This Impressive Digimon Frontier Cosplay Takes on Zephyrmon

Bandai is celebrating the 20th Anniversary of the Digimon franchise next year, and the franchise has seen numerous iterations over this tenure. Each of them is fairly distinct from one another, but the one season that got attention for changing many of the core tenants of the anime franchise was Digimon Frontier. The fourth iteration of the anime series, this anime saw the DigiDestined themselves turning into Digimon and fighting rather than have traditional partners like previous iterations.

One of the standouts, for numerous reasons, was Zoe Orimoto’s Beat evolution Zephyrmon. And one artist has surprisingly tapped this rare well and debuted an impressive take on the Digimon through cosplay. Check it out below!

Cosplay Artist @azayaka_cosplay (who you can find on Instagram here) shared her take on Zephyrmon and it’s been a huge hit with fans. Not only is it a take on a Digimon that rarely gets paid its dues, from a season that is given even less credit among the majority of the fans of the franchise, it’s an impressive work full of detail. With full wings and claws, this Zephyrmon cosplay is ready for battle…and it’s a take that fits right into the canon of the franchise.

In Digimon Frontier, the DigiDestined kids tapped into the powers of ancient spirits to do battle. This “Spirit Evolution” (as it was known in the English dub release) transformed the kids into Digimon warriors who then were able to tap into more beastial forms later in the series as they grew more powerful. Zephyrmon, for example, was the Beast variation of the Spirit of Wind that Zoe was privy too.

Digimon Frontier wasn’t the best received season of the series on its debut, but now that fans are looking back they are also viewing the series much more fondly than before. And if this cosplay is any indication, there’s a deep well of Frontier cosplay to mine.

The Digimon series was originally conceived by Bandai, Toei Animation, and WiZ in 1997 as a way to capitalize on the virtual pet craze sparked by Tamagotchi. The franchise focus on its titular “Digital Monsters,” monsters that live in a parallel, digital world that came from mankind’s technology. The franchise had its first anime adaptation, Digimon Adventure, which focuses on a group of children known as the DigiDestined (or “Chosen Children” in Japan) that are transported to the world of Digimon and have to fight the various evil digital beasts that roam the land.