Cosplay Complex

I really think this anime was way ahead of its time or maybe I need to watch more 5/10.

For a three episode OVA this was fun.

For a 2004 anime. The animation is good its not a innovated but its pretty good. I don't see animation mistake or any inconsistency on its character. (7)

Its funny to be honest. There's some meta humor I liked while watching this and sometimes the characters are quirky. All jokes are cliches and reference. The execution of their jokes are decent to make me laugh. (6)

Sound design, it has less background music, Sound effect which is kinda stock sound effect ... nowadays but for its time its pretty decent, OP and ED are not that bad. (6)

I did enjoy this but the rewatchability for this is pretty low. But it is Very good after you watch it.
Personal Score: 8
Public Score: 6

Cosplay Complex is a weird, horny little love letter to cosplay as a hobby, though it never really explores it more holistically as a craft or art form, and while it can be pretty funny at times, a ton of the jokes fall flat, and some of the production quality is left seriously wanting. Beginning with the story, it's a zany, fast-paced tale about a school's cosplay club and its ultimate goal of competing in the cosplay world series, competing in smaller championships and contests and training to be better at what they do along the way. Of course, hijinks ensue. While this is a ... solid core for a nice little comedy about an important aspect of otaku culture, it doesn't really capitalize on it all that well. While some bits are genuinely funny, a lot of it just feels as though they're trying to get you to laugh, even coming off as a little desperate. As a result, this anime is just comedy, or attempts at comedy, draped over a barebones skeleton of a story. The worst part of this supposed comedy routine is the show's inordinate focus on the Italian lesbian pedophile exchange student character Jenny Matel, who feels very insisted upon, as though they thought her one joke was going to be a real tentpole for the whole OVA. Even given all this, the story and writing wasn't all bad, and managed to be quite funny when things did indeed land, especially in terms of comedic timing.

Next, the art is probably this anime's strongest aspect, which makes sense for an anime that has to depict colorful and complicated costumes, which it does well throughout, borne out by solid character designs and a well-comprehended sense of cosplay style and proportion. Being from 2002, you really get this sense of the transitional period that anime was going through at the time, in both a stylistic and conceptual sense. It feels like a mixing point between the 90s and 2000s, with the bright, colorful aesthetic of the 90s and the crisp, stylized aesthetic of the 2000s. This makes the anime an interesting piece on these merits alone.

The sound is the weakest aspect of this anime, dragged down mostly by the quality, or lack thereof, found in the voice work. While the OST and sounds of life meet the basic standards of quality for the time, much of the voice work is amateurish, and even mechanically low-quality. For reference, all I could find to watch was the dub, which was horrible, so what I say here might not apply to the original Japanese voice work. Anyway, outside of our main cast, who provide fairly unremarkable, sometimes hammy voice work throughout, the voice work for everybody else is atrocious. It sounds as though the voice actors never read the script before recording, with weird, uncertain tone and cadence, and even sometimes sounding as though they're recording on bad equipment or something, with prominent echoes, crackles, interference, or some other technical difficulty present throughout. Honestly not sure why they released such a bad dub in the first place. Who in the studio went over the recordings and gave them a thumbs up? Wild.

Anyway, as for the characters, there's not very much to say about them, as they all more or less meet the basic standards of quality for the time, filling various basic archetypes. Of them, Chako and Reika were my favorites, given that they both felt like they enjoyed the most character writing and development, which are pretty relative terms here. However, what really gave them an edge over the rest of the cast is their choice of cosplay throughout the show, with the most interesting stuff from a lot of properties I recognize from anime and video games. Fascinatingly, this OVA actually has supplementary material for those that need it, where it spends about 5 minutes or so going through a bunch of the cosplay seen over the course of the anime, which was honestly a cool little addition that shows some care was put into its production. Overall, Cosplay Complex is an odd OVA that seeks to tackle one of otaku culture's most distinctive and visual elements, however, it falls short of doing a particularly great job. Still, it managed to be funny enough and reference enough interesting cosplay ideas and designs that I'd wager to say it's not a total waste of time, though that feels like a determination that'll be a real case-by-case basis depending on the viewer.

Cosplay Complex is an OVA series that was set up to have a sequel, but never got one. And that's okay, there wasn't very much you could do with it anyway, it already seemed like they were running out of ideas during just these 3 episodes, because all of them are about a contest, that's it.

The story of this series is about a high school Cosplay club, and they add some new members every now and then. There are some rivalries, a love interest, ecchi, and lots of cosplaying.

The art is pretty good, it's definitely not the standard, especially for an OVA, I could be ... wrong, but I don't even think it was the standard in 2002, unless anime has really come a long way in just 9 years, it's amazing.
It's not annoying and it definitely will not bore you.

The music is almost non existent, and the ending theme reminds me of something Nobuo Uematsu would have composed for a happy go lucky show, but that's not a bad thing.
The seiyuu all do a great job! I especially like whenever Delmo speaks, but that's probably because of my love for Gintama.

Character is very basic here, nothing special, but it's there.

I enjoyed this more than I expected, but for it to be something by Tatsuyuki Nagai, he has definitely come a long way in creating great shows. Sometime you can't judge a book by it's cover, or its first publish sometimes. Only time will tell when it comes to greatness.

It is overall a show that can be fun to watch if you just want some light hearted fun, and like cosplay.

Be aware that this show was set up for a sequel, so things at the end do not make sense, and they never will (Unless someone really wants to do another sequel.)