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Kamen Rider Black Sun Discussion
It's live on Amazon Prime video now. Share your thoughts on the first episode!
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First episode was largely composed of what we saw in the trailers, but the points of interest for me were:
- We see Kotaro and Nobuhiko operated on as children in a far more grueling and painful way. And in a shack in the middle of nowhere no less. - The Kaijin rights struggle is center stage here, being the backbone of the conflict thus far. It heavily parallels real life as is obvious, but notably paints it as very grey and muddled. The initial protests I think perfectly describe the dynamic with advocates and dissenters rallying on both ends with authorities caught in the middle. Most impressively IMO is the fact that the police are painted as just as divided. One cop discriminates against the Kaijin while another tries to protect them, and one cop shoots and possibly kills a Kaijin who loses his cool, though not out of seeming hatred, but rather out of stress and fear. Nothing here seems entirely black and white. - Kotaro is a Ketamine addict and fuels his addiction by taking shady jobs. He beats a Kaiju to pay back his loan, then takes a hit job on the girl who gave a pro-Kaijin speech. Said speech was facilitated by the Prime Minister, who is quickly revealed to be part of Gorgom. (which is even its own political party) - The Century King is shown alive. Kind of. It's a big grasshopper man with a missing limb and being bled for a substance called "Heaven" which seems to give Kaijin strength/longevity. Nobuhiko is chained up by Gorgom, apparently no longer fit as a replacement Century King. - Kotaro doesn't have his King Stone, and without "Heaven" he has aged albeit slowly. He finds the stone (a stone?) on the girl who gave the speech and transforms into Batta Man, violently killing a Spider Kaiju. I will say it's not bad so far, but I do still struggle a bit with it being Black specifically. It's calling back to plot points from the original but framing them quite differently, and it does feel like this is a bit of a unique tale simply dressed up in Black's name recognition. Kotaro especially feels off, a husk of a man without morals which is a very far cry from the fiery man of justice of the original even fi we're to be believed that he has grown disenfranchised. It's not even a bad character, and it fits this story quite well, but it's not really Minami Kotaro. Also the start of episode 2 is ironically, if not humourously, opened with both sides of the Kaijin argument blaming the government. This movement has also been ongoing since the 70's. |
I'm one episode in.
I definitely wasn't prepared for the level of gore in this. I've seen Amazons, but still was not expecting Kotaro to yank out a dude's intestines before ripping his head off. That was certainly a lot. It doesn't feel out of place, though. A little excessive, but also fitting with the show's darker tone. Interesting to see them go full X-Men with the kaijin. Definitely a departure from the original, but it's working for me. I'm not sure how well this will be able to be resolved, given the nature of what Gorgom is and that Kotaro is likely going to end up mostly fighting kaijin instead of humans. I get that Greta Thunbe... er, Aoi, is meant to be the POV character for all of this, but I'm not sure if there's an ending to this that doesn't involve the deaths of all the kaijin, especially given the implication that they need Creation King milk to survive. Kotaro is a little bit too much of a cipher to get a full sense of yet. Verdict is still out on him, but I'm surprisingly enjoying what we've gotten out of Nobuhiko so far. Definitely on board with him not just floating in a bubble of stock footage for 30 episodes. |
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1. I'll fade into sparkles cause we cant show a corpse 2. I'll punch a man and rip out his intestines. |
So this just doesn't appear to be available in the US for some reason??
"primevideo.com" where I've seen others say to watch it at is for other locale and we just get redirected back to Amazon.com, where I simply cannot find this show. And I'd really like to watch it on my TV instead of laptop. So... That sucks. |
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For the laptop issue, if it and the TV have HDMI ports, connect both of them with a HDMI cable. Edit: Or just click this link and log in with a Prime account. |
It may sound strange, but I get a very strong Showa vibe from this show. That is, First, Next, and Amazons looked like an adult reimagining of Showa riders through the prism of the Heisei era. But Black Sun seems like an adult reimagining with modern special effects, but without the influence of modern riders. I don't know if I explained it clearly, but that's how I feel about this show.
