We had some viral marketing success in the late 90’s and early 2000’s with the “net idol” concept in Japan (being in charge of the technology side which was still computer geek dominated) that helped provide the initial catalyst that eventually pushed cosplay into the mainstream.
The creators behind this are what I call shrewd because they are doing things atypical of how Japanese tend to do things. Like they even made the character model (MMD) available for download (PNG preview below) but with some restrictions (obviously there is a gold mine when it comes to official licensing rights).
Normally, official image copyrights are heavily protected (you rarely find Japanese firms making part of their intellectual property openly available like this). But they know there are talented people who can do MMD far better (specifically the dance part).
