[Switchblade]

Ugh... Black RX. I tried giving that show a far shake but I just couldn't get into it. Kotaro feels like a totally different character and while I like his girlfriend, the family he lives with annoy me to no end. Call me weird, but domestic abuse as comic relief just doesn't work for me. Replacing the kid of the week with one constant annoying kid character didn't do much for me, either.

The show as a whole is pretty weird. In a lot of ways it feels more like a Metal Hero show than Kamen Rider (especially with the alien villain council). It's probably not a bad show, but the decision to have Kotaro as the main character again forces it to be compared against Black, which is really to RX's disadvantage. I've heard before that adding Kotaro to the show was a fairly late stage development and that the show was originally going to star a different character. I'm not sure if that's just speculation or reality, but to me it would explain a lot of why Kotaro feels so different.