World Cos-play Summit

The Japanese comic book format known as manga has fans all over the world. And some of them are so into manga that they dress up like their favorite characters. It’s called ‘cos-play’, short for costume play. Manga fans Renee Gloger and Sonia Paz will be representing Team USA. They’ll be performing a skit in full costume as characters from the Japanese comic, "JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure."

"For the competition, our costumes are really annoying — its fantastic. Reflective metallic spandex, because we have to be as obnoxious as possible for America … We are having a dance-off and fighting to see who is the most fabulous, but in the end we decide that we are both pretty fabulous," says Gloger, a native New Yorker.

The dialogue is prerecorded Japanese, since the audience is primarily Japanese. Japan has two teams, but there are teams from many other countries — Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, Thailand, China and Korea.

Communicating between these teams can be difficult, but they share one thing in common: a love of manga.

PRI’s "The World" is a one-hour, weekday radio news magazine offering a mix of news, features, interviews, and music from around the globe. "The World" is a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston. More "The World."