Soki, his true nature fully revealed, is engaged in a full-court press on Rika! Before her boyfriend Hajime returns home, she resolves to settle things with her college classmate—and, especially unravel the night she and Soki spent together. But when Hajime returns, Soki challenges him to a duel between men!

Hajime's hospitalized father has gone missing. The gang searches for him, but it's Rika who discovers him attempting to burn his deceased wife's wedding dress. She tries to stop him, only to suffer serious burns, a mysterious piece of metal inside the dress scarring her palm... Feeling at fault for it, Hajime returns to the U.S. to help his father heal, asking Rika to break up over the phone. Where did this sudden request come from? To find out, we must look into the scars in Hajime's heart, scars he's borne since childhood...

Create one-of-a-kind outfits with this essential guide to Japanese-style fantasy fashion! Using the authors' unique Costume Matrix, you will learn how to develop new and daring designs for your anime and manga characters and cosplay creations. First, choose a look to serve as your fashion foundation. Then select an alternate style and fuse it with the first fashion theme to create an unexpected ensemble combining elements have never before been seen together! Mixing and matching basic themes and styles in this way results in one-of-a-kind mashups and hybrids, for example: School Uniforms & Military Apparel Casual Basics & Gothic Formal Wear Japanese Fashion & Folk Costumes Plant Motifs & Animal Motifs Nature Motifs & Mechanical Objects Seasonal Motifs & all of the above! Using the Costume Matrix, the fashion mashup possibilities are endless! Here are just some of the unique combos made possible by applying the Costume Matrix technique: A Folk Costume crossed with a snake motif that results in a Scheherazade vixen with veils transforming into slinky scarf-like vipers! A Gothic Lolita paired with a Rabbit for a fun and furry character with fuzzy paws for boots and a crazy carrot-top hairdo! A Sailor Girl School Uniform combined with a Female Ninja fighting outfit—with a throwing star as the perfect accessory! A mashup of Casual Basics and Plant Motifs creates a head-turning Sunflower Girl complete with a green-leaf collar and flared-petal skirt Fantasy Costumes for Manga, Anime & Cosplay presents over 55 fantasy fashion mashup examples and provides you with the key to designing your own totally original characters and styles!

Rika makes a shocking proclamation: She wants to break up with Hajime! And just as he’s headed for the United States! Even if the two of them do make up, Rika won’t be able to erase her history with Arata… Was it out of guilt that she wanted to break up?! Plus, we get a peek into Arata’s broken heart. And new developments are afoot!

Most of us are conscious of having a single and stable self, but the self is more fragmented and plastic than we care to think. David Berliner explores the captivating world of identity through an array of astonishing experiences. From Napoleon doppelgangers to Philip Roth's alter-ego Nathan Zukerman and Wonder Woman cosplayers to anthropologists going native, he delves into the kaleidoscopic nature of the self and attempts to understand the heterogenous nature of identity. But Becoming Other also discusses a great cultural controversy of our time: who has the right to play at being whom?

Cosplay, short for "costume play", has grown from its origins at fan conventions into a billion-dollar global dress phenomenon. Costuming Cosplay takes us from elaborately crafted DIY costumes to online fandoms, examining how the practice of portraying fictional characters from popular culture through dress and performance has become a creative means of expressing and playing with different identities. With an approach that ranges from admiration and role-play to gender performance, this is the first book to fully examine the subculture and costume of the Cosplay phenomenon. Drawing on extensive first-hand research at conventions across North America and Asia, Therèsa M. Winge invites us to explore how Cosplay functions as a meritocracy of creativity, escapism, and disguise, and offers a creative realm in which fantasy and new forms of socializing carry as much importance as costume. Illustrated with color photographs of both celebrity and amateur Cosplayers, Costuming Cosplay is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion and costume, popular culture, anthropology, gender, and media studies, as well as global players and fans of Cosplay.

Beatdown in the bayou!? Armstrong?s surreal reunion with Andromeda, his long-lost wife, gets even weirder (if that?s possible) as a legion of bath salt ?empowered? Florida Men unleash total mayhem! But that?s not the only trouble awaiting Valiant?s fearless-ish adventurers? Enemies from across the globe are descending on the Sunshine State to destroy Archer & Armstrong once and for all! But never fear, dear reader, in the darkest of hours a new hero will rise ? and, by Gub Gub, he?s bringing prophetic visions of the future with him! Harvey Award-nominated writer Rafer Roberts (HARBINGER RENEGADES) and Eisner Award-winning artist Mike Norton (Revival) are in one heck of a sticky situation as ?ANDROMEDA ESTRANGED? continues!