When I cosplay I tend to go to the 'minor' characters or the less known animes.
Only once did my character get recognized a lot and that was back in the day (long long time ago) when I dressed up as Setsuna from Sailor Moon (Sailor Pluto as herself no Sailor fuku)
Other years I have done Siberian Jubei (that was interesting), Pretear (water), and even as Moonglo from Rainbow Bright (that year we were a whole group in which we were all one of the colors, by myself no one knew me but as soon as we met up with Rainbowbright everyone remembered )