Let's start with Jin, Fuu and Mugen keeping it mad real! I honestly think the OP to Samurai Champloo is one of the ten best in the entire history of anime. I'll be bold and say it's even a bit better than Cowboy Bebop's from the same director (Shinichiro Watanabe, whose new series Space Dandy is now showing on Adult Swim) and you know how good that is. Watanabe was the series director of Samurai Champloo, but the opening credits were directed by one of his staff, the somewhat obscurely-named "Katsuyo Hashimoto."
At first it seems a shame we haven't seen more work from such a talented guy—but then again, we have! "Katsuyo Hashimoto" is one of the several pen names Mamoru Hosoda has worked under—that's right, the director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars and Wolf Children directed the opening credits of Samurai Champloo! The animation for the opening was done by Takeshi Koike, the director of Redline. The background design was done by Toshiyuki Yamashita, who most recently created the look of the opening credits for A Woman Named Fujiko Mine. And of course, we won't forget the composer of the opening theme, "Battlecry," the late Nujabes, expressed with great lyricism by Shing02. This year is the tenth anniversary of Samurai Champloo, and we're still proud of publishing the Samurai Champloo Roman Album, the complete guide to the series and the people who made it!
Looking at Princess Zelda from Skyward Sword and Chi in one of her many, many fashions (I thought it was her Patisserie Chiroru outfit at first, but it's not quite the same), it occurred to me that if necessary to escape enemies, Zelda and Chi could easily disguise themselves as one another. We're ready, because we publish both Hyrule Historia and Chobits!
I like to believe the way the Dark Horse logo swirls around Alucard is just an evocation of his power. I was thinking about how it would be tough to draw the magic circle on his gloves correctly, because it might get distorted when the gloves are worn and the fabric stretches. Is the secret to put the glove on a dummy hand and then draw the circle on it? I suppose you could put it on your own hand (assuming you can draw with the other), but you'd have to keep pretty still.
Now this just goes to show how you can express a completely different mood while wearing the same costume as someone else. This Seras and Alucard look like they're about to go clubbing. Actually, have you ever gone clubbing in cosplay, or gone to a party in cosplay? I think it shouldn't just be for conventions.
On that exact note, I remember seeing a guy (a different guy than this fan who was kind enough to come to our booth) dressed as Vash one day, walking down the sidewalk on SW Washington in Portland. This wasn't a year when Kumoricon was held downtown, and I couldn't figure out any event happening around there that would give someone a reason to cosplay. But maybe he was doing it without a reason, which is the best reason of all.
Speaking of everyday cosplay, it almost seems like you could run into this Mamimi and Naota in real life. I think a lot of people can relate to growing up in a place like Mabase, a town where "nothing ever happens." Do you live in the kind of town where you could imagine FLCL happening (or dearly wish it would happen)...?
Wait, what's a Spartan doing here? Cosplay is not their profession! All I can say is that Japanese is one of the over 20 languages that 300 has been published in. From that book, I learned that the way to sound like a Spartan in Japanese is to end all your sentences in "zo!"
Ah, that's more like it. If Belldandy had been around, 300 would have ended with Leonidas and Xerxes sitting down to tea. The heroine of Oh My Goddess! is nobody's pushover in combat, but she counts her victories (as someone wrote two decades ago) in peace, love, and empathy. This year is also the 20th anniversary of Oh My Goddess!, thanks to you, the Dark Horse readers, who have made it the longest-running manga in the history of the English language. You can bet we'll be celebrating it in 2014!
—Carl Horn, Manga Editor