Would you please explain what cosplay is?

Cosplay as a word us a unison of the words "costume" and "role-play". As such, cosplay is the act of dressing in an outfit appears to resemble of imitate the outfit of a character. Often times it's used to refer to people who costume themselves as anime/manga characters, though this is due to the immense popularity of cosplaying in Japan.

It's understandable that you may confuse it for "group" since most cosplay is done at conventions or event which do have large groups of people whom do cosplay.

Cosplay is a contraction of the words "Costume Play." (or costume role-play)

It is the act of dressing up and pretending to be a character. Many groups who cosplay are focused on one fandom or theme, such as Harry Potter (fandom) or Anime (theme) but it can be more general than that.

You could say that children who play dressup are cosplaying, since they are acting out being cowboys, fairies etc. but usually it is more specific. A good example of a hardcore cosplay group is "The 501st" who are an international group of Star Wars costuming fans.

Cosplay can be a group or a single person as long as it involves people (or a single person) dressing up as an anime, manga*, or movie character. In short, a person or people dressing up as a character in animation.

Sometimes cosplay can be people acting a scene in a animation which also includes themselves dressing like the characters.

*manga= a japanese form of comics In case you didn't know. : )

Cosplay is when you dress up like a character from a Anime, movie, or game

If you go to Comic-Con you see a lot of people dressing up like Naruto , Ichigo,or Leon

By the way Comic-Con is a play were a lot of people go to every year to dress up as different characters from movies, games, or Anime

:)

Cosplay is where you buy a anime character costume then you dress up and stuff exactly like em

Etymology

Translation of Japanese コスプレ (kosupure), which is a contraction of コスチュームプレイ (kosuchūmu purei), a Japanese English meaning costume play.

(countable) A costume that imitates any character from manga, anime, tokusatsu, video games, or, less commonly, Japanese live action television shows, fantasy movies, or Japanese pop music bands.

(uncountable) A subculture centered on people wearing cosplays.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cosplay

http://www.wordspy.com/words/cosplay.asp

It's when you dress up as a character from a book (typically comic books), movies, or other media. Such as someone dressing up as Superman, Wonder Woman, Captain Jack Sparrow, etc.

You dress/act like an Character from Anime,mangas,movie..

costume play - dressing up, usually like a character from a game/movie