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...

Rika’s been kissed by her boyfriend’s best friend! Now, is she going to have to keep it a secret from Hajime? Why would Arata do something like that, anyway, when Hajime is the one he likes? While Rika’s head spins after this unexpected development, it seems that Arata is finally getting serious.

It's the final volume—and the hero is Arata, whose second love is chronicled in a hundred-page short story! It all starts when the owner comes to Arata's place and drops off a lion...or a monster...or something. It turns out to be a girl in a pretty realistic costume, but despite a speech impediment, she proves deft at reopening old wounds. What happens when he finally faces up to Rika again? Also included: "Boys' Talk," a wild vacation story starring the boys of Felice—ending in a tear-jerking finale!

Expand your costume-making skills and go from beginner to confident maker! Picking up where Creative Cosplay left off, this new volume prepares costume enthusiasts to create out-of-this-world effects from head to toe! Cosplayers of all experience levels have much to gain from Amanda’s expertise as a national cosplay competition winner and judge. Learn the basics of making an original costume pattern, using prosthetics and latex, and customizing fabric through dyeing and painting. Transform yourself into the character of your choice with Special Effects (SFX) makeup. SFX makeup uses prosthetics and smaller on-skin materials to create illusions — such as wounds, scars, deformities, or supernatural features — directly on the skin. Get the scoop on sergers, embroidery machines, and using a digital cutter Pick up industry secrets on the basics of LED work, body painting, and SFX makeup Create a DIY costume repair kit for conventions, and market yourself in the cosplay world

An exploration of cosplay and its relationship with the realms of its global fandom, performance, and the modes of fictional existence Flourishing far beyond its Japanese roots, cosplay has become an international phenomenon with fervid fans who gather at enormous, worldwide conventions annually. Here, author Frenchy Lunning offers an intimate, sensational tour through cosplay’s past and present, as well as its global lure. Through a culmination of years of personal research on cosplay, and growing out of Lunning’s wealth of scholarship, conference presentations, and cosplayer interviews, Cosplay is a unique and necessary examination of identity, performance, play, and otaku fandom and culture in relation to contemporary theories. With discussions covering construction, masquerades, and community through performance, Lunning presents cosplay as a dynamic and ever-evolving global practice. She combines the fascinating viewpoints of cosplayers with observational, in-depth research on cosplay history and practice, and a deep dive into critical theory involving the modes of fictional existence, in order to understand its global expansion. Augmented with beautiful photographs, this is an engrossing, lively read that explores a complicated and often misunderstood history and meditates on how cosplay allows its participants to create and construct meaning and identity.

Animal Crossing is an innovative virtual world with a global audience beyond traditional online gamers. The book is the first major study, offering an interdisciplinary exploration of copyright and other laws, user creativity and sociability, psychology, the virtual world’s economic and technological basis, uptake during COVID-19, gamification of offline brands, relationships with past/contemporary computer games, and Animal Crossing as an example of the Japanification of online popular culture. The book provides insights for students, researchers and non-specialist readers.

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?