Kamen Rider

In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent. This week's selection of the best cosplay ever includes the Winter Soldier, Batwoman, Hellcat, Frodo and more.

The annual Kamen Rider team-up movie, where the current Rider has an adventure alongside the previous year's model, has become something of a tradition in Japan. The thing is, it's been going for so long that it has to be a pretty tough task to top what happened in the last one. There have been climactic wars between all the Riders, the return of the original "Legendary 7" from the foundation of the franchise, and even invasions from alternate dimensions where the bad guys won and turned all the good guys evil. Once you've done all that, you have to wonder where you can possibly go next. Clearly, there's only one thing to do: Get New Japan Pro Wrestling star Hiroshi Tanahashi to play one of the villains in a movie that also stars five different Riders and Pac-Man. No, seriously. That's what's happening in the next one.

A few weeks ago, a few images from the upcoming Kamen Rider 1 movie hit the Internet, featuring a new design for the original Rider. It was a bulky, armored affair that --- unlike Shotaro Ishinomori's original design that basically amounted to an Adidas tracksuit accented with some grasshopper-esque touches and a cool red scarf --- turned the character into a hulking, intimidating giant, and as you might expect, the jokes about finally getting "Frank Miller's Kamen Rider" were pretty quick to come. The thing is, that's kind of what's actually happening. Judging by the trailer that just dropped last week, the new movie is basically the Kamen Rider equivalent of The Dark Knight Returns, right down to actor Hiroshi Fujioka returning to the screen to play a much older version of the role he originated all the way back in 1971. Check out a trailer!

So here's the good news: If the impending spookiness of Halloween has you in the mood for horror-themed superheroics, Kamen Rider Ghost has finally made its debut. As the latest series in the long-running tokusatsu franchise, Ghost combines all the dirtbikes and jumpkicks that we've come to expect from Kamen Rider with a premise that feels like the Japanese equivalent of Kid Eternity, focusing on Takeru, a young ghost hunter killed in the line of duty, who has to collect the souls of dead heroes so that he can use their power to wish himself back to life. And here's the bad news: It's only airing in Japan.

Although cosplay has been present for decades within the comics, anime, and sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, social media has played an integral role in the thriving communities of costuming that exist, such as Cosplay.com and the Superhero Costuming Forum. Over the years, the cosplay community has evolved into a creative outlet for many fans to establish and showcase some impressive feats of homemade disguise, craftsmanship, and sartorial superheroics at conventions. In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent.

Although cosplay has been present for decades within the comics, anime, and sci-fi/fantasy fandoms, social media has played an integral role in the thriving communities of costuming that exist, such as Cosplay.com and the Superhero Costuming Forum. Over the years, the cosplay community has evolved into a creative outlet for many fans to establish and showcase some impressive feats of homemade disguise, craftsmanship, and sartorial superheroics at conventions. In honor of the caped crusaders of the convention scene, ComicsAlliance has created Best Cosplay Ever (This Week), an ongoing collection of some of the most impeccable, creative, and clever costumes that we’ve discovered and assembled into a super-showcase of pure fan-devoted talent.

You may recall this story from last summer about a guy riding around Japan's Chiba Prefecture on a Batpod while wearing a very accurate movie Batman costume. Well, step aside, Dark Knight. Japan's got a new motorcycle-riding hero, and this time, he's a Japanese-born character. Someone with a very accurate Kamen Rider costume has been riding around in Fukuoka Prefecture, specifically in the city of Kitakyushu (and at one point, the surrounding farmland). His mission? To put an end to drunk driving.

For those of you who don't keep up with live-action superhero shows made for tiny Japanese children, Kamen Rider Gaim is the latest in the long-runing series of Kamen Rider shows. Focused on young Kouta Kazuraba, the show revolves around a secret power struggle within Zawame City, a community dominated by the massive Yggdrasil corporation, and the monsters that are emerging from the mysterious Helheim Forest to battle the Armored Riders who have unlocked the power of the forest's fruit. And it's also apparently taking place in Gotham City. See, in the latest episode of the series, we finally got a glimpse of an actual map of Zawame City, and it turned out that it's just Eliot R. Brown's map of Gotham, in use at DC since 1998, turned on its side. And I am delighted by this news.

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