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1. As this festival is meant to celebrate and educate people about Japanese culture, all costume source material must be of Japanese origin. That means anime, manga, japanese video games, J-pop/rock, Takarazuka, Super Sentai, J-dramas, and Japanese Mythology are all acceptable. Any non-Japanese source (cartoons, comic books, TV shows, etc) will only be allowed if the source material or design is relevant to Japanese or Japanese-American culture in some way.  If you are unsure whether your costume qualifies, please feel free to email us at nihonmatsuricosplay@gmail.com. 

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2.  All walk-ons must be rated PG, as this is a public festival being presented by the Japanese community of Utah and is open to be viewed by everyone, including children. It is our goal to keep the performances family friendly – if you have any questions about what this might mean, please e-mail and ask! We are happy to work with you.

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3. Please try to keep your performance as accessible as possible, to make the show an enjoyable experience for everyone in attendance! Keep in mind that there will be people in the audience that might not know much about the source material or the character you are portraying.

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4. This is a Walk-On only contest - this means no spoken dialogue in your audio. If you have any questions about whether your audio fits this criteria, please feel free to ask!

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5. Please give us an accurate and detailed description of what you will do on stage, so there aren’t any surprises!  If your plans change, be sure to let us know via email so that we can update our notes and prevent any disqualification.

 

6. Contestants that are 12 years or under must be accompanied by an adult.

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7. If you bring it on the stage, you must be able to take it off with you when you are done.  That means no feathers, confetti, glitter, etc.  We share this stage with many other cultural performances, and we need it to remain as safe and clean as possible. As always, please reach out if you are unsure if your plans meet this criteria!

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There will be no on-site sign-ups for this contest. All sign-ups will need to be completed via e-mail or our submission form, ahead of time.
 

Last Day for Sign-Ups: April 26th

Last Day for Audio: April 27th
 

Contestants may enter as an individual or as part of a group. Groups can contain no more than 6 contestants, unless specifically cleared by our contest admin. Entries of any age are welcome! However, any contestant under 12 must be accompanied by an adult.

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If you would like to compete, please fill out this Google form:

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Sign-Up Google Form

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Please email us if you have any issues with the form, and we will work with you!

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nihonmatsuricosplay@gmail.com

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AUDIO REQUIREMENTS:

● MP3 format only

● File clearly labelled with Group or Contestant Name

● Track can be as short as you want it to be, but it CANNOT exceed 1 minute 30 seconds. (If you need an exception, contact us via email - we will handle these on a case by case basis.)

● Track must NOT have dialogue, as this is a Walk On contest. (If you have concerns about this, please contact us - we will tell you if your track is appropriate.)

● If you don’t send us an audio track, we will provide a generic one for you. It will not be personalized, and

you will not be able to hear it until the contest itself, so we highly suggest sending us in audio if you can.

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Slots for Craftsmanship Judging will be 5 minutes long. If you have a large group and are worried about time, please email us and we will make arrangements with you.

 

The slots will run from 8:00 am to 12:00 noon. (This ending time may change based on the time the contest is scheduled.)  Judging slots will be opened for reservation on April 22nd.

 

There are THREE classes for craftsmanship in this contest: Beginner, Intermediate, and Masters.

 

Beginner: no more than 2 individual craftsmanship wins.

Intermediate: 3-5 individual craftsmanship wins, or any win in an Intermediate division.

Masters: more than 5 individual craftsmanship wins, or any win in a Masters division.

 

If you are unsure what class you qualify for, please feel free to ask! We will help place you.

 

Progress pictures are not required, but are recommended as a way to document your creation process for the judges. You can bring a physical copy for the judges to look through during your time slot, or you can provide a QR code to a digital copy that we can pull up on a tablet or phone. 

 

Judging will be located at the festival - we will contact contestants with a more specific judging location when the festival gets closer.