Today's Soundtrack: Droids Attack - Mashenomak Strikes Again

In the universe of Kamen Rider Black, there are two universal truths:

1. No matter how big the city is, the titular Kamen Rider is only ever a block away from whatever sinister plot happens to be going on;
2. Anything that happens that could be considered even a little weird is always the fault of Gorgom.

Gorgom is a terrorist organization of evil space wizards. Where did they come from? What is the source of their strange, and ill-defined power? You're only given vague answers to that question, at least for the first 30-odd episodes. What we can say for sure is that they have one primary goal, above all others: World domination.

That's right. It's the 80's, so villain organizations are still banging on about this idea of taking over the entire world. But Cobra, these guys are not. Gorgom has the worst ideas to take over the world that anyone has ever had. Remember, in the previous episode we talked about, they needed to abduct new mothers to care for the eggs of the Crab Mutant. To what end? To hatch... 12 Crab Mutants. Which, supposedly, leads to world domination? Hmmm.

So how are Gorgom going to take over the entire world this week? With "an army of female warriors." If you were here for my article about the Crab Mutant and the new mothers, as soon as you heard that this one was about women again, your asshole probably closed up tighter than Fort Knox. This episode is a tiny bit less misogynistic than that other one, but it's not exactly a triumph of feminist media.

In any case, I've put it off for long enough. Let's talk about Kamen Rider Black episode 24, "The Female College Student's Nightmare."

Part 1: Meet me at “No Touching” Point

We begin with an eery night shot of a crappy, beat-up red car. It's parked near some trees overlooking a body of water. Inside of it, two young-ish adults are having what we can only assume is a deep, personal conversation.

This is classic horror movie stuff, but the problem is that we're in an episode of Kamen Rider. Despite all the mayhem and violence in these shows, their primary demographic is adolescent Japanese boys. So if you think there is even going to be kissing involved here, let alone the copping of feels, well I'm afraid I have bad news. Pull your hands out of your pants everyone. In this universe, Second Base equates to smiling and nodding at your partner, then saying "Be careful, okay?"

Because we've got a lot of stuff to get to in this episode, the writers decided that we need to speedrun this horror scenario. So immediately we see the episode's monster emerge from the water nearby.

We're a total of 10 seconds into our episode, and we're already seeing today's monster. And it looks almost exactly like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, at least at a distance. I guess when you have to come up with a new design for a monster every week, you've probably run out of ideas by like the 15th episode. "Wait, we have to make 50 of these?? Fuck. Alright, this week the monster is just a fucking elephant."

Perhaps the director of the episode knew that the reveal was going to be underwhelming, so they just got it out of the way early. Seriously, this one is not their best work.

Back in the car, the woman puts her head on the man's shoulder, or as we like to call it, "Tokusatsu Third Base." Damn, we skipped the "Be careful" and everything, this woman is hot to trot! I'm pretty sure the next scene after this is just her holding a newborn baby, and no explanation as to what happened in between.

Unless... Some asshole mutant were to spoil everyone’s fun.

This is the most half-assed start to a horror movie I think I've ever seen. The Creature from the Black Lagoon is making the least amount of effort to sneak up on them. The episode has barely started and we've already seen the monster clear as day, and neither of these horny young adults have put their hands underneath the others' clothes. What do I even watch these shows for? Oh right, to recap the episodes on my blog while doing my best Seanbaby impression.

The woman screams "There's someone there!" As if the thing approaching them wasn't immediately visible and obviously a monster. The guy foolishly gets out of the car. After all, if we are doing the half-assed horror movie setup, these people have to be dumb as hell. The guy is a 20-something year old in a Kamen Rider show, so not only is he young and dumb, but he's also dangerously full of cum. Nobody is even kissing in this universe, let alone fucking. It's so chaste that this guy probably won't even find out about jerking off until he's 30, when he blows a hole through the ceiling above his bed.

Unfortunately he’s not going to live long enough to discover the wonders of cranking hog, because he immediately gets grabbed and lifted onto the roof of the car by the monster. Then, from on top of the car, the monster makes the very odd choice to try to claw his way down through the roof (which was apparently a convertible roof the whole time) at the woman.

Seriously, scroll up to the picture that I inserted of the exterior shot of the car. Does that look like a convertible to you? Did this car just have a flimsy fabric roof but the rest of it was a normal sedan? Or are we supposed to believe that the monster is ripping through the metal so easily that it's like fabric? We're only like a minute into the episode at this point, I can't be getting hung up on this stuff so early, I'm sorry.

