Cosuplay was the last tune to be completed for the Setsu album. It was quite a struggle to get the parts to fit together but, in the end, it's one of the tunes I'm most pleased with. For a while I wasn't sure if the juxtaposition between dark verse and poppy chorus worked: the verses alternate bars of B major then C major and the chorus shifts to a good old-fashioned doo-wop kind of thing with a G / E minor / A minor / C, though that does have an unexpected Gmaj7 thrown in on the word 'Geek'. Anyway, it was meant to sound both conformist and subversive to mimic the way the girls follow the rules all week and cosuplay on Sunday. Of course, this in itself is typical of Japanese subversion: it should still be done according to a strict schedule and within clearly-defined rules.
The dream sequence in the middle section, where the girls imagine leaving their "small town shopping mall" behind for the crowds and glamour of Harajuku, shifts unexpectedly from the neat resolution of the C at the end of the chorus up a semi-tone to a D flat minor. Again, this subversion of the doo-woppishness represents the rebelliousness of the thought of hanging out with 'actual' weirdos (what would grandma think!). To me at least, the girls in this tune won't realise this dream; the thrill is just in the thinking of it. Any kind of cosuplay I saw in Japan to me was all surface and no substance: kids didn't dress as punks in clothes they'd actually made look punky, it was all bought like that, pre-fabricated with rips and safety pins in place. It could just as easily have been teddy boy fashion or an anime character. They certainly didn't identify with the spirit of the punk movement.
The lyrics in the verses probably zip past too quickly to hear on a first listen (but they're on the Soundcloud page in the song info). The first part of the verse is solo voice only but then the backing vocals chime in, highlighted in this excerpt with all other tracks (except one guitar backing) switched off.
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