Kamen Rider Black

[Japaneseseriesfan]

They're mid-series rivals both. We can't really judge if Phoenix is any more similar than that until we see how his story concludes.

You could as easily compare Birugenia to Apollo Geist from X.

I know I could have, but Wizard's a more recent example. Besides, they all fall under one category anyways because most of the rivals are always like this.

It's almost like a mould, and the only thing that changes is the colour you mix to get a character, and the spices that you add are the taste of each era or year.

 

[Black Fang]

Both were created because of some solar eclipse

Birugenia was just born during a solar eclipse. The eclipse itself had nothing to do with his creation.

 

[Japaneseseriesfan]

Birugenia was just born during a solar eclipse. The eclipse itself had nothing to do with his creation.

Ah but see, that's the reason why he's important. Just like Kotaro and Nobuhiko, he was born during a solar eclipse, which made him a candidate to become the next Creation King, but the previous one took a disliking to him so he didn't give him the Kingstone.

 

[Scissors]

RX....first, picture the weirdest Black filler episode. Then, try to picture if 95% of Black were like that. Also, if Kohtaro were goofier. There you have RX.
Of course, you could say it has a more consistent tone than Black...

Its very rare for me to defend RX, but I don't think its fair to call it a 95% weird filler show.
There was the Robo-Rider/Bio-Rider arc, which was so well made and entertaining that it almost felt like an RX movie split up into episodes.
Then not very long after that, we got the two Shadowmoon episodes, which I know some people dislike, but the writers did their best to give the fans of Black a more "happy" ending to the story.

Then we got the episodes with the psychic girl, followed by the build-up for the Crisis Emperor's arrival, where we got to see each general have their own little focus-episodes before they were killed off.

Then we got the final episodes, where the Showa Riders returned, and the light-hearted nature of the show got completely blown away after the death of two certain characters.

I would not say that RX was perfect, but unlike Black, it always gave the viewer a little treat between the fillers instead of saving it all for the second half of the show.

 

[Burkion]

I am not going to go into RX.

Not here anyways. I'll do it later, in a more personal manner. But I will say one thing-Black did not need a happier ending, and the fact that RX tried to give it that only shows how much RX does not get what it was supposed to surpass.

 

[Kivat]

Two certain characters?? Is it one girl and one guy? I feel like I know who.

On the topic of ShadowMoon, may I just say he is a beautiful beautiful creature. I look at long lost sibling arcs, and Taiga - Kamen Rider Saga comes to mind. The cold harshness of, reality you can say, is sooo evident I got goosebumps. His brother, for now, is a complete stranger. At least Birugenia is down.

The camera angles on Moon's debut, *claps* panning behind him before Birugenia's demise, the close-ups, everything. Every bit of his body radiates complete inhumanity. I loved it. Can't wait to wrap it up.

 

[Painted_Outlaw]

I look at long lost sibling arcs, and Taiga - Kamen Rider Saga comes to mind.

Not surprising considering the way the Kiva\Saga story ended up was pretty much Black-lite.

 

[Kivat]

Not surprising considering the way the Kiva\Saga story ended up was pretty much Black-lite.

But people around these parts don't really recognize Kiva's beauties. Smh.

Now I know what Black Fang was talking about way back during Kiva's run about how Kiva was Black-esque in certain aspects.

 

[Burkion]

Shadow Moon is something that I feel needed the build up towards.

It's why I don't mind the episodic nature of the show, though I will argue bitterly about the plots Gorgom had as most of them made sense. Not all, but most.

The wait for Shadow Moon builds him up, I feel, so making him show up is a big deal. Then after that the show kicks into high, because once Shadow Moon shows up, its the herald of the end. They can't have something like him around for long before getting into end game stuff, so of course they had to stall before bringing him into the series.

The filler in between was smartly salvaged, despite apparently being temp scripts, and had a lot of great action and great monsters. For filler, it can be worse.

Also Glam, in your list you neglect to have the death of the human doctor played by Hayata's actor from Ultraman, the very next episode after Biru's first appearance. This baffels me because it matters far more to the plot than the silly "Biru tries to one up Roadsector" story you DO have listed, which I do like but is more filler than the former, which involved the death of a semi major character and the showing of Biru's talents even further.

 

[Glamador]

The Biru one-upping the Road Sector episodes goes with the themes I wanted to include in the list and I tried to pick episodes that tied up or continued off of previous ones over one-offs. As such, the black bike episode was an easy choice.

The reason I didn't include the episode where the mad doctor dies is because I felt like he was a completely useless, unecessary character to begin with that only served to make the Gorgom plots seem even more cliche'd and ridiculous. His exit was as meaningless as his existence. He could just as easily have been killed like the singer in the 2nd episode. It was just a way of passing the mid-boss torch off to Birugenia.