Post by Yuri Petrovitch on May 17, 2014 19:53:55 GMT -5
KAMEN RIDER BLACK
SYNOPSIS
The cult known as Gorgom has designs on conquering the world with a combination of mysticism and technology. On the eve of the fulfillment of their prophecy wherein the two Century Kings, Black Sun and Shadow Moon will wage war one against the other to determine who will supplant the Creation King (their current ruler) and give them the power to conquer everything.
To put the prophecy into motion, they kidnap two stepbrothers, Kotaro Minami and Nobuhiko Akizuki, both born on the same day of a solar eclipse. With the help of Nobuhiko's father, they are transformed into cyborg soldiers and implanted with the powerful Kingstones, the heart of the Century Kings' powers. Once this is done, they are both meant to be brainwashed as slaves of Gorgom. Nobuhiko's father has a change of heart when it comes time to brainwash Kotaro, and let's him loose to fight against Gorgom and free Nobuhiko.
Committed to freeing his brother and stopping their evil ambitions, Kotaro rejects the name "Black Sun" and fights a one-man war against Gorgom and the three High Priests who rule the cult as Kamen Rider Black:
Gradually, the plot thickens. Annoyed with the Gorgom's high preisthood being unable to kill Black, the Creation King demands the Priests release the ancient warrior (and fellow child of an eclipse) Birugenia, who was sealed away for daring to revolt against Gorgom. Birugenia, operating his own agenda, is as much a liability as an asset to them, but at least is nearly the physical match for Kotaro, for awhile, anyways.
Because Kotaro may be the most unstoppable Kamen Rider of all time. Even though he's fighting a one-man war with two motorcycles, one of which is alive, a secret identity he has to protect lest Gorgom come after his friends, up against an entire organization and carrying around enough angst for several Chris Claremont characters, Kotarao will not yield, no matter how many times he's defeated by Gorgom. He just comes back stronger and in the face of that Gorgom's sure to crack, right?
But as the series nears its end, everything changes, as Nobuhiko awakens, now fully the Century King Shadow Moon (and alas, this clip is not in Japanese or subtitled, but . . .best I can do) Shadow Moon is fully committed to fulfilling the prophecy and supplanting the Creation King and Kotaro may have no hope of saving his brother after all . . .
ANALYSIS
[SPOILERS FOR TWO WHOLE SHOWS UP IN HERE]
For as much as Kamen Rider Black is a troubled production (the show had no less than ten writers through the course of its run) and has a very flabby middle section where nothing much happens in the way of plot advancement (seriously, virtually nothing happens for at least twelve episodes aside from the usual monster of the week formula until Shadow Moon awakens) Kamen Rider Black is considered one of the best--if not the best--Showa Kamen Rider series, and coupled as it was with its Super Sentai counterpart that year--Liveman--made for a one-two punch of Japanese superheroes at their darkest.
They share similar themes--Kotaro is battling selflessly to save his brother from evil, just as Liveman battles to save its friends who have fallen to evil and declared war on humanity (Liveman even has the heroes pleading "Friends, why did you sell your souls to the devil!?" in the intro) Ultimately, Liveman is able to save the Earth, but not their former friends. The best they do is a brief moment where they reclaim their humanity before they die.
Kotaro doesn't even get that. Shadow Moon is wholly committed to his aims, and there is nothing of the brother Kotaro loved within him. Shadow Moon destroys his motorcycle, and even kills Kotaro (he gets better) and Kotaro has no choice but to take his brother's life in the name of ending Gorgom's threat forever. And while he has triumphed, even the small extended family he'd made for himself and fought to protect to replace the father and brother he'd lost are gone, and he's left alone.
But Black's message (usually encapsulated by the narrator at the end of every episode) is that even if the fight is a lonely one and even triumph may leave you with nothing at the end of it, you still have to fight. The consequence of doing nothing is too horrible to contemplate.
That's a heavy message for a kid's show, especially one that is not at all shy about being scary without being gory. Gorgom is often allowed to be genuinely spooky, often enslaving whole towns Wicker Man style or turning people into werewolves, or draining their blood or whatever. Black ups the darkness quotient in a literal sense by relying on a lot of night shots for its action footage, which give the series a unique look lacking in other Kamen Rider series (though Kuuga did a few--basically, night shots are a lot of very hard and expensive work, so you might see a few in the early episodes when the production is flush with cash but not so much as the series moves on) The monster designs have also gotten an upgrade as well, discarding some of the early Showa era "hybrid of monster and machine" for "genuinely terrifying animal/human hybrid."
Character-wise, Kotaro is a back to basics kind of Rider--he's apart from everyone, even those closest to him and utterly determined to vanquish Gorgom, to the point that even death doesn't stop him. He's one of the last Riders to be a straight-up brawler--no fancy rays or weapons or beam attacks here--Black just punches or kicks monsters so hard they explode, because that's how he rolls. If he needs to get stronger, he doesn't get another gadget to power himself up, he just trains harder until he can dish out more punishment. Black's brutalist design makes him stand out in stark contrast to the more ornate Shadow Moon (to further invert the good/evil expectations) and indeed, among all the Kamen Riders, he's unique (when rebooted for the sequel series, Kamen Rider Black RX, Kotaro is given a look more inline with more common Kamen Rider elements, which the sequel series pretty much was writ large) and that uniqueness, coupled with it's dark approach and it's unique place in the timeline (after the initial flourish of Showa Riders, but before the final Showa Rider movies) has made it one of the most beloved series in the Kamen Rider canon.
Kamen Rider Black was meant initially as a clean reboot--it makes no references to Kamen Riders of the past or previous series, and as such, it is a much more accessible series, even if that flab in the middle can cause one's attention to wander. However, if you stick with it, it's actually a pretty good series, though don't be surprised if you wonder why it's so highly rated until Shadow Moon shows up and things start moving--the final arc is really where the show earns its reputation, but you can't really skip ahead to those without losing a lot of the seeds of the tragedy to come.
Ultimately Black was so successful it was given a sequel series, Kamen Rider Black RX, which formed the basis for Masked Rider, if you remember. RX was a deliberate attempt to run the clock back and make a lighter, less grim show after the darkness of Black, and as such it's not quite as lauded as the original, though it was massively popular at the time. It also locked Black more directly into the larger Kamen Rider universe, for better or worse. But that's a discussion for another time. For now, let's just get across that Black is an aberration in the Kamen Rider canon, but an extraordinarily influential one, given that no series of movie after it doesn't owe a little something to it.
NEXT WEEK
Continuing our trip through the Showa Riders, since we looked at Black as an influential aberration, let's look at one that wasn't so successful. Next week, we see what happens when you try to make Tarzan into a Kamen Rider (well, more or less)--you become the shortest running Kamen Rider show ever.
Join us in seven, when we'll look at Kamen Rider Amazon: