Team Japan Wins Cosplay World Summit 2012 - [News via AnimeNewsNetwork]

Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil, Italy are runners-up in 10th international cosplay event

[News via AnimeNewsNetwork]

View more images from the event: HERE

An audience of about 18,000 attended the World Cosplay Summit 2012 finals in Nagoya, Japan on Saturday. 40 representatives from 20 countries, including the United States, competed for the top spot.

Japanese cosplayers Yukari Shimotsuki and Kaito won this year's grand prize as the characters Hijikata Toshizō and Kazama Chikage (family name first) from Hakuōki Shinsengumi Kitan. The duo won the ANA Prize and the Minister of Foreign Affairs Prize. This is Japan's second win in four years, having won in 2009.

Singapore's Frank Koh and Valerie took the second-place LIVE DAM award as Solar Aquarion and Otoha from Genesis of Aquarion. Singapore also won the Brother Prize for costuming.

The third-place Bushiroad award went to Yesaya Marito and Rizki Karismana of Indonesia as 98-AV Ingram and Griffon from Patlabor the Mobile Police.

Other winners include Brazil for the Cyperous Award for best wigs. Brazil's representatives Bruno Lorandi Pabno and Debora Guerra do Silva cosplayed as Lars Alexandersson and Alisa Bosconovitch from the video game Tekken 6.

The Docomo Anime Store Prize for accuracy went to Italy's Paolo La Manna and Francesco La Manna for their renditions of Unit 01 and Unit 02 from Neon Genesis Evangelion.

This year's judges included singer May'n and voice actor Tohru Furuya. May'n sang at the Summit as well, and Furuya revealed that Code Geass director Goro Taniguchi is making an anime about World Cosplay Summit "for cosplayers."

Team Germany streamed this year's event:

Video streaming by Ustream Video streaming by Ustream

The World Cosplay Summit was launched in 2003 with four participating countries. Since then, it has expanded to 20 participating countries: Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, The Netherlands, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The last four years' grand prize winners were Brazil (2011), Italy (2010), Japan (2009), and Brazil (2008).
[News via AnimeNewsNetwork]