Kamen Rider Black Sun (2022)

One of the Best Reboot Ever!

As a fan of original KR Black series, I'm so excited to watch Black Sun because of behind the scenes team. I loved Kazuya Shiraishi's works and Shinij Higuchi, and let me just say that Black Sun has the BEST production quality in Rider franchise ever, so far at least. The visuals are breathtaking, the acting/performances was phenomenal, the story/characters were great, and yoo the SCORE/SOUNDTRACK was mesmerizing.

I'm always a big fan of the story/plot that doesn't hold back and boy...Black Sun really went DEEP in the social commentary aspect and I was shocked on how real it got. I was like damn how they can get away with this stuff, its madness but I LOVED it! The chemistry between Aoi and Kotaro were definitely one of the HIGHLIGHTS for me, probably the best pair I've seen in a while, its just so good. There's one character that I absolutely HATED in the beginning because on how extreme his actions were, but at the end, he's the one that got me emotional the most (HINT: ep 9, the last man standing on the battlefield), SO GOOD!

I also loved how cohesive the switch back between the flashback and present. Its so hard and very complicated to make it flow smoothly but Black Sun managed to made it beautifully connected with each other, especially ep6 and 7 were PERFECTION. Then...the BEST FAN SERVICE in the opening of ep10...just chef kiss! If I have nitpicks, its that one scene/moment when the mantis kaijin in cgi mode and some foreign extras were just unintentionally funny lol but still it doesn't really took me out of the series. Finally, I'm very glad and so SATISFIED that I got to witness this 50th anniversary project from Ishinomori's legacy and I hope Toei keep up this standard and quality for their upcoming big, high budget project like Black Sun. Its crazy that we just got Fuuto PI anime which is I also LOVED, then Black Sun and now I can't wait for SHIN KAMEN RIDER next year! So good to be a long time KR fan.

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Everything the show did well:
-Really cool action overall that feels very 'raw'.
-Prior the final episode, the majority of the cast is entertaining.
-Pretty good plot and setting overall.
-The rivalry between Kotaro and Nobuhiko is entertaining overall.
-Really cool world-building.
-With the exclusion of the final episode, the show manages to be consistently entertaining.

Everything the show did bad:
-One of the worst finales this franchise has ever had. The last 10 minutes of the show somehow manages to ruin most of the cast, especially Aoi and ruins most of the set-up the show had done up to that point. The finale comes off as the characters just being really dumb and out of character suddenly to make the finally unnecessarily bleak. This personally made the show feel like a waste of time in spite of me really enjoying the show prior those last 10 minutes or so.
-The character played by the ex-rapper of ALI Jua feels really out place despite being a kinda likeable character overall. His overall personality feels like it doesn't fit with the show's tone and his actions don't really make much sense considering his backstory.
-Some of the political elements of the show feel kind of out of place at times and kind of disconnected from the show's messages.
-Some characters feel unnecessarily scummy at times due to their lack of backstory.
-While the cast is indeed likeable overall prior to the finale, they really aren't anything that amazing or stand-out.

There isn't enough info on the production to know why the show ended this way. There's rumors that Amazon Prime, the platform on which this show was released, requested the political elements in the show and that the weird ending was done as a sequel hook. But all of this info is unconfirmed and currently there's no way to know.

Overall:
I could see people giving this show a 6 or even a 7 due to the show being enjoyable for the most part but I just don't feel right recommending this show due its horrible finale, especially when there are far better tokusatsu and action horror shows out there. I can only recommend this if you're really starving for an action horror show since that aspect is done particularly well in this show or if you're a Kamen Rider completionist, just be prepared for an awful finale.

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