Glam, if you paced the show like that, Biru wouldn't matter AT ALL. He'd be nothing more than a glorified monster of the week, rather than the huge threat to Black that he is.
He doesn't matter at all. He's a mid-boss. A cool and interesting mid-boss, but you get everything you need to know about the guy from the few episodes I chose to "keep".
In fact, I have no idea what you're talking about when you say it didn't have anything to do with episode 34. Black and Biru fight in the Beetle episode, some time passes, and 34 is when he seeks out youknowwhat. It's paced out, yes, but they didn't have any other fights between those two episodes, and it stands to reason that the one episode leads into the latter.
You misunderstand the point I was trying to make, which is that if you fail to watch the gold bug episode then you lose basically nothing going straight to episode 34. Kotaro's first personal victory over Birugenia is little more than background knowledge as far as the plot is concerned, and is only important if you crave a deeper understanding of their rivalry. But as stated before...I don't think their rivalry means much to begin with.
Taken on their own merit, the only way TO take them, none of them are all that bad. They all keep up a consistent tone and consistent characters, and they all strive to have the same high level of energy.
Except that they are. I pointed out a few in that other Black thread I made, but I'll reiterate (Though NeonZ did a good job of explaining it). They are NOT tonally consistent, Gorgom's plans are ludicrously contrived and usually only ever get around to destroying humanity in the most roundabout of ways, there is an almost completely lack of characterization within OR between episodes, "all roads lead to Gorgom" with Kotaro just randomly falling upon a Gorgom plot or making impossible leaps in logic to arrive at that conclusion, and Kotaro himself is practically a side-character in his own show.
Indeed I stated in the other thread that the ONLY redeeming quality of most Black episodes IS the high level of energy you refer to.
By-the-by, when you say I missed a crucial episode in my list, are you just referring to the gold bug again or did I miss another one?
Hell if you applied this thinking to most Super Sentai you'd never watch anything.
I don't like Sentai.
Did you follow his initial Black impressions? I don't find that unbelievable.
He disliked that most monster of the week plots of Black focused on weird operations that somehow would lead to humanity being doomed in indirect ways and were always tied to child of the week. In Black RX, most of Crisis' plans of the week are actually just to kill RX. That's it. Some child might be involved, but it's all much more focused on Kotaro himself.
Kotaro also gets much more screentime and focus in Black RX than in Black, where he often only appeared as the "hero" to save people when the episode wasn't plot relevant, with the chilren of the week receiving large chunks of screentime and characterization for each episode.
Also, regarding it being episodic, Black RX follows up things and has one continuous arc much earlier than Black (with the Kaima world arc in the 10s), even if it still had many episodic stories.
RX seems to address many of his complaints about Black. I believe RX was weaker in other aspects (the main conflict itself, the antagonists, the poor way they handled elements from Black and all past Rider series), but it's easy to see why someone might enjoy it more than Black.
Hit the nail right on the head, this one. Well done NeonZ.
Black's wackiness isn't its problem. It's the lack of tonal consistency and almost completely lack of continuity or character development, forcing every episode to introduce a new set of characters, problems, and behaviors which are very often shallow, unimportant, and cliche if not downright insulting to the viewer.
