short stories – Lucca Comics and Games (cosplay, anime, manga)

Lucca is known throughout the world as a city of Art, History and Culture.

Since 1966, however, Lucca has also been the undisputed City of Comics, and year after year has hosted an event dedicated to strip cartoons that is acknowledged to be the most important and exciting of its kind in Italy.

Every year, at the beginning of november, Lucca becomes one of the world’s capitals of comics, thanks to the enthusiasm and skill of international experts, publishers, authors, critics and fans.

Ok, let’s stop this introduction and let my pictures show some “tastes” from the exhibition.

First I’d like to show pictures about strange people called “cosplayers”, alias “costume players”. This habit comes from a Japanese subculture centered on dressing as characters from manga, anime, and video games. However “cosplay” has been expanded to mean simply wearing a costume [from Wikipedia].

I saw a lot of them wandering in the historical center of Lucca, with strange costumes: I wasn’t able to identify any cosplayers I shoot.

So, I need help from you: tell me who they are! Click on the image below to start a short slide show about them (in IMHO these pictures are fair, not a masterpiece anyway).

Then I run through the Japanese shed: it was the exhibition of toys, gadgets, posters, characters (anime and manga) straight from japanese shops or italian importers from Japan. There was also a small desk with some Japanese girls serving sushi, beer and food from Japan: here is a small slide show about them.