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I’m three eps away from finishing and, yeah, didn’t expect the show to go this way.
The moral dilemma surrounding the Creation King is a good one. I had the exact same decision in the book I wrote and it’ll be very interesting to see what this show ends with. |
I watched episode 1, seems interesting. Though I feel like it dragged on certain parts and it could've been way shorter.
If the rest of the episodes are like that (Given the shortest is 38 minutes I think, uh... that's likely) in terms of pacing, I probably won't finish this show. I can deal with slow, but this reaches level's I'm not really able to deal with. Had this been released weekly? Totally, probably would've been able to keep up. But I cannot binge like, this size of episodes. And if I try and pace them out, the way my brain works will just keep putting it off until I just unintentionally drop the show. But anyway yeah, Episode 1! Real neat concept stuff! Mostly the redux Black stuff though. Also Amazons left a way stronger first impression. |
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Finished it. I'm aware I'm biased at the moment, but this was the best Kamen Rider-entity I have ever seen. Yes, it profits from a lot of factors: No toys to advertise, no creative restrictions to appeal to a certain audience, and a lot of runtime to develop the world, characters and story.
But it's not like all of this automatically guarantees a success. No, they worked hard for this, and it paid off big time. I'm blown away by how fantastic this was. Everything worked for me. And for how much one could critique this for being very much not Kamen Rider Black, I felt like the spirit was carried on and evolved to a new saga. All of the references were just icing on the cake, the opening to the last episode especially. My jaw dropped when that happened. It never once felt tacky or weird to me, like so many other "adult"-oriented Kamen Rider projects do, this was a fantastic experience from start to finish. I did not expect much out of Black Sun to be perfectly honest, so witnessing this made me feel happy. Happy to be a Kamen Rider fan, happy to see Ishinomori's messages still very much intact and worth holding up. This is where it's at, this is where kamen Rider truly shines, amazing stuff! |
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I think the reason is that the people working on Black Sun have never dealt with riders before and, if I'm not mistaken, tokusatsu in general. Fresh blood is always useful, especially if their talented. |
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Heck, the name "Kamen Rider" isn't even dropped once. Although that's something a few of the main shows do as well IIRC, I think Wizard was one example who only got the title in the crossover movies and other like Gaim get different ones, like "Armored Riders". |
The beginning of episode 10 was pure, shameless, absolutely filthy fanwank and I loved every second.
Also I may have my reservations about Black Sun's design, but I'd totally get the Figuart of that end of episode 9 version. |
So now that I've finished it I have some... real mixed opinions.
I thought it was told very well but the ending... fuck man, if that isn't one hell of a "bad ending." I genuinely don't know what it was trying to say. The idealistic young revolutionary becomes a radical terrorist indoctrinating children to build bombs. She claims to take after Kotaro but ends up doing exactly what Nobuhiko did. Is this series trying to say that politically motivated violence is the right solution? Yet the framing is entirely sinister, and I think the idea is that Aoi learned the wrong lesson. There's also rather very tasteless parallels to real life at the end. Shockingly so, and not in a "open my eyes" shocking but "Jesus, have you no tact" shocking. I felt the social commentary, while no doubt overbearing, was handled quite respectably up till then. It was presented almost indifferently, showing the cycle of hate perpetuating and feeding itself. It kinda went off the rails at the end and went from all the subtlety of a Styrofoam bat to an iron cudgel. On a technical and character level some things didn't really jive. The main point of contention being just how the hell do the King Stones work? They're the stones that turned Kotaro and Nobuhiko into Kaijin, yet they can remove them and spend the whole series without them. So what's in their belts? Why do they have belts? Why did Aoi get a belt? Why did she not get a "Rider" form and just turned into her usual mantis kaijin form? If every Kaijin has a stone inside them does that mean they can be born with stones or that they were all experiments? How has the Kaijin race persisted if they're all created? Or is that just some not all? Why was that distinction never a factor or facet of the discrimination? Why did Nobuhiko die after removing his stone? Why did he remove his stone? Was it just to die? I don't see what the hell this had to do with Black. It really could've been just a generic Rider series. Gorgom could've been Shocker, Black and Shadow Moon could've been Rider 1 and 2, etc. The Creation King is a plot point but it's not like he's at all similar to the original. The show is dressed in vague Black iconography but entirely it's own story. I also found the music quite repetitive. The