A cosplay duo from Metro Manila will represent the Philippines in this year’s World Cosplay Summit (WCS) after winning the top prize in the National Qualifiers held during the Nippon Industrial and Cultural Exchange event last Sunday in Davao City.
Team Saui (pronounced “sa-YU-ee”), led by Sergio Santa Ana and Edward Amparado, bested eight other teams and broke the five-year winning streak of teams from Mindanao in the qualifiers with their performance from the video game franchise Sengoku Basara.
Team Deathmatch, also from Metro Manila, won runner-up. They have portrayed a skit from the popular video game Monster Hunter.
Among the judges in the competition are internationally-renowned cosplayers Reika and Taeyeon.
Video courtesy of Futomi Nomura / World Cosplay Summit Philippines
Amparado, who originally hailed from Bacolod but is now based in Manila, is no stranger to Cosplay Competitions, having been part of Team Ban X Kai who won third place in the 2015 Asian Regional Cosplay Championships at Anime Festival Asia in Singapore.
In an interview with Jay Agonoy for his online journal keepsakes., Santa Ana and Amparado mentioned they once had a friendly rivalry during their previous stints in the WCSph Regional Qualifiers but have decided to team up this year to improve their chances of qualifying for the international cosplay bout.
“Dapat maglalaban kami sa WCS, pero nawala, so we just collaborated and beat the others” (We should have competed with each other in WCS, but we instead collaborated and beat the others) Santa Ana said.
“I knew I really learned a lot and I believe this is another lesson for my life”, Amparado adds.
Video courtesy of Jay Agonoy / keepsakes.
Amparado also posted a status on his personal Facebook account after his win, saying that being the 2018 WCS Philippines representative will not be an easy duty for him.
It is the first time the capital won in the WCS PH National Finals ever since it was first held in 2014. Previously, teams from Davao and Zamboanga won as Philippine representatives to the ‘Olympics of Cosplay’ ever since the country became part of the competition.
The World Cosplay Summit will be held in Nagoya, Japan from 28 July to 05 August 2018 with at least 30 countries competing.
