It was a kaleidoscope of colourful dresses, props, wigs, dyed hair, masks, swords, guns and even obscure Japanese weapons of war — such as the Gunbai, which looks like a guitar, but instead of playing strings on it, you bash it over someone’s head.

But it wasn’t a movie set or a Japanese battlefield, it was just your average everyday cosplay event. In Pakistan, however, a cosplay event is never an average everyday occurrence, despite its proliferation in recent years.

Cosplay, or costume play, has become a performance art of sorts, where people convene dressed up as their favourite fictional characters from comic books, video games, movies, TV shows and, specifically, Japanese anime and manga. It’s an extravagant form of self-expression.

The event was called Geek Con, held at the Al Hamra Arts Council in Lahore at the beginning of August. Organised by Geek Haven, the parent company of this convention, this was the second Geek Con this year, with the first in Karachi in February. The company is planning a third event later this year, again in Karachi.

So, is there actually a huge market and an eager audience for events inspired by anime, manga and comic books, or is this just a tiny bubble of dedicated cosplayers? The growing success and longevity of events such as Geek Con suggest the former.

In a society often defined by tradition, a new generation is finding freedom in the fantastical. This is the story of how Japanese anime, elaborate costumes and geek culture are providing a powerful outlet for self-expression and community in Pakistan…

ACHIEVING CRITICAL MASS

Geek Con has now been around for almost a decade, starting small scale at first, then moving on to bigger and grander venues and more participants. The Geek Con at Al Hamra had almost 5,000 attendees and over a hundred cosplayers, fully decked out in their costumes. There was a dedicated photo booth for fans of the cosplayers to have their pictures taken with them.

This was Geek Haven’s fifth major event; the one in Karachi earlier this year was the fourth. However, the latest one in Lahore was bigger by a margin of at least 1,000 people. Behind it are three young anime fans with an entrepreneurial streak: Yasir Obaid and Huzaifa Tajuddin, who are both 26, and Ovais Ashraf, who is 27.

Yasir tells Eos that Geek Haven began as a hobby for a group of friends during their A-Levels and has since grown into a full-fledged event organising company.

“In Karachi, there were some comic con related events happening [when we were younger] but we always felt that we could do things on a bigger scale, do things better,” Yasir explains. “So, as an experiment, we started off doing a couple of events,” continues Yasir. The team quickly found out that there was enough interest for them to scale up and be sustainable. “We felt that it can totally shape and change the entertainment scene in Pakistan,” he adds.

While the growth has been incremental, Yasir says the team has continued to make improvements with every event. “We have now held events in Karachi and Lahore and, hopefully, will organise one in Islamabad as well,” he says.

So far, the Geek Con team has always managed to break even. In Lahore, the tickets for the event were priced at Rs2,000 a pop, and they managed to sell 4,800 tickets, reveals Yasir. “So, we’ve definitely grown this community since we started, and now we have influencers, celebrities, media persons, vloggers joining in.”

In fact, cosplay events have been around in the country since 2013. The first cosplay events were in collaboration with the Japanese consulate in Karachi in 2013, called Dekho Japan. Then, Comic Con in Lahore and TwinCon in Islamabad got the ball rolling the year after that, in 2014. It was followed by the Karachi Con at Atrium Mall in 2015.

Even colleges and universities have had cosplay events, including FAST Islamabad, Forman Christian College Lahore, and IBA and Habib University in Karachi. One cosplay event was even hosted by the Mathematics Department at COMSATS University in Islamabad.

The pandemic disrupted some of the momentum, but similar events bookended the lockdown, proving the community’s resilience. Shogun Anime & Comic Con took place in Karachi a few weeks before the lockdown, while Karachi Anime & Comic Con was in both 2022 and 2023. Since then, other conventions have continued to pop up, including Animaykon, which took place in Islamabad earlier this year and in Lahore last year.

A SHOT IN THE ARM

This year, Geek Con Lahore brought a global brand on board in PlayersUnknown’s BattleGround (PUBG) Mobile, which rakes in over a billion dollars in revenue annually.

It was PUBG that reached out to them, says Yasir. “They wanted to have influencers pose in their game-related costumes for social media uploads,” he tells Eos. A PUBG representative tells Eos that they’ve been doing this internally anyway. “Whenever we launch new skins, we get influencers to model for them,” the representative adds.

23-year-old Afia Ahmed, with 78,000 followers on Instagram, is one such influencer and cosplayer working for PUBG right now. She was wearing PUBG Mobile’s new skin launch, called Sun Ascendance, at Geek Con. Afia has been cosplaying for PUBG since 2023. She’s also done an international cosplay project for The Otachan Show, a popular anime based on a fictional YouTuber. Last year, she did a collaboration with the company to cosplay the titular character Otachan, here in Pakistan, which was slated for release on YouTube before their latest season.

“While the cosplaying community in Pakistan is growing, it is still small enough for everyone to know everyone,” says Yasir. “When we started, we were in our teens. Now I guess we’re all in our mid-20s, our demographic is definitely the 18 to 26-year-old range.”

Geek Con also has a prominent influencer on their side, Ali Arslan Soomro, with 236,000 Instagram followers. Soomro travels everywhere to support them as an ambassador of sorts.

“Brands are slowly waking up to their younger audiences, who make the majority of this country,” Soomro tells Eos. “PUBG partnered with us because, look around you, this is their target age demographic.

