SINGAPORE - Some 5,000 anime and manga aficionados got a glimpse of popular characters like The Iron Giant, from a movie of the same name, at the International Cosplay Day 2014 on Sunday.

Short for costume play, cosplay involves dressing up as characters from Japanese pop-culture anime and manga or electronic games, movies and Western-genre comics, and aping their mannerisms and way of speaking as closely as possible. Other characters seen at the event include Yuna, a summoner character from roleplaying game Final Fantasy 10 and Kha-Zix, an assassin character from online game League of Legends.

The cosplay convention, in its third edition this year, was held at Scape on Sunday. It is organised by Singapore-based cosplay blog The Neo Tokyo Project, and coincides with International Cosplay Day, celebrated in countries such as the United States, Philippines and Mexico.

The convention features activities such anime quizzes, and cosplay chess, which involves cosplayers duking it out on stage in a human chess competition.