While cosplay is a popular hobby among anime fans, and otaku culture anime generally loves zeroing in on all our favorite hobbies, cosplay anime is actually very rare.
If you are looking for anime about cosplay, you have two choices – My Dress Up Darling and Cosplay Complex.
Now, two series don’t exactly make for a compelling list. However, if you enjoy cosplay as a hobby, you will find more than a few anime characters who also enjoy the hobby of cosplay. It is just that almost none of those anime series are about cosplay itself.
If you are a cosplay hobbyist who was hoping to enjoy an anime about cosplay, you will likely have to keep waiting. However, until then, enjoy these cosplaying anime characters.
Anime Characters Who Cosplay
Hanako Koyanagi in Wotakoi – Love is Hard for an Otaku
Wotakoi is beloved for being a romance anime depicting the relationship of three different couples – all of them nerds in some way.
Hanako is an office lady by day with a passion for cosplay. Unlike her boyfriend and her other otaku office friends, Hanako doesn’t necessarily hide her passion for cosplay.
While a passionate cosplayer, unlike the myriad of other passionate cosplayers on this list, Hanako is actually a talented crossplayer, meaning she cosplays male characters despite being a female. Her mature face and above average height helps her flawlessly pull of more bishounen men that make the ladies squee.
Chinatsu Hayakawa in My Tiny Senpai
Although My Tiny Senpai is a rather wholesome anime about the relationships building between several office workers, a catalyst for one such relationship comes from Chinatsu’s outside-of-work activities.
Chinatsu spends her spare time indulging her otaku hobbies and going to cosplaying events. At one such event, she runs into her boss that not only says she looks cute, but develops an interest in cosplay due to her. Of course, his interest is not cosplaying himself, but rather taking pictures of her because she looked so good.
Marin Kitagawa (and Others!) in My Dress Up Darling
Although faulted for some moments of obvious fan service, My Dress Up Darling is really the pinnacle of cosplay anime for cosplayers. While cosplay is often used for meta jokes or comedy in anime, My Dress Up Darling dives full into the process of actually doing it as a hobby.
While Marin is a gyaru, she is also a passionate nerd. She is really a great modern example of how people, and anime characters, can be more than one thing. An otaku is an otaku, but they can also have an interest in fashion too.
While Marin herself likes cosplay and knows a small bit about it, it is often the others in the anime that help her bring a character to life. She befriends a boy whose sewing skills help her make magnificent costumes, while other cosplayers give her tips on other cosplay accessories, makeup, underwear, and everything it takes to bring a character to life in cosplay.
Satomi Tachibana in How Heavy Are The Dumbbells That You Lift?
How Heavy Are The Dumbbells That You Lift is a unexpected series to find a cosplayer in, but you find them there for very relatable reasons.
The series is an educational anime about a series of characters who go to the gym all for different fitness reasons. The anime is teaching audiences about fitness in an entertaining and still very “enjoyable as an anime in its own right” way.
One such character who joins the gym is Satomi. She is a passionate cosplayer, but a bit embarrassed to go to the gym. Yet, she ultimately makes the jump because she enjoys cosplay and knows that a little extra weight around the middle can distract from the costumes she worked so hard to make.
Megumi Chihaya in Servant X Service
Megumi is another cosplaying character out in the regular world for incredibly relatable reasons. Servant X Service follows the varied office workers at a government office. Megumi is one of the temp workers who devotes herself wholly to her hobbies, and uses work only as a way to fund them.
She chooses temp work specifically so she can fund and focus on cosplaying and attending events. As we all know, work tends to eat up a lot of free time.
Kanako Ohno (and Others!) in Genshiken
Genshiken is all about a college club full of otaku. In the beginning, it is pretty much exclusively nerdy guys, but girls trickle in over the course of the series.
Kanako is one of the first women who join the club, and she joins because she is a passionate fan of not just manga and video games, but cosplaying characters from them. She then proceeds to infect several other members with her passion, culminating in her becoming club president and swaying the Genshiken more towards cosplay than ever before.
Perhaps the most fun thing about Kanako in Genshiken is that, unlike other anime characters that cosplay, she is often cosplaying characters from real anime in a bit of a fun fourth wall break.
Konata Izumi and Patricia Martin in Lucky Star
While a bit long forgotten these days, Lucky Star used to be one of those otaku culture anime that was rife with jokes and references that the passionate anime, manga, and video game fan could revel in. It loved breaking the fourth wall as much as much as it loved being about girls doing absolutely nothing.
Like Genshiken, but without any sort of plot, Konata and her American exchange student friend Patricia both enjoy cosplaying actual anime characters like Haruhi and Mikuru from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
Cosplay Association of East Oizuki Academy in Cosplay Complex
Although a short three-episode OVA, like My Dress Up Darling, Cosplay Complex is all about cosplaying.
The characters run a floundering cosplay club at their school that is trying to recruit new members to stay alive, and also trying to settle silly cosplay battles that they get challenged to around town.
Unlike My Dress Up Darling, Cosplay Complex is less about the cosplay process and more about the cosplay comedy.
Komugi Nakahara in Nurse Witch Komugi-chan
Not unlike Genshiken and Lucky Star, Nurse Witch Komugi-chan is most beloved for its frequent comedy and references to other anime. Those are fostered by the main character Komugi being a pretty passionate cosplayer herself.
While Komugi is also a magical girl, her real dream is to be a cosplaying idol, which is why she frequently shirks any magical girl duties to work for her talent agency that has her endorsing products in silly costumes.
Kuroneko in Oreimo – My Little Sister Can’t be This Cute
Oerimo follows a brother who discovers that his little sister is actually a secret otaku. As he helps her explore those interests and meet others who share them, they both befriend Ruri Gokou, or as everyone in her otaku group calls her, Kuroneko.
Kuroneko is a passionate otaku who dislikes anime that is moe for the sake of being cute. However, while she looks like a standard Gothic lolita, her outfit is actually cosplay itself. She is cosplaying a character from her favorite anime, Maschera.
Renge Hoshakuji in Ouran High School Host Club
As Ouran High School Host Club is about a secret host club full of beautiful boys in a prestigious school, it is actually a bit more cosplay focused than you would expect. The boys often have “theme days” in which they dress for a particular theme – Butlers, swimsuits, crossdressing, ect.
However, the real cosplayer of the show is Renge. She is one of those noble-bred otaku who ends up going to that school because one of the boys in the host club looks just like her favorite dating sim character.
While Renge is quickly regulated to randomly appearing comic relief, she often randomly appears in some form of cosplay that is indulging her otaku hobbies.
Do you know more passionate anime characters who cosplay? Let fans know in the comments section below.
