Kamen Rider Black (1987)

Black!

And finally I finished: Kamen Rider Black. Amazing visual effects, creepy monsters and a well written story (very episodic and long, but still). The protagonist is great, and the villain being another Raider in the end is a good choice. It gives a very dynamic duality of roles. I just wouldn't say it's my favorite Raider so far due to the pacing being a bit of a drag. The episodic feature of the show give the feeling that it should end early. Even so, it remains one of the best rider series. Very dark and creepy with incredible pratical effects. If you have never watched any showa Raider i recomend this one.

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Everything the show did well:
-Kotaro is a really likeable protagonist.
-This show is the closest thing to a Kamen Rider show actually retaining the atmosphere/tone of the first arc of the 1971 show for the entire season.
-Shadow Moon is a great villain.
-One of the best final arcs in the franchise.
-Consistently great action and direction.
-The show does a great job at making Gorgom feel like menacing villains with its cases of the week.
-Great villains and characters of the week for the most part.

Everything the show did bad:
-Other than Shadow Moon the main villains are pretty generic most part. The High Priests aren't really interesting until the final arc. Bilgenia is slightly more interesting than them but he isn't that remarkable of a rival.
-The show's sidecast: Katsumi and Kyoko, take too much of backseat throughout most of the show and mostly serve to take care of the characters of the week rather than actually developing as characters. This alongside the villain problem really drag the show down prior the final arc.

Reasons for the show's strengths:
Despite the show changing producers during its pre-production, the rest of the show's production went really smoothly for the most part. The show trying to be a soft reboot that returns to form but also tries thing a really different way, and having learned from the other time they tried to reboot the franchise with Skyrider, resulted in a show with a darker tone a really unique aesthetics. The staff went all out on the show's first episode taking a whole month to film, which really set the show's atmosphere and how it would be from that point onward.

Reasons for the show's problems:
Due to the staff wanting to keep Kotaro's identity secret + having the characters of the week be the main focus of the episodes in order to show how much a menace Gorgom was resulted in the sidecast getting shafted. Also main writer Shozo Uehara not writing that many episodes resulted in the villains not being as interesting.

Overall:
I feel most people would give this show an 8 due to the show's atmosphere and action being amazing. But the issue with everyone in the cast not being that interesting besides the protagonist Kotaro until the final arc made me lower it down. Still this is a great show and has one of the best final arcs in the franchise so I recommend this show of you're a Tokusatsu fan.

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LONG, LONG AGO, SHOWA ERA

Kamen Rider Black is, overall, fantastic. It may be a great introduction to the series as a whole. The suit designs are great, the stunts are exciting, Kotaro's transformations into Black might be one of my favorite Henshins in the series. It also has a great end credits sequence - the single, isolated Kamen Rider Black marching ever forward. It's a great way to summarize the show in general. It carries itself with a distinct tone - it is dark, and at times perilous, but at the same time it still has moments and episodes of more wild, silly concepts for episodes. While it can sort of effect the tone of the overall series, it also stands to show the humanity that Kotaro wants to keep dear. It isn't perfect, because some of these episodes can really mess with the overall tone of the series, but it's not to a grueling extent like the OG 71 series could be at times. It's not my absolute favorite but it is definitely high up on the list.

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