Tokyo Comic Con has just swung its banhammer down on male-to-female (or trap) cosplay, with the new ban being posted on the convention’s website alongside some other banned costume styles.
Among other types of cosplay banned are transparent cosplay, “excessive skin” (we’re not entirely sure how excessive is considered excessive) and real military costumes.
Female-to-male crossplay seems to have dodged that bullet, so if you’re intending to crossplay one of the boys from Mystic Messenger, you’ll be absolutely fine.
However, a ban on male-to-female cosplay isn’t something new, considering a fair amount of Japanese conventions actually don’t allow it. It’s also rather weird because anime is pretty obsessed with trap characters and is pretty accepting of cross-dressing compared to other genres of entertainment.
So tough luck, if you were planning on crossplaying for this convention, we hope you have other options available.
As for us, let’s hope that no such ban will be enacted for our local conventions.
