Junior Macey Lukas remembers when she started to become curious about dressing up as anime characters, after watching an anime with her friend, junior Vincent Duncan. Their curiosity allowed Lukas to find her passion, cosplay. 

“I’ve learned from cosplay to be more open about creative ideas and actually doing them,” Lukas said.

Since she started in sixth grade, Lukas has visited 3 cons in total: Anime Crossroads, Popcon and Amaicon.

Cons, short for conventions, are gatherings that typically have a primary focus on the Japanese culture, such as anime and manga. Cosplay, also known as costume play, is when a participant wears costumes and accessories to portray a character.

Lukas met her best friend, Charity Frost, a freshman at Beech Grove High School, along with her conmom and condad, through cosplay. 

Conmom and condad are the parental figures in a confamily, something that is created with cosplayers when they meet at a con. They act like a cosplayer’s parents, without actually being parents. 

“I’ve made a whole family,” Lukas said. “We go to cons together all the time now, but if I didn’t cosplay and all that, I wouldn’t have met these people.”

She and Frost also had to deal with odd people, noticeably one from Amaicon, which made them feel awkward. Luckily, her conmom and condad were able to help. She advises anyone interested not to go alone to cons.

Now, very excited about future cosplay plans, she is using her improved sewing skills to make a homemade Ty Lee outfit from Avatar. She also enjoys voi

ce acting, and has voice acted male and female characters.

“Patience and time is definitely the key,” Lukas said.

Lukas’s first cosplay was Sakura Haruno, a female character from Naruto. Now almost five years into her passion, she has cosplayed many characters, both male and female alike.

She and her friend Frost are known for their Natsu and Lucy duo cosplay, characters from the anime Fairy Tail.

“We make a really good team…,” Frost said. “Whenever we go to conventions, they’ll want to take a picture or they’re inspired by us.”

Lukas has made many memories from cosplay, like staying up doing dances and meeting new people she admired.

Experienced with dressing up, Lukas understands that people may be shy to cosplay, and advises curious people to get out of their bubble to do what they enjoy.

“Cosplay who you want to,” Lukas said. “It doesn’t matter what body size they are, what ethnicity or anything, just cosplay who you want to cosplay.”