[Kurona]

Alrighty, so, I'm 38 episodes into Black! I've got only 13 episodes of Shadow Moon & Black Sun goodness to go!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kiwami

The "problem" with Kamen Rider Black’s shift in tone stems less from the plots becoming sillier and goofier, but from the fact that children become the central protagonists of the episode and Kotaro devolves to a secondary character that comes in later to save the day.

Not every episode mind you, it isn’t as bad as Super-1’s second half, but it is noticeably different. And I put "problem" in exclamation marks on purpose because Black is super fun all around. Some little kids jumping around isn’t really changing that, plus, Black is still allowed to have focused episodes of his own. He isn’t permanently degraded to a secondary role. Like poor Super-1 was. God, I’m still not over that.

... and being this far in, I need to say that this description confuses me because it doesn't really match up with my experience. Are there kid-led episodes? Sure, but only a few; really happens only as much as it does in Ryuki or Ex-Aid. If anything they serve as a nice little break to make at least the opening of the episode feel a bit more unique than Kotaro biking around and just happening to run into Golgom's plot (which only happens halfway through these episodes!). Heck, Kotaro ends up taking over as main character at that halfway point anyway; that recent episode focused on the girl targeted down by Bishium? Looked to be about her at first but it wasn't too long until it turned into Kotaro Minami's Magical Mystery Tour Fever Dream.

If anything, the episodes became MORE about Kotaro as time has gone on! I've mentioned in my last KR Black post that Birugenia forced more competition and direct action out of the high priests, and while they still of course have an approximately 5% success rate; this is still very much true. Suddenly there were a lot more episodes about trying to remove Kamen Rider from the equation, or focusing on one of the two girls, or actively trying to awake Shadow Moon. It's hardly direct serialisation but I find this season got more plot-heavy the more time went on.

Talking of plot... Shadow Moon's woken up! And he is a hell of a threat. What I wasn't expecting was for him to be so mechanical and to feel so much like a machine; there's always a lot of beeping around him and that leitmotif of him clacking his boots creates such an intimidating atmosphere. For the last third of the show I get the feeling it's going to make Golgom even more of a threat and much more enjoyable to watch overall!

...

Is what I would say if my three favourite characters in the High Priests didn't get reborn as generic monster designs that don't reflect anything about them and don't carry any of their character. They don't even use the same elements the previous episode hurriedly assigned to them! Girl General Shadow gets to keep her face at least (because, y'know, she's the girl one; but that also means she gets the standard girl design), Discount Dr. Doom becomes this weird biker cat thing, and the short one that gave off the elder vibe has become this giant buff insect??? Their speaking roles are heavily decreased to what amounts to little more than grunts, they've abandoned their cloaks and with them any sense of actual mystery or power, and it is a damn shame. I was genuinely liking these three and I was so excited to see them alongside Shadow Moon! It's not even that I'm opposed to them getting new more powerful designs because that's actually very awesome, but the way it's done has removed every bit of character from them that made them great and it's difficult to imagine worse redesigns for them. It's a good thing Shadow Moon is as good as he is because man this would have turned me off so much.


To end this on a positive note, I love that Shadow Moon is never referred to as a Kamen Rider despite everything about his appearance, his powers and how he works. Is this a good thing thematically? Well, yeah, but the MAIN positive here is that the title of "first evil Kamen Rider" gets to go to Scissors.