Post by Yuri Petrovitch on Jun 14, 2014 14:27:38 GMT -5
"I am the child of the sun! Kamen Rider Black! RX!"
KAMEN RIDER BLACK RX
SYNOPSIS
It's been six months since Kotaro Minami triumphed against Golgom, though not without cost. Finally starting on the road to getting his life back in order, he's become a helicopter pilot for Sahara Airlines and has been adopted by the owners, the Sahara Family. While piloting the Sahara helicopter one day, Kotaro is abducted by the Crisis Empire, an alien force bent on escaping the destruction of their own dimension and colonizing Earth. Powerful enough to prevent his transformation into Kamen Rider Black and recognising Kotaro as an obstacle to their ambitions, they offer him a chance to join them. When he refuses, they destroy his King Stone (the source of his power) and set him adrift to die in space.
But while drifting in space, the fragments of Kotaro's King Stone react with the rays of the sun, dividing it in two and increasing his powers exponentially. Returned to Earth, Kotaro battles the forces of Crisis as Kamen Rider Black RX, and proves to be a formidable opponent, not least because the upgraded power of his King Stone allows him to access two different forms--The Prince of Flames, Robo Rider--super strong and near invincible, and the ninja-like Prince of Nature--Bio Rider. His sentient motorcycle is likewise enhanced as well--transforming into Acrobattler, and (this is unique to RX as no other Rider has his own car) the superfast Rideron.
We soon learn that Crisis' world is a mirror of our own world, and the pollution of our world is destroying theirs, or so they claim. In actuality, it's the evil of the Crisis Emperor that is the threat to both worlds, and if left unchecked, could destroy Earth as well. RX's war against the Crisis ultimately leads to the resurrection and final battle with Shadow Moon, and soon after leads the head of Crisis' Forces, general Jark, to murder the Sahara family in cold blood. Upon committing this atrocity, the final battle begins, only this time, Kotaro stands with the previous 8 Kamen Riders who ally with him to destroy the threat of Crisis once and for all.
ANALYSIS
Ideally, the time to review RX would have been before or after Masked Rider, as it is the main source of fight footage for its American version, but unfortunately, subtitles episodes weren't available to me then. This turned out to be surprisingly fortuitous, as it also is of a companion piece with Skyrider from last week, for reasons I'm about to get into . . .right now:
Kamen Rider Black was a surprise hit, and managed to succeed where Skyrider had failed in being a complete, clean reboot of the Kamen Rider franchise up to this point. At no point in Black did Kotaro ever meet the previous Riders, at no point in Black was it ever intimated that there were any Riders besides himself. There had been plans to follow up Black's success with a completely new series in the works as Black neared its end, but with Black's popularity, these plans were retooled into a sequel series, lead actor Tetsuo Kurata was retained for another year, and Kamen Rider Black RX was born.
RX is a much different series to Black. For one thing it generally has a lighter touch to it--the action is more colourful, the grim consequences and more horror-movie elements of Black are dialed way down (until the last third of the series, anyway, when Jark murders Kotaro's surrogate family) Kotaro has actually learned to smile in six months (and quite often seems to act like a different character entirely) and generally it's a LOT more the kid's show that Black wasn't. This approach, while not very popular with fans of Kamen Rider, did prove to be slightly more successful in terms of ratings than Black did, and RX was exported to several different overseas markets and maintains a healthy popularity even today.
But the most important element of RX is that it introduces and runs with the concept of form changes--that is, alternate versions of the Rider that have different skill and power sets. While Kamen Rider Stronger had the first form change (with his temporary Charge Up upgrade) it was not widely used and functioned more as a final attack. With the advent of Bio Rider and Robo Rider, there were now, essentially, three Kamen Riders in one (and an opportunity to sell two more action figures in the bargain) Of all of the enduring tropes of the later Showa series, this has perhaps been the one most often run with, culminating in the current Rider, Gaim's, who has about 17 or so at the time of this writing.
The relative quality of RX is dependent on how much you thought the mood of Black was a strength. Kamen Rider fans who just want to see a vaguely bug-themed guy thrash monsters will find it quite suitable indeed. The filming and action choreography is quite exceptional for its time and the action quotient is very high. RX looks very cool--sleek and acrobatic, which suits the more flashy, kinetic, style of his fights. Robo Rider and Bio Rider have distinctive movesets and fighting styles and even though the notion of a Kamen Rider tooling about in a cap will never not seem silly to me, the Rideron is actually kinda gnarly.
Story-wise, something's definitely missing. Tetsuo Kurata, who played Kotaro said that the lighter tone rankled him somewhat (the impetus for more humour was excessive to him) but did add that while he generally prefers Black to RX, he did enjoy very much that Kotaro had found some small bit of happiness in the gap between Blacks' rather downbeat ending and RX's beginning. He's not wrong, but some of this is down to the fact that Kurata is not an actor who can do humour very well--being a stoic lone wolf alone against the forces of evil was a much better fit for him than this.
In all, RX is a bit of a mixed bag, especially coming on the heels of Black, which was such an amazing show and was so thematically together. RX just feels like "another one" and while it's good, it lacks the spark, the reason to exist that made Black so good, but it also features some new ideas to the franchise that would lead to interesting places once they were developed in later series, and serves as an interesting breakpoint for the Kamen Rider franchise (as technically it's the final Showa TV series--both in terms that the Emperor died during the run of the show and that no other TV series were commissioned after this one)--it finishes by looking back to the past, and points the way to the future and the Heisei Riders to come.
As a final bit of trivia about Black and Black RX's lead actor, Tetsuo Kurata--after years of declining to return to reprise Kotaro's role, he returned for Kamen Rider Decade, where thanks to some dimensional jiggery-pokery (and trick photography), he was able to be Black and Black RX simultaneously. Also, on an Iron Chef kinda show, Kurata (who owns a steakhouse in Tokyo) demolished the lead actor of Kamen Rider Blade in a cooking competition, in perhaps the opening salvo of the Heisei and Showa Rider war.
NEXT TIME
I'm taking the next two weeks off for a bit of a break and to catch up on some series I've been working on. When the reviews return July the 5th, we'll finish out the completed Heisei series with perhaps the most controversial installment. The Oni, a group of specially trained humans hunt and destroy the Makamou, predators of man that can only be destroyed with techniques involving "pure sound." By chance, Asumu Adaichi, a young boy at a crossroads in his life, meets Hibiki, one of the Oni. The story of their journney will be told in Kamen Rider Hibiki:
