[Kiwami]

I finished Kamen Rider Black. It was really, really fun. First Showa-show I finished, definitely not the last. My thoughts below, mild Spoiler warning.

I loved most if not all things about it, as I already said throughout watching the show the suits are amazing, the work behind and in front of the camera is fantastic, the action is awesome, and it does have a plot behind it that binds it together. Not an epic story, but still a tale worth telling.

Of course there’s some stuff that’s not so good: After the initial dark setup and some very mature episodes the tone of the show goes down a lot. Around the middle point the show starts to heavily feature children and their problems and Kamen Rider usually is the guy who’s just around when Golgom plans something nasty and children are in trouble. In fact many if not all later episodes start with a child facing an issue, which somehow ties into Golgom doing evil stuff and then Rider saves the day. They even have a children fighting squad in there, believe it or not.

That’s not that bad, as most of these problems are still relevant to children worldwide today and they do bring a lot of creativity into it to make it work as a Rider-episode (sometimes too much even – the episode where the severed head of a Golgom Mutant helps a child to get over the death of his beloved dog comes to mind), but I like the darker tone of the earlier episodes a bit better.

However, later episodes have something strong going for them, which is the new bad guys. Early on the three High Priests of Golgom are the enemies, they send out the Mutants Kamen Rider faces. That get’s tiresome rather quick though, as there’s no interesting side to them, they share the same goal and aside from plotting and laughing, sending out Mutants, sometimes fighting Rider and cursing when they lose they don’t do a whole lot. That changes drastically when Sword Saint Bilgenia arrives, and he’s fantastic. He’s a Golgom Warrior who was trained to face the challenge of a Century King but he was never chosen by the Creation King to actually take that challenge.

So he has a burning hate for the Century King and he can’t stand the High Priests either, and that’s hilarious. He constantly clashes with the Priests, pokes fun at them when they fail again which makes them in turn really mad and that’s such a joy to witness. Makes the Priests more believable and interesting too.

Bilgenia also brings new setups to the table as he uses new powers and tactics to battle Kamen Rider and is generally a fun and interesting antagonist.

And after Bilgenia there’s Shadow Moon, which is IMO the best part of the show, as the whole setup that Nobuhiko is still trapped by Golgom flourishes and everything the show build up to finally pays off. These last 20-ish episodes are really good. You get some more setups that don’t involve children but instead deal with Kotaro being unable to face Shadow Moon or one of Shadow Moon’s plans needs to be stopped without a children protagonist in there. And the Priests mutate into Great Mutans and take a much more active role now that Shadow Moon is awake and that’s great too.

And the final episodes featuring the battle between Kamen Rider Black and Shadow Moon are really cool.

So yeah, I like this show a lot. The suit work is outstanding, the characters are believable, action is fantastic, and even the bad episodes are sometimes so crazy that they’re very enjoyable. I think I now understand why this show is the best old Rider has to offer.

There are some more points for and against it I could make but I think you get the idea. Anyways, in my ranking this will go quite high, and I had some re-arranging to do too. Here’s my current list, favorites on top, not-so much favorites at the bottom:

1. Gaim
2. Kuuga
3. Kabuto
4. Black
5. Ryuki
6. Agito
7. W
8. OOO
9. Den-O
10. Drive
11. Wizard