[Kurona]

Promise I'm not gonna do an episode-by-episode play-by-play - mostly because especially for longer series and ones I've never seen before, I have difficulty really talking about individual episodes - but. Man. This is the sort of shit I love.

It's not a shot Black lingers on for long or a concept that the episode really stays with much, but it does what it needs to. Kamen Rider Black's just saved a bunch of people, they all look up at him in admiration, and he wordlessly rides off into the night.

OOO reaching out to the man in the Cat Yummy. Build doing all he can for a victimised former prison guard's family. Everything in Kuuga. What I prize in Superhero media above most other aspects, and what I've found so much in Tokusatsu; is the willingness to just help normal people without question. To dive in there and do anything you can to save lives, because you have that power to do so and life is that precious.

Something I particularly love about how Black does it for the first big time here, in Episode 3? Even though like I said, it doesn't spend much time on it; what is there is irreplacably important. Because they're scenes that wouldn't have been out of place if you'd replaced Kamen Rider Black with a Firefighter. He doesn't just leave after he's dispatched the Silkworm Mutant, he goes right back in there and throws off cage doors, tears people out of their silk confines... it's a wonderful scene, and one scarce of dialogue aside from his little assurances like "Hang on!". It's Kamen Rider down to its bare bone essentials. You're not a hero because you beat up the bad guy; you're a hero because you're there for other people when it counts.


Kamen Rider Black so far is very content on being a fairly simple series, but one that's also effective at making me recall why I fell in love with this franchise to begin with. Good episode.