slow key note version of the theme is used to irritating excess. It should've been reserved for Black Sun's important moments. By the end it stopped feeling dramatic and started being annoying. They "Mandalorian theme'd" it. Also, as amazing as the Black opening recreation was... it was hilariously tonally mismatched, especially knowing the lyrics. This Kotaro is nowhere near the fiery man of justice the original was. He's a battered husk with hardly a will of his own. This is not a man who "loves being alive in this great blue cosmos." Also I found it pretty weak how after Nobuhiko gets beat up a bit he just... abandons his big plan. Like he doesn't even mention the Kaijin future he was just preaching about and just kinda starts crying about his friends and how he wants to go back. What? He never even implied that was close to something he was thinking of. His righteous fury just evaporates after a fist fight and it's like it all meant nothing. Which I think is the point? That this is all meaningless? Hatred will continue, radicals will fight it, those radicals will be consumed and destroyed, and the hatred will go on. How will Aoi be at all different from Nobuhiko? How did she so badly misunderstand Kotaro's will? Speaking of, he just dies for nothing. He becomes the new Creation King, somehow, and then despite them just establishing that the Creation King can have a will of his own he's just a husk begging for death because he became the thing he tried to destroy. Kotaro has zero agency in this whole show. He has no moral compass, no vested interest, besides committing to a fifty year old proposition. It's amazing that a character so central to the proceedings feels entirely removed from them. Long story short: this is a good show that completely shits itself at the end. I'm still processing how I feel because it genuinely comes across like it changed gears at the last second. That ending feels like it's meant to imply the entire story and struggles were not only in vain but will continue to be in vain going forward. Really not a fan of how this all concluded. I was waiting for some big payoff and it was just nothing. |
The ending makes sense to me personally. Is it the ending I wanted? No. But it works. Sadly.
It was said multiple times that Kotaro and Nobuhiko's struggle and fate would never bring immediate change. It only paved the way for decisions to be made in the future, good or bad. Which makes sense, killing the Creation King and making the origin of the Kaijin public has no positive effect on the general racism debate. In fact it makes it worse, because humans now know Kaijin were created as living weapons. Your average citizen will not try to understand Kaijin after learning their inherited fate; they will fear them more because now they know Kaijin were bred to kill. Meanwhile, nothing changes in politics because the corrupt asshole politician is just followed up by another who will sweep all of this scandal in its entirety under the rug. And Bishum is still there with her own agenda. So what is Aoi to do? She's not a heroine; she is very much a scarred individual now. She learned the hard way that holding up signs and chanting words changes nothing in her world. She organizes an armed force to fight what she deems "evil" and thus the wheel continues to turn. To what outcome? We don't know. She is however different from Nobuhiko in the sense that she doesn't deem Kaijin as superior; she brings humans and Kaijin together in an organized effort to stand up as she thinks they are one and the same. Could they potentially have made some sort of "flashback into the future Aoi is president now we're all happy"-kind of ending? Sure. But that would've pissed me off royally because then I would've felt cheated out of seeing how they got there. Personally I wanted Aoi to "free" Kotaro out of the Creation King's shell, walk home with him and end the series in a way that they live happily as a family and organize another stand against the Kaijin hate together with the remaining survivors. End it on a positive note while acknowledging that there is work to be done still. But that's the ending I as an old softy want, it doesn't thematically fit this world. And about the Creation King-thing specifically, I believe what they said could've come true, that someone could keep their free will as Creation King, and Black Sun could've pulled it off, but it was the old Creation King's heart that meddled with the sequence and ruined it. Obviously an attempt to bring back the heart as the final boss from the OG Black. So it's the old Creation King who somehow usurped the process and created another incarnation of himself. If not for the heart, maybe Black Sun, Shadow Moon or Aoi could've been a Creation King with free will. Aoi getting a belt without changing her form was weird, yeah, I expected her to have a Rider form, but Black Sun and Shadow Moon also had belts without Rider forms, they emerged later through their intense feelings, so I just assume they wanted to visualize the concept that Aoi follows Kotaro's footsteps so she magically has a belt now too and will someday get her own Rider form. Weird but I get the idea. But I agree on multiple of your points, some things like the Kingstones made no real sense whatsoever. |
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I actually think the ending is hopeful.
