What is UP with KR Black and all these KIDS!?

[MattComix]

It's fair to say that not every episode featuring a kid is created equal. However, I don't really see this is as grounds to dismiss the writing in Kamen Rider Black or the Showa era in their entirety. Nor to be revolted at the idea of episodes featuring kids as characters.

I wish Black could have finished Biru off, but Black's victory was complete before that point.

I do to. Kind of like how I wish it was Kuuga that had gotten to take out the Bat Gurongi.

..but in this case there was something kind of satisfying about Shadowmoon taking him out. It's like all of Biru's bluster about how he should be Century King blows up in his face royally.

It seems to be something that happens a lot of these Starscream type characters (for lack of a better example) who wish they were the main bad guy. They don't even get the dignity of being taken down by the hero but by their own presumptuousness.

 

[Glamador]

It's fair to say that not every episode featuring a kid is created equal. However, I don't really see this is as grounds to dismiss the writing in Kamen Rider Black or the Showa era in their entirety. Nor to be revolted at the idea of episodes featuring kids as characters.

You're reading something in my words that isn't there. I am not dismissing the writing in Black for the kids alone. There are a great, great, great many issues with the writing in KR Black (Up to ep. 33, at least). Needless exposition, voice-over narration as a replacement for character development, simplistic plots with more holes than a colander, "window dressing" female sidekicks, Gorgom's nigh-comically evil plots, and the complete lack of overarching plot progress are notable negatives.

But that's not what I'm questioning in this thread. I'm questioning the kids, hence my focus on that. And that's not to say anything about the rest of Showa since I haven't seen even 1 episode of them. Nor is it claiming the Heisei plots are akin to The Great Gatsby. It's an observation, and a complaint.

The kids may be an audience surrogate, but the audience (even kids) know when they're being played. It's pandering. I said elsewhere when I was discussing why Heisei era KR series don't feel like "Kids Shows" what I think about pandering in children's television. It brings down the artistic integrity and overall quality of the story being told when you can tell something is in there *JUST* so it can appeal to kids.

 

[Beast King]

I'm pretty sure kids didn't factor in heavily.

Don't worry if they're not in your face they'll be in the script via childish jokes and insanely childish humour.

 

[shingamyeonblack]

You're reading something in my words that isn't there.

He does that and he also tries to find a way to stick Kuuga in there.

I do to. Kind of like how I wish it was Kuuga that had gotten to take out the Bat Gurongi.

Huh.


Anyway, yes, there are more kids than usual, but think of it this way: The children are the future, and the battle is for the future. Children should be in the battle. (That's looks like some Battle Royale thing now that I think of it.)

 

[MattComix]

He does that and he also tries to find a way to stick Kuuga in there.

Kuuga was sited simply as another example of having a villain that was always trying to put himself ahead only to be knocked off by the main villain instead of the hero.

 

[MattComix]

The kids may be an audience surrogate, but the audience (even kids) know when they're being played. It's pandering. I said elsewhere when I was discussing why Heisei era KR series don't feel like "Kids Shows" what I think about pandering in children's television. It brings down the artistic integrity and overall quality of the story being told when you can tell something is in there *JUST* so it can appeal to kids.

Interesting. See, I find a character like Shunpei from Wizard who's only point of existance is to rubber face and fall down a lot to be far more aggressively pandering than any of the one off kids from that era. At least those kids have some story function to them in the episode itself.

 

[Glamador]

Nor is it claiming the Heisei plots are akin to The Great Gatsby.

See that ^

See, I find a character like Shunpei from Wizard who's only point of existance is to rubber face and fall down a lot to be far more aggressively pandering than any of the one off kids from that era. At least those kids have some story function to them in the episode itself.

Was meant to counter that ^

It's all a matter of degree. Though Shunpei is certainly one of the noticeable bits of modern writer's-facepalm. Anyhoof, comedy relief characters aren't quite the same. Pratfalls and fart jokes may be immature, but if Comedy Central and Spike TV have taught me anything it's that "adult" shows can have that too.

 

[NeonZ]

I think excusing Black's problems due to its age is pretty misleading, especially because some of Black's problems are pretty unique to it. Yes, they have some similarities to older tokus, but Black's execution is its own execution and some problems come just from that.

The series is structured in such a way that the episodic plots often are just interrupting the main story. While something like the original Kamen Rider is more episodic than Black, without something driving the main narrative like Nobuhiko in Black, the series isn't hurt nearly as much by its episodic structure because there isn't something being interrupted for the weekly battle, and when they need to follow up on something, they do follow up on it. Aside from Hongo's early departure from the show due to his actor's accident, which is rectified later with his return, the show won't start something only to completely break it in the middle. They had a two parter in the first 10 episodes and made one episode that specifically referenced early ones right there too. Meanwhile, in the first 10 episodes Kotaro had completely forgotten Nobuhiko after episode 2 and was just running around randomly in unrelated episodic plots. Although there was a clear episodic structure, the original Rider's didn't strangle the show like Black's did.

