Wake up the viewer! Kamen Rider Black RX Episodes 1-2

I've covered Kamen Rider Black, Liveman, Jetman, Time Force and Turboranger. These are all shows I love or like. I might have had some issues with a few of them, and I pointed them out -- but I like the shows nonetheless, and they rank among my favorites.

But what would it be like to cover a show I hate? That would be an experiment. It wouldn't be easy, because I've really lost patience with bad shows. But I figured I'd try. And the show I chose was Kamen Rider Black RX. And I chose this basically because I was really in the mood to watch Black, but rather than rewatch that for the tenth time, I figured I'd give these further adventures of Koutarou Minami a new chance.

I've gone on at length at what a wasted opportunity this show is as a sequel to Black. I'll refrain from going into that right now, but it's going to come up a lot, be warned. Toei didn't care to make this an actual sequel -- they're just doing whatever they please. It's Black, it's Koutarou, it's a license to print money. So the show basically ended up as if Koutarou Minami was thrown into a Metal Hero...

But you CAN'T just look at it as its own separate thing, because there we are -- Koutarou Minami is the star. It's called Kamen Rider BLACK RX. There's references to Battle Hopper and the King Stone in the first two episodes. So, to help begin my journey, I'll just repeat my joke before I started -- this show is the adventures of Koutarou Minami after he was prescribed a massive amount of antidepressants, which accounts for his happy demeanor, and thus what "RX" in the title means.

And so begins the rewatching of RX. Will I make it, and what will be left of me?

EPISODE 1

What kind of way is this to begin a TV show? We're just thrown into Koutarou's helicopter journey with Reiko and their "hilarious" banter. We don't know who they are -- you can't really recognize it's Koutarou off the bat, because he's covered in shades and headgear and his voice and demeanor are so different from we're used to. Reiko's apparently a photographer and taking random pictures of such thrilling sights as the body of water they're flying over. We don't know this is a couple, we're just thrown into this scene, and then they're thrown into being vaguely attacked by three glowing, giant Toblerone pillars, which sends the helicopter out of control, requiring them to make a jump into the sea, as the helicopter flies itself away.

And then...they walk for a while and encounter the helicopter, perfectly landed. They get in and fly off. We catch up with them as they eat dinner with a random family. This is the dreadful Sahara family, who Koutarou inexplicably lives with -- the father of the family is Koutarou's boss. Koutarou pilots helicopters for a living now, which makes him a Kamen Pilot, but the show still insists on calling him "Rider."

And the Sahara parents "comedically" bicker, as well. They're harsh to each other, and each performer is LOUD. Main writer Takashi Ezure is like one of those bad comedians whose material is all moldy jokes about wives and in-laws. Koutarou's always pointing out how, lol, Reiko's so noisy and a bad cook while the Sahara dad points out, lol, his wife is noisy and stupid and a pig who's lucky to have gotten married to the louse. Fun-nee! I HATE the Sahara parents, who are played in an over-exaggerated skit show way, and they're never funny or charming or likable. The show never gives you a reason to really care about them, which makes a later twist not play the way it's intended.

Main writer Takashi Ezure is a poor man's Noboru Sugimura. I might not be the biggest Sugimura fan, but whether it's him or the staff of the Super Sentai shows he worked on, his attempts at weirdness -- as tryhard as they could often be -- at least had SOME color and liveliness to them, a spark of imagination. Things would be bonkers, but at least they'd be madcap or memorable or even off-putting. Weird, random shit goes on in RX, and it's mainly the show doing weird stuff for the sake of showing off SFX it can't afford to pull off, and it's just plain goofy and bad.

Weird thing one: throwing us into this weird Kamen Pilot show and these three random Toblerone spikes that show up.

Weird thing two: the boy of the Sahara family, Shigeru, flips through a book containing a Kamen Rider Black manga, which turns into panels of him reading the manga and seeing spooky skull monsters, which he does.