“Anime has always been big here, you and I grew up watching Ghost in the Shell, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, these kids are just following in our footsteps,” he adds while operating his drone camera.

“We just want to give young people a safe space to express themselves, to be themselves,” continues Soomro. “Just look around, everyone’s comfortable, no judgement, no staring, they’re all a community, we’re all geeks.”

You definitely got the sense of community with the cosplayers and attendees. In fact, people travel from city to city to attend these events, to dress up in extravagant costumes.

BEHIND THE MASKS

There are even dedicated costume designers who work for local cosplayers and secure international commissions.

One such costume designer is Hamza Sadiq. Many of the cosplayers at the Geek Con Lahore event were wearing costumes made by him. He was also in attendance, having travelled from Karachi.

Hamza tells Eos he started cosplaying and making costumes for himself in 2015. Soon, he was taking commissions from the friends he made in the community. Some of those friends wore his costumes in the events in Abu Dhabi, which helped him get an international clientele through word of mouth alone.

Hamza is also part of many cosplaying forums online, which helps him to project his work. He says he learned how to make the costumes and props from YouTube videos and says his costumes can range in cost from Rs10,000 to Rs150,000, depending on the design.

Saqib Hussain is a cosplayer who was wearing a Hamza Sadiq costume at Geek Con Lahore. The character? The mercenary Guts from the manga series Berserk. It cost him Rs25,000 because the costume required full body armour and a gigantic sword, which the fictional character is famous for.

But there are cosplayers who meticulously craft their own costumes, too, to the tiniest prop and detail.

Geek Con Lahore’s best cosplay winner Dr Wasif William has held sessions in previous cosplay events on how best to design your own costume. After winning the first prize at this year’s Geek Con, Dr William wrote on his Instagram page, “Gundam RX-78 took the spotlight! Proud to announce that my Gundam RX-78 cosplay won first place at Geek Con Lahore 2025, earning a cash prize of PKR 150,000!”

Dr William added that it took him “five to six days of non-stop, sleepless hustle, late nights, trial and error, and pure dedication to bring this mech [giant robot] to life.” The effort was evident in every detail of his mechanised armour, even as he walked through the crowd, pausing for pictures with admirers.

A GROWING FANBASE

One of those admirers is 23-year-old Soha Mudassir, who was cosplaying the character Angel Devil from the manga Chainsaw Man on day one and the teenage vampire Draculaura from Monster High on day two of the festival. The latter costume had her in pink hair, holding a gigantic pink lollypop.

Soha, 23, was once a cosplay ambassador for the University of Lahore to Forman Christian College’s cosplay event in 2022. Since then, she’s attended four such events, with the latest being this Geek Con.

“I’ve always been into anime ever since I was a kid,” Soha tells Eos. “It started early with watching Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Beyblade and the one that really got me into anime was this really old slice of life/supernatural genre anime called ‘Mirmo!’,” she continues.

For Ayesha Rehman, 20, this was her first cosplay event. She went as the half-human, half-spirit Choso from the anime Jujutsu Kaisen, dressed in black and white robes with black paint smeared across her nose. She was accompanied by her anime-obsessed friends who were also cosplaying. “I’ve been watching anime since I was a kid and, of course, if you don’t cosplay at an anime con, you’re kind of missing out,” she tells Eos.

A GENERATION UNBOUND

There were even people from out of town, including 24-year-old Ayesha Mahar from Islamabad.

She says she always wanted to attend a cosplay event, but never found the right-minded people to go along with, until she made new friends during her postgraduate degree. It was with them that she attended her first comic con, Animaykon in Islamabad.

Ayesha dressed up as Nanao from anime classic Bleach on the first day and the assassin Osaragi from the ongoing anime Sakamoto Days on the second day. Her Osaragi costume, of course, came with the silver buzzsaw that the character wields in the anime.

When asked if she ever feels judged for stepping out in public in costume, Ayesha says, “To be honest, people judge you all the time.” She says her relatives even made her uncomfortable about a collaborative photoshoot — her first and last — prompting her to take it down. “But now, I have decided I don’t care about society,” she continues. “If my family is okay, I don’t give a damn about anyone else,” adds Ayesha.

This is a generation of young people who aren’t afraid to put themselves out there. This is the TikTok generation, the Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts generation, that has grown up with cellular phone exposure. They’ve also grown up with anime and manga.

Apart from the limelight of cosplay walks, there are numerous stalls at these events selling trinkets from Japanese pop culture: art, posters, figurines, toys and collectible items. The passion isn’t limited to organisers and cosplayers; it extends to every attendee who buys a ticket to watch and cheer.

That tiny bubble has grown enormous, and it is going places.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Lahore. He can be contacted at hsbasif@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 31st, 2025

An earlier version of this article misidentified the person who made the following quote: “PUBG has been doing it internally anyway. Whenever they launch new skins, they get influencers to model for them.” The story has been updated to reflect the quote was by a PUBG representative, and not by Yasir Obaid. The piece also misidentified the person who made the following quote “Brands are slowly waking up to their younger audiences, who make the majority of this country.” The story has been updated to reflect that the quotes, till “Just look around, everyone’s comfortable, no judgement, no staring, they’re all a community, we’re all geeks”, were made by Ali Soomro and not Yasir Obaid. The errors are regretted.