ARTICLE
Aloysius Pang, Joshua Tan and Joyce Chu to Cosplay in New Local Movie!
By InCinemas / 02 Apr 2015 (Thursday)
Fans of Aloysius Pang, Joshua Tan, ‘Malaysia Charbor’ singer Joyce Chu and Jeffrey Xu will be happy to know that these up-and-coming stars will be donning elaborate costumes and fashion accessories of characters from Japanese manga in their new movie, ‘Young and Fabulous’.
‘Young and Fabulous’ is Singapore’s first movie about cosplay where stories and characters are inspired by real life cosplayers, students and teachers. Directed by Taxi! Taxi! Kelvin Sng, the film will also see Gurmit Singh, Quan Yi Fong and Henry Thia who will play parents to these younger actors.
Among the cast, Xu, the self-confessed huge fan of the popular manga ‘One Piece’, is the only actor who had experience in cosplaying. As an avid fan of Japanese animes since young, he shared that he cosplayed during his teenage years and will even be heading to Japan later this month to attend an ‘One Piece’ event.
“This is my first time participating in a feature film and I’m really looking forward to it. My character in this movie is a guy who is very gentle and soft-spoken; I hope I can contribute some comedic elements to the film,” said Xu.
As a huge ‘One Piece’ fan, he naturally chose a character in this manga when we asked which ideal character would he like to cosplay as. “I would choose ‘Chopper’ (a toddler-sized human/reindeer) but it isn’t exactly a human being. If I have to choose, maybe Sanji (chef),” he quipped.
Also a fan of manga is Joshua Tan, best known for his roles as Ken Chow in Jack Neo’s Ah Boys to Men franchise, who revealed that he will be cosplaying as one of the characters from ‘Naruto’.
He said: “I’m actually looking forward to it because I used to watch some anime like Naruto and Bleach when I was a secondary school kid; I’m really excited to see what I look like.”
In ‘Young & Fabulous’, Tan plays a business-minded, charismatic young man, ‘Haoren who comes up with crazy ideas to earn as much money as he can for the family. Also known as the class’s ‘Lobang King’, Tan is aware of the possible comparisons with ‘Ah Boys’ castmate Wang Weiliang, who played a delightful ‘Lobang King’ for the three movies.
“I believe the character definitely has some similarities but there will only be one ‘Lobang King’ and Weiliang did a great job in ‘Ah Boys To Men’; if you want me to act as ‘Lobang King’, I will never do ‘Lobang King’ like Weiliang did.”
He added: “I wanted to do something different… Hao Ren is a very business-minded person and he is one that will speak English in his everyday working life to sell stuffs. Also, I just keep inserting different mannerism in different points to deviate Hao Ren from Lobang.
“I don’t want them to be so similar which people will compare, and that’s not what I want.”
'Young & Fabulous' will commence filming on the 15th of this month and is slated to release at the end of this year.