Weird things three, five, fourteen and thirty -- all of the tryhard stuff at seeming "surreal" and "alien" aboard the Crisis ship. The show's trying SO hard to wow you with stuff it probably thinks you've never seen, but it's all so...pointless. These villains, their aesthetic, their storyline, is so far from what works in a Kamen Rider. They are truly Metal Hero villains, and the tryhardness of seeming so bonkers is straight out of that franchise, as well. (For example: Gedorian's crackhead bouncing and flipping all over the place, hanging upside down 'n stuff.)

These genius villains, prior to entering the dimension, have studied Kamen Rider Black and think they can recruit him. Evidently, they didn't study enough, because they're obviously bad guys and he spent a year killing bad guys. So they abduct Koutarou, show off all of their KRAZY SFX (they can't afford) and make their case. Koutarou tells them to shove it, and so they place him in the Toei Catchall Weird Makuu Space Wannabe Machine -- it's Tetsuo Kurata on wires floating in front of a projection of just a lot of digital ugliness that can't be sorted out by the eye. They claim they're sending him to space, but he's just floating around in front of a bunch of blue-screen baloney. A spike hits him; he seems like he's dead. (He looks all right in the next shot, though, fully awake.) He comes upon footage of the sun and crashes to Earth, now RX. Somewhere, Battle Hopper's corpse becomes the much less impressive Acrobatter. Koutarou realizes he's been reborn and races to deal with those random skull monsters as the episode ends.

Just...what is this crap? Random nonsense. This isn't a way to begin a show. Certainly not a way to begin a show that's following Black, which remember, had one of the best, all-time greatest premiere episodes. Whether you believe in my conspiracy theory that RX originated as its own thing that Koutarou was later shoehorned into or not, this was just a TERRIBLE way to begin a show, but it's especially a terrible way to follow Black. An OK way to follow up Spielban, maybe, but not Black. I would really love to sit down with producer Susumu Yoshikawa and the crew and ask them what they were thinking, why they thought this was good enough to put on TV and as a follow up to Black.

And also: how slapped together is this show when they actually use an OUTTAKE of the opening theme within the episode? Sums it all up right there.

Random thoughts for a random episode:

1) What was the deal with those glowing spikes?! They come outta nowhere and seem to target Koutarou before just showing up wherever the plot demands them. General Jacko eventually says that those spikes are basically Crisis planting their flag and...huh? Spikes and Toblerone imagery is a big part of Crisis' visuals and...why?

2) What was the point of the Kamen Rider Black manga? Obviously another "weird" stylistic choice to show off, having the kid read a manga that's depicting what's beginning to happen in reality, but it could have been accomplished with ANY manga. Making it Black's just dumb and distracting.

3) The main Crisis guys. Oy. They're total Metal Hero rejects, right outta B-Fighter Kabuto. (I actually think I might like the B-Fighter villain designs more, and that includes squish-faced Gigaro with his cape made out of lettuce.) The worst might be that robot guy with the blue bowling ball head and the leather jacket, who they think is some cool, tough Yoshinori Okamoto-kinda villain, but they're wrong.

These guys honestly make me respect Vyram more. The Jetman staff must have been like "Well, we're doing weirdos from another dimension who occasionally show off their weird powers through trippy SFX scenes. Let's not do it as bad as RX, guys."

The Crisis are just so uninspired and lacking and treated as all-purpose villains. Like...I always just think of them as aliens from space. That's how they're presented, that's how they look. But they're actually supposed to be from another dimension, one that's referred to as a basically kind of supernatural realm, an underworld. If they had been depicted in more of a style like that, that would work. That would fit with Black's world. But they look and act like generic alien foes, just like the ones in the Space Sheriffs. They're just a grab bag of generic villains, also taking a page out of that Metal Hero playbook of having factions, one devoted to monsters, one to robots and so on.

Their vibe is more sci-fi, and that's just not something that works with Kamen Rider, IMO, and certainly not the world of Black.

4) A couple of positive things I'll point out.

4A) Maribaron has a goofy design -- she stuck a feather in her cap and called it macaroni -- but I've always liked Atsuko Takahata and think she does a really good job here, one that the show might not deserve. She needed a great Sentai villain to play.

4B) Tetsuo Kurata's the man, so the show has that going for it.