Also, an ending that nails the quintessence essence of Rider. No matter what, whenever evil rises, those who stand up to it will rise as well and oppose them. That's what the ending is trying to convey, while the world may not have magically changed and fixed itself, and there is still evil to inherit older evils, the fact that people will fight endlessly to oppose them hasn't changed either. In this instance, Aoi carries on the torch of resistance and handing it off to the next generation. |
I just finished the first episode and goddamn does it ooze with what I expect of a modern day Ishinomori show. I never saw Black but I very much enjoyed this
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I’ll have to rewatch this again for a real opinion. My tired brain didn’t process everything I saw last night. Didn’t like the ending. Black… has plot issues to address. Back to sleep you people rock
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I took it more allegorical. That Aoi is doing what Kotaro did for her, handing over the ability to fight when necessary to the next generation. And, given how young Aoi is, they can't properly show that without using literal children, or the generational message gets kinda lost. It's not perfect, but I feel it works well. |
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Yeah, I can see why this can be a dealbreaker for some. It certainly left me a bit unsure myself while watching it, but the show had garnered more than enough goodwill from me to just see it as what it was clearly meant to be, an allegory. So, I just allowed myself to pick the charitable interpretation here, and with that, it works great.
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I think that if the show's ending is so divisive and even interpretive, it's definitely an achievement for its creators and a milestone for the entire franchise. |
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Even ignoring the moral implications of the ending, I find this version of Minami Kotaro quite unpleasant. He's unmotivated, lacks any personality or drive, and doesn't feel like a hero or even a human being. He's flat as a board and about as charismatic as one. He just goes through the motions, feeling like he's completely without agency. The fact that they played the original theme over him feels almost like a parody given the lyrics and tone. The original Kotaro's optimism and hot-blooded personality were infectious. He treated every situation with the gravity it had, and was incensed by injustice and cruelty. He'd be the perfect personality type for this story, not the bland husk that we got. Again, this doesn't feel like it has anything to do with Black specifically. Kamen Rider Black was a hero of justice, Black Sun is just a prop. Quote:
One thing in particular that bothered me was the idea that Kotaro taught Aoi how to fight. This is repeated both literally and figuratively, as though he somehow imparted the will and drive to stand up and take action. He didn't do anything of the sort, and I can't imagine he'd be happy knowing she went on to create a terrorist cell comprised of young children. I was half expecting that scene to end with the whole building exploding because a preteen improperly wired a fuse. |
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And of course it's wrong to judge by this site alone, but so far the Black Sun is a rider's analogue of BvS. Whether this film is good or bad, everyone decides for himself, but they talk a lot about him and he undoubtedly shook up the genre. Here is the same situation. Yes, at least the fact that almost everyone scored on Gits and discuss this show shows what a strong impact it made. Quote:
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Finally finished the show. And I'm of...Very mixed feelings about it.
