Interest

'Real Loveplus' Virtual Girlfriend Cosplayed

A cosplayer in Nagoya City's Osu shopping district demonstrates what Konami's virtual girlfriend simulator Loveplus would look like in real life:

The Loveplus game allows the player to "date" three different high school girls. Since it debuted for the Nintendo DS last September, Loveplus has sold over 235,000 copies. It spawned a sequel called Loveplus+, which sold an additional 103,000 copies in its first week of sales in June. It also inspired five different manga that launched in five different Kodansha magazines this past spring. A Tokyo man named "Sal 9000" performed a "wedding ceremony" with his copy of Loveplus last year, although he acknowledged to CNN that the "wedding" was not legally binding. In January, Zoids manga creator Michiro Ueyama even posted his Doraemon-inspired interpretation of what "Real Loveplus" girlfriends would be like.

The World Cosplay Summit 2010 event took place in Nagoya this weekend, and it featured a multi-block cosplay parade through Osu on Saturday. Teams from 14 countries participated in the event, including the United States team of Kathryn Griffin and Krystal Stoner. The two passed the United States Qualifying Round at FanimeCon in California in May. The team from Italy, Luca Buzzi and Giancarlo Di Pierro, eventually won the final round in Nagoya on Sunday. The guest judges were voice actor Tohru Furuya, musician Hironobu Kageyama, and Canadian anime theme song singer HIMEKA.

[Via Kyō mo Yarareyaku, Dengeki Online]