4C) A GREAT soundtrack. Not only Kawamura's BGM, but all of the great Takayuki Miyauchi songs. Miyauchi is one of my favorite ani/toku song singers, I think he has a great, powerful voice, and he's always delivering. The songs are all polished, but it's kind of like another reminder of how far this show is from Black. I mean, I love the Black song collection, but a lot of those songs, to me, are so rough and bare and rock 'n roll and fitting with the cool update Black was supposed to be. It was a youthful soundtrack for a guy like Koutarou Minami.

4D) Jiro Okamoto's also the man. I don't like the RX suit as much as Black's, and when I can shake the dreadful memory of Saban's Masked Rider -- with TJ Roberts and his cracking tween voice dry-heaving dialogue from the RX suit -- I can appreciate RX's suit. I mostly like the hooded helmet, which recalls Ishinomori's Black design.

With Okamoto and action director Osamu Kaneda, the show will give us some decent action at least. Unfortunately, so much of it is at the Makuu Rocks that you just feel the cheapness, and feel like it's more proof that this isn't Kamen Rider, but Uchuu Pilot RX. (Right down to him killing monsters off with a lightsaber knockoff.)

5) One last complaint. Acrobatter is atrocious looking to me. Not only in comparison to Battle Hopper, but...that color scheme is AWFUL. It really doesn't fit with RX. It makes me miss the Roadsector, and you know how I felt about that thing.
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EPISODE 2

RX takes care of those mysterious skull guys, kinda collapses, and trips out. He's taken on a spiritual journey by a mysterious voice who's lecturing him and telling him he has to fight for humanity and abandon hope of a normal life if he hopes to do so and...the thing's a real drag. It's acting as if these new RX powers are any different from the regular kaizo ningen powers he acquired in Black. Yeah, he's no longer human. Yeah, he has abilities that would frighten people. Yeah, yeah. Koutarou's basically like "Your advice stinks, I'm going to do what I want to do," and that's the end of this mysterious voice and spiritual adventure. WHAT WAS THE POINT?! The mysterious voice, by the way, reveals itself to be the King Stone. Yeah...because it talked before. WHAT WAS THE POINT?! Ugh.

Here's how little this show knows what it's doing -- Koutarou's just peacefully having brunch with the annoying Saharas and then gets some Spidey-Sense -- he dashes out and it ends up being some random asshole cop who's just in the neighborhood and spying on the Sahara residence because, well, who knows? This cop is incompetent, played as a goofball by a goofball, you know the type of character. Not funny, but the show wastes time with them and thinks they are. Why are we wasting time with this guy? WHAT IS THE POINT?! This guy's further proof of the show being a frustrated Metal Hero, because he's just like the pudgy support characters in those shows who are meant to be comedic, but rarely are, and the show devotes far too much time to them and overestimates their worth. These guys are toku's Bulk and Skull.

So the android of the week -- played by JACtor Toshimichi Takahashi, who's also the suit actor for Jark, yet the voice of Gatezone -- is wandering around nekkid, Terminator style, and grabs dumb cop and steals his clothes. WHAT IS THE POINT?!

Here's the nice randomness of this show. The monster strikes as Koutarou is out shopping with Reiko and the two Sahara kids. Does the monster approach him, challenging him to a duel? Is Koutarou swept up in some world takeover scheme? No, a car just bursts out of the ground and starts chasing after him. See the thought going into this show? "OK, so how does he get involved in the action. Um. Maybe we could write a story...no, no. That takes time. How about a car just bursts out of nowhere and chases him? Sounds good to me."

What the hell am I watching, man? I guess some of this crazy stuff is meant to be a "spectacle," but...it doesn't work when the production's obviously not wanting to put all the money required into it. I don't know where the money's going, but the show is THIS close to having Zyuranger's yucky dark cheapness to me.

I find it very difficult to believe that these first two episodes were directed by Yoshiaki Kobayashi, who directed Black's tense, dark, atmospheric premiere episode. These first two RX episodes are so choppy, scattered and cheap-seeming. These are the only episodes of RX he directs, so I imagine he's like "Can't help you guys with this turd. Bye!"