South African JinxKittie is the global Crown Champion of Cosplay

Rugby World Cup Champions. Miss Universe. Now South Africa can add Crown Champion of Cosplay to the nation’s list of recent achievements. JinxKittie Cosplay, AKA Kelsey Atkins, placed first in the world this past weekend at C2E2’s prestigious cosplay competition.

The event is essentially the World Cup of Cosplay, marking the culmination of ReedPOP’s 2019 Global Championships of Cosplay competition circuit. ReedPOP are, of course, the organisers behind Comic Con Africa (and this year’s inaugural Comic Con Cape Town), MCM Comic Con, PAX, EGX, New York Comic Con, Emerald City Comic Con and C2E2 in Chicago.

Having been crowned the overall winner at last year’s CCA, at C2E2 this past weekend Durban resident JinxKittie represented the whole of the African continent. She was judged alongside national champions from the likes of France, the UK, USA, Austria, Australia, Singapore, India and Indonesia.

JinxKittie won for an upgraded version of her Blood Priestess Bathory build, which had previously earned her the title of African Champion of Cosplay, R10 000 in prize money, an all-expenses paid trip to C2E2 and automatic entry into in the Crown Championships of Cosplay finals.

Blood Priestess Bathory is based on an original character design by Cinderys Art and Cosplay, who herself topped at Blizzcon 2019 with her Prime Evil Leah from the Diablo universe.

Apart from the honour of being named the world’s best cosplayer, as the Crown Champion, JinxKittie also takes home a cheque for $5000.

This is only the second time that South Africa, representing the greater African continent, has participated in the global championship. This time last year, Kinpatsu Cosplay (Tayla Barter) placed second at C2E2 for her Sister of Battle from Warhammer 40K. Kinpatsu achieved the title of Africa’s first-ever Champion of Cosplay at the inaugural Comic Con Africa 2018.

JinxKittie Cosplay is no stranger to cosplay competitions. In addition to cleaning up at local events like ICON and rAge in recent years, JinxKittie was part of the pair – alongside Maoukami Cosplay – selected to represent South Africa for the first time at the World Cosplay Summit in Japan in 2018. They were followed a year later by Kinpatsu and KomboKatjie, who reached the Top 8 and finals of that particular global contest.

Kinpatsu and JinxKittie are arguably South Africa’s most well-known cosplayers internationally, with online followings in the hundreds of thousands (Kinpatsu tops 378K on Instagram, and JinxKittie 145K). There is no shortage of cosplay talent in the region, but whoever is chosen as Africa’s next cosplay representative on the global stage has some pretty big shoes to fill after these two women. It’ll be interesting to see who rises to the top at CCA in September this year.

Last Updated: March 2, 2020