The original Rider had a kid as one of the secondary characters, and there were some episodes about a kid seeing a monster and needing the Riders' help, but that wasn't what drove all episodic plots, differently from Black. Also, there are Rider series older than Black that are less episodic than it, like X and Stronger (Stronger mostly due to its second half. The first is very episodic, especially during the first 8 or so episodes). X had a monster of the week every episode, but could carry things from one week to another, like the situation with X's fiancée initially and the weapon plans race and reintroduction of the other Riders in the second half. It even follows up on some stuff from V3 when Tachibana is reintroduced as a man who's still shaken up by Destron.

 

[Lynxara]

Zyuranger is WORSE about it.

I think the random kid parade is a lot less incongruous in Zyuranger. Black has this very grim first episode shot in total B-horror movie style, and that makes the kid episodes really jarring when they start to show up. Zyuranger begins with an episode about saving random kids from Bandora, though, and that's pretty much exactly what the rest of the show is like. Even Burai's death arc hinges to some extent on interaction with a kid of the week.

I want to jokingly blame Noboru Sugimura but, how much of Black was he actually involved in? ?_?

That's an interesting question. Japanese Wikipedia credits Sugimura with episodes 13, 20, 26, 34-36, 38, 46-47, and 50-51. I would say that Sugimura's experiences writing Black were probably a key influence on Zyuranger, but he doesn't seem to be one of the Black's main writers. So it's kind of weird he writes so many important arcs toward the end of the show?

Judging from Black's Japanese wikipedia page, Black's writing situation may have been completely fucked up. The show used ten different writers in total (modern Rider typically uses three or four at most). The intended head writer appears to be Uehara Shouzou, who ultimately only writes episodes 1-4 and 12. After that the guy just seems to up and disappear from the show's production? Which might explain the show's flaccid first quarter. Was Sugimura chosen to be his replacement, maybe?

Maybe at Toei in the 80s, "kid of the week" scripts tended to pile up in a drawer, bought on spec and intended for use if the actual writers couldn't finish a real story in time for shooting. Maybe a lot of Black's kid-of-the-week stuff was the result of chaos among the Black writers, and Toei just pulling scripts out of a drawer and slapping in Black's character names to make sure they'd have something to shoot on time.

Black's writing really is problematic. The show coasts by on the strength of Tetsuo Kurata's natural charisma, the good stuff with Shadowmoon that happens toward the end, and some pretty energetic and entertaining action sequences. I've always heard that Black suffered any number of production problems, and I imagine the writing being tonally all over the place just reflects that chaos.

I still like Black, but I can't really make myself sit here and argue "No, the storytelling is brilliant!!" It wasn't, it's completely fair for OP to call the show out, especially since the cool opening arc does lead you to expect the show to be something it's not. Black is just a show where a lot of the appeal isn't anything rational or artistic, it's in the sheer raw energy that crackles through in the show's fight scenes and dramatic beats.

 

[Burkion]

I can agree with that explicitly.

The core idea of Black's story, what is built towards in the finale, is great, classic stuff...but you have to either skip around, or just take it as it comes.

The last arc is the best one, I think, building up to the big finale, but beyond that, you almost have to forget the greater story to enjoy what's there.

Mind I think it still handles all this better than a series like Jetman, where the tone goes all over the place from episode to episode, down to having out right sitcom level plots.

And, as a whole, I think Black is more tonally consistent than ZyuRanger, which has all of this darkness and drama intertwined with out right comedy or parody level stuff in the same episode.

Case in point, first episode-ignore the kids getting to go on the space ship, this is just that kinda show where that happens...Bandora freaking wrecks a city, killing god knows how many people, while her castle sports a big honking neon sign and then there's just the other goofiness going on sprinkled through out. If Bandora wasn't supposed to be as big a threat as she is, it wouldn't be as jarring to me, but she is and it's not just her.

This makes the REAL drama to come all the harder to swallow. Meanwhile, in Black, the villains never acted out right goofy like that, or did silly things. The tone tended to stay even through out.


(On a tangent note, that's one thing I'll say Mighty Morphin Power Rangers did better than ZyuRanger, keeping a tonal consistency. Rita, as a whole, seemed a greater threat to me than Bandora, with the perfect execution being the Pudgy Pig episodes. Bandora made hers to torment some fat kid, while Rita created hers to devour the world's food supply. Yes, Bandora goes to greater extremes, especially by the end, and more serious things happened in Zyuranger, but MMPR held a greater serious tone over all, I think.)