Earlier this year, I reviewed Cocoro Books "We Love Cosplay Girls" which was an excellent book for reference material and the way the book was broken down to several areas in cosplay from heroes to dark side, I just felt that the book was well done, sold for a great price and worthy of purchasing.
Before "We Love Cosplay Girls", in 2007, Cocoro Books released "Cosplay Girls 2', another cosplay book that can be found for a great price and also featuring many photos of various cosplayers in Japan in a variety of outfits from popular video game, manga and anime series.
One thing that is noticeable is that "Cosplay Girls 2' is an 8.5×11 book, which the newer version is much smaller.
Also, the introduction features a pretty length 3-page article on the alluring world of cosplay.
Another difference between this book and its current incarnation is that in the newer version, you would see several cosplayers in the same outfit or from the same series. Whereas, this version breaks things down in several chapters such as "Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 1', "Before and After", "Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 2', "Cosplay Boys Catalog", "Cosplay Beauty Asuka and her 25 transformations" and "Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 3'.
The Table Contents features the name of the cosplayer, the character name and the series its from. While in the main pages, a single photo features the cosplayer with the character and series below the photo.
The spelling of the series is more towards the Japanese romanization, so "Eureka 7' is spelled "Eureca 7' and a few typos with "Scenery" typed out as "Scernery" and a few format errors where a word's final letter would continue in the next paragraph but this is very few and it doesn't detract from the overall book.
The "Before and After" metamorphosis chapter is actually quite intriguing as it features several women, featuring their cosplay name, age, job, how long they have been cosplaying and what is cosplay to them. So, you have their before and after photo.
And another small problem I found was that you would have an odd page featuring the before's (ie. page 51) and then the next page on the other side 52 would feature their transformations. So, it would have been nice to have the before and after on the same page but again, another minor thing but nothing that detracts from the overall book.
Whereas the first chapter feature cosplayers in full-page or a large photo on each page, part 2 of the catalog features two or three photos per page.
And I saw this as a way to not make things too expensive as it is evident that there were so many photos that Cocoro Books wanted to feature but to make things cost effective print-wise, to put 3 photos on a page instead of just one.
In "We Love Cosplay Girls", I wrote about how it would have been awesome if male cosplayers from Japan were shown and sure enough, "Cosplay Girls 2' features a few pages on cosplay guys.
The next chapter features a "Cosplay Beauty Asuka and her 25 Transformations".
This chapter features the cosplayer Asuka in a few similar poses but wearing a 25-different outfits.
The final chapter "Cosplay Girls Catalog Part 3' returns to large photos and half-page photos.
Again, I have to applaud Cocoro Books (DHP) for bringing these Japanese cosplay books to the US. The third volume "We Love Cosplay Girls" was awesome and obviously much was learned from the previous cosplay books including this "Cosplay Girls 2'.
So, "We Love Cosplay Girls" features a very different focus and done very well. "Cosplay Girls 2' has its slight problems but yet when it comes to these type of books, it's not a book that is for reading, it's a book for admiring the cosplay and creativity of that cosplayer (or its maker) and of course, for others, it's about admiring the beauty of female cosplayers.
"Cosplay Girls 2' does offer things that are not on "We Love Cosplay Girls" and the transformation and before and after chapter was pretty cool to see.
As well as showing a few pages of cosplay guys as well. So, it's good to see some inclusion of that, even at a few pages.
But all in all, there are big photos which selective cosplayers can use as a reference for ideas of upcoming cosplay outfits or to see how certain outfits were crafted.
So, it's a book that serves its purpose and all in all, for its price which you can find online at a great price, there is no need to hesitate in buying this book, even though a third book has come out.
So, check out "Cosplay Girls 2'. A very good reference book for cosplayers and for those who want to see beautiful Japanese girls and women in cool outfits based on anime, manga and video game characters. Check it out!