So to get the things that irked me off my chest, as well as maybe getting some clarity about things that I might have misunderstood. I disliked how the Creation King was just an object. Yeah, he did some stuff, but ultimately, he was just a background item that characters argued about. Then the revelation that he has no will of his own? That just felt so odd, especially when flashbacks showed him turning a lab into a pile of body parts before he started to cry. I dunno. I also wasn't really feeling Kotaro. I get the Logan vibe they were going for (And I know this style of aged hero was done way before Logan. It's just the first example that came to mind :lol), but they didn't give him enough life. They lacked a strong reason for why he'd protect Aoi. Yeah, she had a Kingstone, but that was kind of it. He also lacked personality. I get that he's supposed to have basically given up on life and etc, but he doesn't have to be so bland. And the biggest problem I had was the ending. Black becoming the Century King and then being milked for Heaven, despite the series hinting that someone with a strong enough will could become the Century King without becoming a glorified cow? Then dying? Uh, okay. Then Aoi taking a page from Shadow Moon's book and training children to kill and basically becoming terrorists? Nawh, I'm not cool with that. I get that fixing one problem won't solve everything. That's what the ending was trying to get across in that the Kaijin are still being discriminated against. It doesn't fix that it's wildly out of character for Aoi to suddenly turn into a terrorist with a literal child army. Anyway, that off my chest, there was plenty I liked. Aoi, aside from her sudden shift at the end, was a strong protagonist. She literally lost everyone and kept on fighting, which is what I like to see. The themes of racism and prejudice are so in your face it hurts, but I'm glad they addressed it. The show made it very clear that hatred and bigotry prevails because the common man won't stand up to stop it. They'd rather duck their head and ignore it, and hope it goes away. Shunsuke's lynching for trying to stand up to them was a strong moment, and I'm glad it served for Shadow Moon's breaking point. I also really enjoyed the action. Very well done. Them using their torn off insect legs as swords is crazy. Honestly, this show was alright. It's key theme is hatred, and unfortunately, it's not about overcoming hatred, but rather, fighting hatred with more hatred, if the ending is any indicator. |
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In fact why did we even need the character of Aoi to be the main protagonist? Why couldn't it be Minami himself tat was the champion for the oppressed and victimized? Y'know, like the original would have been. Quote:
I think it was all fluff to try and justify why Nobuhiko would want to become the new king, instead of using Aoi as he originally wanted, which really doesn't make any sense to me. Quote:
"Logan-style" weary characters are capable of having a strong sense of motivation. In fact I was waiting the whole time for Kotaro to just explode, react in some freaking way to everything around him, and take a stand to do something even if it wasn't going to fix everything. But no, he just becomes a big stupid bug again and gets milked before dying. Quote:
If you take the ending as a hyper cynical view that we're just doomed to kill each other forever and there's no such thing as true justice or peace, and that the only way to combat evil is to become evil and destroy lives, then it's kind of got a point in that it shows how this is all so ineffective. But what the fuck does that have to do with Kamen Rider Black? |
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Maybe, but it's better than being a Black Widow rider`s version, which could happen too. Quote:
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And why?" this is a question for the director / screenwriter / actor. Perhaps they were too eager to speak out. They may have liked Black, but not the original Kotaro. Or maybe the scandal with Tetsuo Kurata somehow even influenced the shown image. But to be honest, they could take Shin Ultraman's example and change the names of the characters, since they still don't look like their counterparts. Quote:
The main character turns into a black grasshopper. |
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He reacted to things around him, but he always kept the same hyper-stoic air to him. I wouldn't say it made him come across as disinterested, but just disgruntled to everything going on. Quote:
The government is still corrupt, the Kaijin are still discriminated against, and those that try to fight on their behalf are indoctrinated by Aoi. Kotaro's mission of the Century King being killed and the Kaijin dying off is accomplished...Good luck everybody else, I guess? Quote:
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Man, Battle Hopper isn't even alive in this. This show feels like an American adaptation that thinks brief references to the original counts as a good "update." Quote:
The whole thing with the Kaijin doesn't actually make sense. They're man-made, but that's a secret. How is that a secret? |
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I think the first generation of Kaijin was created manually, the ones after were born. There are exceptions like the two Century Kings of course, or recent experiments like Aoi, but I think the majority of the Kaijin population was born and not made by transforming humans. |
