Kamen Rider X is an amazing series, it's my second favorite series in general (only behind Hibiki) and my favorite Shouwa series. Even though it's sandwhiched between the "legendary" Kamen Rider V3 and the bizarre Kamen Rider Amazon, I've always seen it as the series that finally went a little deeper in exploring the themes of loss, betrayal, and basically having what I think is/should be the most iconic Rider villains of all time in Apollo Geist and King Dark. I thought it was also the first series to really give us a cast of supporting character who weren't...well, liabilities. The twins knew how to use their attributes to their advantage and that could do a lot to just screw with Jin's mind at times.
We're finally will be all able to watch it now! Gather here, all you X Rider fans.
I'm sorry but this series is beyond the spoiler warning point. And I mean this is a thread about it. If you are worried about spoilers, then maybe have the discussion about it in the sub thread.
I've recently finished watching the raws. Anyway, I haven't finished Stronger, Skyrider and Super-1 yet, but, so far, I'd rate it as the best Showa series.
It had the basic structure of V3 or later episodes of the first series, but introduced elements that kept the show moving. Apollogeist also was a very good antagonist, at least, initially. I also liked the style of monster suits used in X better than the ones in V3 or Stronger.
I thought the episodes about the reborn Apollogeist, besides his actual return and the final one, were rather weak compared to everything else in the show.
In the first set of episodes with him, there's this sense of Apollogeist approaching X Rider more and more, until they finally fight. After his return, that was kind of lost, and he just appeared at opportune moments to fight briefly with him without going anywhere. His final episode was good though, so it was a shame that they left that story for a single episode, rather than developing it throughout a few episodes.
There are two things about X Rider that bothered me though, but both are rather minor:
-> Even compared to other early Showa series, the use of dolls/mannequins for stunts was rather badly handled here. Often they used those dolls for children in short dresses or shorts, and they just don't work at all for people with too much exposed skin.
-> X just received too much focus, even though other Riders even had their actors around. Now, this is a fairly minor problem because otherwise the crossover episodes were handled very well. The guests didn't just disappear completely after their episode was over and they were actually story relevant too.
Anyway, it was interesting to see both Tachibana's and Shirou's reactions to another organization appearing after Destron's defeat. Shiro's excitation about another evil organization appearing was kind of creepy to me, but I guess that might have been mostly because I had just read the Franken-chan parody of V3 before getting to that first episode with V3's return in X.
-> X just received too much focus, even though other Riders even had their actors around. Now, this is a fairly minor problem because otherwise the crossover episodes were handled very well. The guests didn't just disappear completely after their episode was over and they were actually story relevant too.
I sort of thought the same the first couple of times I saw those episodes, but after a while I just started liking the approach because the the guests didn't disappear.
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