Heroes of Cosplay.
I'm a casual cosplayer and even among people I know that are "professional", IE they spend a whole lot more time to make their costumes perfect, and we all agree, this show kinda sucks.
Here's the biggest beefs with it:
1) It feels like any other reality show. Especially those bits where they go from footage of what's going on to a personal interview of one of the cast members, sitting in front of a generic curtain, explaining how he felt at that moment or rationalizing his douchebag behavior. I do realize that it wouldn't BE a reality show without those clips, and that's pretty much the backbone of reality crap tv, but I'd love to see a reality show done without them, just to see if it can be done (probably not). In any case they piss me off for some reason, because they do it in this show as well.
2) It feels like one giant competition, like it's the Bachelor or something. At times it almost seems like the different cosplayers are all but at each other's throats, or trying to backstab each other. "That stupid bitch shouldn't win the contest because she didn't make her costume, her boyfriend did. I should win the contest because I worked the hardest! Fuck everyone else."
When can reality tv NOT be a competition on who can be the biggest prick?
3) The cosplayers seem to be more along the lines of Hollywood costume designers. They all take their craft way too seriously. They put an excessive amount of detail into their suits, and get way offended if they don't win a contest. They act like cosplaying is either A) a competition where winning is the only reason to do it, and/or B) they want to cosplay as a LIVING, not just for fun. So they just take that shit way too seriously.
I'm sure there are cosplayers out there that do take cosplay as serious as these people do, where it's about winning and bragging rights, but most cosplayers are in it because it's fun, and are not competitive about it. In fact, most cosplayers will compliment other costumes and even help people with their cosplays as well.
4) There's like 6 female cosplayers and one male cosplayer in this show. While there is more female cosplayers in the world than men, it's only a slightly higher majority of women vs men. Come on, let's get some more males in this show, dammit. But, oh wait, hollywood audiences don't want to see cocks, they want to see BOOBS. I'm sorry, continue your sexual exploitation of the female cosplayers on this show.
5) On the one episode I watched, they were at a comic con, and they were all trying to win the cosplay contest. Which had 1 award and three places. Um, I don't know about that con, but most cons I go to have multiple cosplay awards, not just one. Way to play up the drama and misrepresent the facts, SciFi.
And I think that's about it. It is somewhat entertaining to watch, just to see the awesome costumes they think up, and how they construct them. However, it's still way too Reality Show-ish, so realize that the producers are creating tension where there usually is none, and this is not even remotely a fully accurate representation of Cosplay. Most of us do it for fun and why not, not because some producer is paying us to be on TV and act stupid.
