation.
JPOP Manila 
To be fair, most of the good items on auction (most starting for as little as P1) were sold earlier during the day and the items being auctioned near the end of the day were the items that did not sell in the earlier auction.
The hosts could probably be better briefed with the names beforehand and allowed some time to review them before announcing them onstage. A better system could be worked out for future events to avoid this problem.
I did like how the Cosplay Costume of the Year 2009 turned out this year with the winners all attending the event to accept their awards (except for one who was in Davao and who sent a representative to receive the award) and the Top 20 Finals was both interesting and entertaining without dragging on too much.
Looking forward to how the experience will impact PCC 2011 as it is one of the most interesting Cosplay Cons at the beginning of the year with new content being added every year.
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i wasn’t at the venue in the earlier part of the day to witness the auctions so so i’ll take your word for it. and to be fair to the hosts, the botched names occur almost every con — it’s just that it seemed to happen every single time and i find that a little hard to understand given that they are anime fans and should have known better.
like you i would love to see more diversity and better representation for cosplayers in the visayas and mindanao area, and to its credit PCC is taking steps to include them in the awarding. anyway, i look forward to new things that the con and its organizers can bring to the table for the 2011 edition. best of luck to you all!
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