Kamen Rider Black Sun Episodes 1~5

I grew up on tokusatsu or Japanese special effect shows. Kaettekita Ultraman, Space Cop, Dennou Keisatsu Cybercop and of course Kamen Rider Black. They were my windows to this world that was Japan where Kaijus would attack Tokyo every week, usually at some abandoned mine area or abandoned warehouse and heroes would vanquish evil by shouting the name of their finishing move.

Black Sun is a reboot of Kamen Rider Black and I went into this one with zero expectations. The Anno Hideaki reboots have soured me on reboots of my childhood favourite shows. This is not a Ano Hideaki show and I would be happy if it just did not suck. To be honest my memory of Black is mostly the intro song, his henshin pose, special moves and of course the cool antagonist Shadow Moon.

Black Sun is a more 'mature' reboot. Instead of Kamen Rider killing a kaiju every week with his rider kick, this show is more about how kaiji have been living with humans but are facing discrimination. Though kaiju can change to human form, they have a different smell and people are able to distinguish between human and kaiju. 

The main characters are Black Sun (Nishijima Hidetoshi) and Shadow Moon (Nakamura Tomoya), two friends who were turned into kaiju when they were kids. Black Sun also takes inspiration from the 1960s Japan university protests as throughout the series we see what happened to Black Sun and Shadow Moon as their joined this group called Gorgom and were fighting for Kaiju rights. The protest flashback is so boring and I kept waiting for the twist to happen.

I thought racism was an interesting angle to go with especially the hardline protestors who wished death on kaiju. Alas, I had a hard time caring about any of the characters. Not Black Sun nor the girl Aoi who was giving the UN speech about racism at the beginning of the first episode.

I always thought that one of the genres you can't screw up is the older dude protecting young girl genre and boy did they screw it up. No chemistry, horrible dialogue. Everything feels stilted. I had no compulsion to watch the next episode after the end of an episode. Your average WOWOW shows end with a nice cliffhanger that makes me excited for the next episode while a small preview plays but Kamen Rider Black Sun makes me question why I am hoping for the show to get better.

The action sucks and the only good thing is that there is blood and gore. I am sure any tokusatsu show today has better action. The world building is bad after episode 1. They spent a lot of money on the protests etc but after that there are a lot of fields and it feels like Kamen Rider Black Sun is set in a small town in Mie instead of Tokyo against the political party running the government. I know the original Kamen rider happened in a lot of warehouses but couldn't they have at least done some city rooftop fights? 

I kept thinking why could I not enjoy this show? Have I become to old? Kamen Rider Black is clearly aimed at adults with the blood and gore and protests etc. It raised the target audience age but did not raise the detail in the world building. The script sucks and most importantly the action is boring. I just watched the first episode of Black on youtube and I was entertained a lot more. Kamen Rider Black Sun just sucks. I wanted to like it so much I struggled through 5 episodes. They should have done a more kid friendly kaiju of the week instead. Don't watch it. I am scared to watch Shin Kamen Rider.