BEIJING, June 8, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The acclaimed fashion magazine Harper's Bazaar China recently published a cosplay series on The Black Swordsman, a character which is derived from the Japanese light novel series Sword Art Online. The featured characters were neither celebrities nor super models, but rather two cosplayers with a large following in China. The series attracted tremendous attention from many demographic groups across the country.
The ACG (Anime, Comic and Games) culture, or "Nijigen" in Japanese, which means "two-dimensional space" in that language, has long been regarded as a subculture, quite apart from the mainstream in China. As ACG culture has grown more popular in recent years, the scope of its audience has expanded, its core audience has grown older, and their purchasing power has increased. ACG has slowly transitioned from one that was regarded as being on the fringe to one of general acceptance, from being highly undervalued to being seen as something of value, and from being misunderstood to being a subject of study in China. The culture has even become a favored topic of discussion in the capital markets, and being seen as an important vehicle through which players across many industries and brands try to connect and communicate with the younger generation. It is no exaggeration to say that the influence and status of ACG and its fan base are growing rapidly.
In China, ACG culture already boasts a fan base of 200 million, 60 million of which are considered "hard-core."
The appearance of the photos of the cosplayers in one of China's top-tier fashion magazines was loudly trumpeted by the licensed distributor of the mobile game The Black Swordsman, a game based on the popular anime and game series Sword Art Online, but was also highlighted by the celebrated designer Lan Yu, who created a wedding dress for the character Asuna, which was featured in Harper's Bazaar China and was shared on their Weibo page: http://chuantu.biz/t5/6/1465265028x3738746559.png
About The Black Swordsman
The Black Swordsman is the first mobile game in China based on Sword Art Online to receive authorization from the publisher Bandai Namco to produce a game based on the series. The skills, equipment, and plots are all drawn from the series, and the game is a perfect interpretation of the original.
