Kamen Rider BLACK
 

For most people, Kamen Rider BLACK is among their favorites, as it was the most widely exported among the Showa era Kamen Rider series. BLACK was considerably darker and more serious (but not as gruesome as Kamen Rider Amazon) than any of the past Kamen Rider shows. Kamen Rider BLACK has undoubtedly one of the best suit designs and Shadow Moon is clearly one of the greatest villains in tokusatsu history.

If you haven't seen Kamen Rider BLACK, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

I've been watching Century King's subs and am up to episode 12. It is a fantastic series. While it's pretty formulaic at the point I'm on, it has a heart and old school charm to it that keeps me coming back. The action scenes are fantastic as well. While not as inheritly dynamic as modern Rider shows, there's a lot of good choreography and plenty of money shots.

Oh, and do I really need to to mention the soundtrack?

Long, long ago, twentieth century!

This man is right.

And after Black, why not marathon Rx? More Rider action!

The one thing I will give Decade absolute credit for was the treatment of Black and RX. So manly. And I enjoy the shows. Win.

Black is one of those rare cases where the show totally manages to live up to the hype. It's a great show with a really likable lead character, awesome suit and monster designs, and some of the best music in Rider history. The only part of the show that I don't think is completely successful is the plot structure - there are times when it wants to do an ongoing narrative arc but there are also times when it wants to be totally episodic, which leads to some pacing issues. Still, even the episodic episodes are a lot of fun. For me, Black is easily the best Showa era series and probably the best Rider series in general.

I've tried watching Black RX, too, but I don't like it anywhere near as much. I think it's like the second part of Hibiki - not objectively terribly, but when taken contextually it cannot even remotely live up to the original. RX's tone is too different and Kotaro doesn't even feel like the same character most of the time.

im still waiting for CK to finish up subbing it so I can finish watching it

such a great series

Personally, I just watched the last few episodes with HK subs. Black's were pretty decent so you could actually understand what was going on.

I watched up to episode 47 with Century King's releases and the rest with the Hong Kong subtitles. At the the beginning I was actually thought it was kind of boring, but somewhere around episode 14 it really started to click with me, maybe it was the music, the action or Kotaro being hilariously hard headed but I got really into it. Although the sixth episode will always baffle me.

Which subtitles did you watch it with? The ones I had were frustratedly incomprehensible.

I've wanted to watch Black for a long long time and just never had the opportunity. I didn't even know anyone was subbing it. I'll have to track down the CK subs now...

Did Black remind anyone else of Guyver? Guyver was my first kowingly Japanese toku (sorry I'm one of those who didn't realize at 5 or 6 that PR was of eastern extraction) and my love for it actually led me to discover that there are as a sub-catergory henshin-heroes and that is why I'm here now.

Any way both characters seem god-like at time and that is what really hooked me. When Kotaro is fighting a Silk-Worm kaijin and there's this bridge and all sorts of leaping and stuff.... its bee a while, but YES! That was such a cool show. I have to check out RX though becasue I like that suit a bit more and he has a sword!!