Colossalcon East 2025 Fighting Game Swimsuit Shoot

“Fighting game is something so great.” — Hajime “Tokido” Taniguchi after winning the Street Fighter V tournament at the 2017 Evolution Championship Series.

Let’s kick off my coverage of Colossalcon East 2025 with the “Fighting Game Swimsuit Shoot” I hosted at the Kalahari water park on Friday evening of the convention. This is the seventh time I’ve hosted one of these meetups during Colossalcon East, as I’ve done so every year of the convention since its second year.

Cosplay from Guilty Gear was the most popular at this year’s meetup, with seven of the attendees at the meetup cosplaying characters from the series by Arc System Works. I suppose it’s fitting that said cosplay dominated the meetup this year, since Guilty Gear is considered to be an “anime fighter,” and Colossalcon East can probably be considered an anime convention above all things. Lucy Kushinada from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was recently added as a guest character in Guilty Gear Strive, so for anyone wondering, yes, she absolutely is a fighting game character now!

Capcom fighters were represented at the meetup as usual, with cosplayers of several characters from the Street Fighter series in attendance, as well as Morrigan from Capcom’s Darkstalkers series.

Characters from 3D fighting games joined in the fun as well, with Jin Kazama, King, and Hwoarang from the Tekken franchise in attendance. We also had a cosplayer of Brad Wong from the 3D fighter Dead or Alive join in, who mentioned he was often mistaken for “drunken Sephiroth.” Brad Wong is known for his “drunken style” of fighting, and the cosplayer aptly substituted his gourd for a Kalahari cup.

Rounding things out we had a Sonic the Hedgehog cosplayer representing the Smash Bros. series, along with Mega Man, who has appeared both in the Smash Bros. series, as well as the Marvel vs. Capcom series.

Why host a fighting game meetup? Why cosplay characters from fighting games? Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but most attendees who come to the meetups aren’t cosplayers with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers, looking to be a part of the latest trend. We do it for one simple reason; because we love fighting games. Whether we’re playing them or cosplaying characters from them, fighting games are something that bring together a very diverse group of people who might never meet otherwise, and that, indeed, is something so great.

I started my article with a quote from a fighting game legend, and I’ll close it out with a quote of my own. FIGHTING GAME COSPLAY IS BEST COSPLAY!

Among the cosplayers in this gallery are madeejay42, sayamaycry, matt_saturday, rodimus_cerix, ookyvonspooky, camcosplays, jhazecosplays, black_iron_cosplay, cosmic_lils, really_ryland, larkspur.cos, and many more.

We now use Smugmug to present cosplay photo galleries and will post all photos there, with a link to each gallery in its own gallery article. This will allow us to give you higher resolution images to download — still for free.

To view the entire gallery, just click on the image below. If you are pictured in any of our galleries, feel free to download the images and use them non-commercially on social media, with appropriate credit.

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