Cosplay began as something gloriously handmade: fans turning up in costumes because they loved a story enough to carry it into the room.

But somewhere between the early science fiction masquerades, Star Wars armour builds, convention photo galleries, viral cosplay, professional creators and the rise of organisations like the 501st Legion, something shifted.

The costume was no longer just a costume.

It became proof that a franchise mattered.

In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave looks at how cosplay grew from fan-made performance into one of the most visible forms of franchise culture, and how the work fans do for love became increasingly useful to the companies standing nearby.

Not because anyone sent a memo.

Because fandom built something too powerful to ignore.

For more geeky news, reviews, interviews, and air dates, head to Geektown.co.uk. You can also listen to Geektown Radio, our weekly podcast covering the latest in TV, film, and gaming.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Geekstorians, we travel to Middle-earth, not as tourists, but as slightly suspicious historians with a map, a torch, and some concerns about licensing agreements.

In 1998, Peter Jackson walked into New Line Cinema with a fantasy epic most of Hollywood considered impossible. What followed became one of cinema’s great gambles: three films, shot back-to-back, built in New Zealand by artists, craftspeople, performers, technicians, and people who apparently did not believe sleep was legally required.

But this episode is not just about how The Lord of the Rings became a miracle.

It’s about what happened after the miracle.

Because once Middle-earth proved it could be enormous, prestigious, beloved, and wildly profitable, it stopped being only a story. It became territory. A machine. A place where skipped chapters, side roads, appendices, rights deals, and strange little corners of Tolkien’s world could all become valuable.

From Jackson’s impossible pitch, to Weta’s handmade craft, to Oscar glory, to The Hobbit, The Rings of Power, and the modern hunt for whatever Middle-earth still has left to give, this is the story of what happens when a beloved world becomes too successful to leave alone.

This is Middle-Earth, Inc.

For more geeky news, reviews, interviews, and air dates, head to Geektown.co.uk. You can also listen to Geektown Radio, our weekly podcast covering the latest in TV, film, and gaming.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anime did not cross into Western culture in one clean movement. It arrived in fragments, through edited TV dubs, bootleg tapes, playground obsessions, fansubs, late-night downloads, and eventually legal streaming platforms.

In this episode of Geekstorians, Dave picks up where Season One’s ‘The Anime Underground’ left off, following anime’s journey from cult import to global mainstream force.

We begin at the 2003 Academy Awards, where Spirited Away won Best Animated Feature without sanding itself down for Hollywood. From there, we rewind to the late 90s, when Dragon Ball Z exploded on Toonami and taught a generation of viewers to expect serialised storytelling, consequences, cliffhangers, and men screaming in fields until the landscape reconsidered its options.

Then came Pokémon, a franchise that became so massive, so quickly, that many Western children did not even think of it as anime. It was just Saturday morning television, playground trading, Game Boy link cables, and the dangerous social power of a shiny Charizard.

The episode also looks at Studio Ghibli’s very different crossing: a studio that refused to compromise, resisted Western editing, and eventually saw Spirited Away become the first Japanese film to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

Finally, we move into the digital era, where fansubs, piracy, simulcasts, and Crunchyroll transformed anime distribution. What began as a fan-built workaround became part of the legal streaming infrastructure. The underground became the industry.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.