Well, I finished the series, so:
Overall, I kinda like it. I liked the designs, the choreography and gore were neat, the music, although repetitive, was nice. I don't have much to say on the stuff I enjoyed about the show. Now for the stuff I didn't like: The series didn't do a good job in the story-telling aspect of the series; a lot of stuff was left hanging on the air, it felt lack lustered in some aspects and other stuff downright didn't make sense. The whole thing with the stones, they didn't really explain the origin of them, or their function inside the kaijins since they can be removed and yet able to maintain their transformed state, etc. For the characters; even though most were OK, it made me sigh at the fact that Kotaro is a convictionless blank slate that only does what the plot drives him to out of seemly convenience. Aoi to me was the worst character of the series. I didn't care for her well being in any point on the series. Mainly because I do not enjoy being lectured by a whiny screeching teenager that doesn't know S about life or the world surrounding her and being a liability more than being useful to the story. The worst transgression was to make her (or at least the writers intention to make her) the main focus of the story while leaving Kotaro essentially on the sidelines. Also I find people are way too prone to forgiveness in the series, you see them at each other throats in one episode, and in the following one they're working together, thought I get they were only working together to achieve a higher goal, there wasn't a good amount of signs of mistrust between the characters while they were in working together. A particular one that made me rise an eyebrow is how easily Nick was forgiven, yeah we know in the end he has a good reason for wanting to become a kaijin, but Aoi and Kotaro didn't know (or they didn't seem to know) and he was forgiven just like that. As for the politics aspect of it, I didn't really mind it, but it felt very one-sided, sometimes preachy or sometimes literally beating you over he head with the message than actually trying to paint the situation in a moral grey. Even when in some situations the kaijins were in the wrong the writers seemed to try to paint them in the right. As for the other side, reducing the concerns that humanity might have towards the kaijin to just be a shouting match of obscenities and essentially be moustache-twirling villains or scum assholes. When there could've been more nuances in portraying on why having around other humans with the ability of turning into killing machines on a wimp is something a regular human would be afraid/opposed to. That being said, the anti-kaijin movement honestly looked more like controlled opposition since they shifted their rhetoric towards immigrants by the end of the series, because like it was said in the series at some point: "a new distraction is needed". As for the conclusion, oh boy... I know it sounds clich?, but it would've been more...hopeful or perhaps more proper if there was some sort of time skip and an adult Aoi was elected prime minister or some sort of high government official so she could enact the changes needed to ensure a better future for the kaijin, but NOPE, Aoi essentially becomes a terrorist leader and start recruiting children into the cause is the worst lesson she could take away from this whole situation. She essentially made a declaration of war in front of the UN. Not to mention that now the government wants to expand the military and the fact that a kaijin killed the former primer minister (though we don't know if that was revealed to the public or if his popularity with the people dwindle) is going to gather a lot of hostility towards the kaijin and possible support towards their extermination, she's getting herself setup for failure. TL;DR: I mostly enjoyed it, but there are things that could've done better and some other that stuck out like a sore thumb. Quote:
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And it would have mattered if Toei had been promised that he would be alive. But all the same claims have appeared before in all previous adult remakes and even in the recent Shin Ultraman, which tried to follow the original much more closely. Black Sun is the fourth such adaptation of the riders and is not much different from its predecessors: the same depressive bloody drama with pretension, crumbling like a house of cards, if you think about it a little. As I wrote before the show aired: I understand that this may not be pleasant, but it is not clear how one could expect something else. I mean, it's clear that you can appreciate Black a lot more than Ichigo or Amazon, but did Toei ever claim to treat him in a special way? |
This may be a moot point, but -
ONE Rider Kick. One Rider Punch. Le Sigh. This had a very “American” feel to it, in some areas, this was great, but the plot slowly unraveled and gave birth to plotholes. WTF was the point of the Kingstones, again??? Why did Aoi henshin (with a Belt with no explanation no less) JUST to keep the same previous form, instead of a Rider one? I wanted SO BADLY to like this. One Rider kick. This the Kamen Rider equivalent to Rainy Dog by T. Miike, just gets more depressing as you go on |
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