The woman screams for help, and this ends up being the very rare instance that a Kamen Rider isn't immediately on the scene to help someone in distress. What did you do, lady? Kotaro usually just materializes on his motorcycle nearby whenever someone is in trouble, so you must have fucked up in some way. “Uh oh, someone needs help! Oh wait, never mind, it’s just her.”

The Creature from the Black Lagoon smashes through the windshield and reaches in, and it's here we get our title card.

Tell me about it, how am I supposed to be able to pay for this windshield repair on a student budget?

Part 2: The Unbearable Weight of Massive Hotness

Based on the title card, it's now safe to assume that the monster attack had something to do with the fact that the woman was a college student. Unfortunately, there’s more to it than that. I'll let this straight-faced news anchor explain:

That's right, it's the "No women with big tits will be safe anywhere" scene from that classic movie They Bite, except here it's played totally straight. They really just went for it. "Tragedy today as the wave of kidnappings continues, and more's the pity because, can I just say, fellas? Not bad."

Once again we're doing a horror trope, but being so overt about it that it stops being a trope and starts just being the whole plot of the episode. Yes, we all remember that the Creature from the Black Lagoon had a preoccupation with a beautiful woman. But here it's laid out so overtly, so clumsily, that now it's the viewer's turn to be preoccupied with the question of "Wait, why did it matter that they were hot? Why did he say it like that?"

If you remember back to the Crab Mutant episode, their explanation for why they chose the specific women they were abducting was... Not particularly satisfying, to put it mildly. Here it's even less satisfying, because the part about the college students being attractive doesn't come up for the rest of the episode. It was seemingly just a throwaway line by this news anchor.

Apparently the scriptwriters did not have enough confidence in the casting director to get actors that were hot enough to convey "This monster is specifically targeting attractive college students." So instead they wrote in the news anchor saying it flat out: "These ladies were total smokeshows, you'll just have to take my word for it."

The news anchor finishes the news story by saying "Female students are in a state of panic." Everyone else who isn’t one of those is totally fine though! Furthermore, based on what the anchor said about only hot students being snatched up, I guess not every student needs to be sweating this. Don't flatter yourself, Becky.

The camera cuts to reveal that Kotaro, the titular Kamen Rider of this series, and his friends Kyoko and Katsumi are hanging out at Central Perk the café. Kyoko approaches this stressful situation with the delicacy it deserves:

Got her ass, Kyoko, nice one. Katsumi definitely does not say "If the monster's only kidnapping hot girls, I guess you'll be sleeping soundly tonight, you cow." Again, cannot stress this enough, she did not say that.

Katsumi has to run out the door because she's late for Professor Takayama's lecture. Kotaro is too busy contemplating the contents of his coffee cup to notice her saying this. This will be important later.

Part 3: Katsumi looks at the Professor's Monkey

As the prophecy foretold, Katsumi arrives late for Professor Takayama's lecture. She immediately spills her books on the ground, then embarrassingly yells out loud about it. Now the whole class is looking at this latecomer and thinking "God, I can’t wait for you get abducted, you attractive moron." She sheepishly picks her books up off the floor, where she's helped out by the professor.

Katsumi is caught off guard by his gesture. He requests that she stay after class, at which time he will show her his monkey.

Okay, well, just because it was an actual monkey doesn't mean this isn't clearly a setup for a porno. "Oh Professor, what can I do to get my grades up..." They haven't exactly been nailing the horror tropes, but they're doing pretty good at setting the scene for fucking. The monkey works the camera, you see. Sorry, where am I?

Right, at my desk writing about Kamen Rider, the series where nobody has ever fucked. Katsumi begs for forgiveness for her constant tardiness, but Takayama laughs it off. "It's you! Don't worry about it," he says, followed very shortly by the sentence "Instead, take a look at this monkey." Katsumi immediately has a traumatic flashback to the last time she tried to make small talk with her weed dealer and got stuck in this exact same conversation.

It's important to note at this point that Takayama's lecture earlier was about evolutionary biology. He was talking about Charles Darwin before Katsumi came crashing through the wall like the Kool-Aid man. Now he launches into a prepared bit about how "most people" believe that primates evolved into humans, but there were apparently other intelligent species that could have also evolved into humans as well. Katsumi is secretly wishing that this conversation could also evolve, into literally anything else.

Katsumi nods and is very polite about all this, but in any other situation I have to assume she'd be looking desperately for the Exit sign. Takayama thinks that the key to human evolution is hidden in the noble coelacanth. Katsumi thinks he's full of shit, but he doubles down.

This is usually the part of the horror movie where someone does or says something to imply to the viewer that they might be the real killer, only for it to turn out to be a misdirection and for the real monster to be someone you weren’t even thinking about. But don’t forget, we are on a goddamn timetable here, folks. So yes, this obvious fish pervert is exactly what you think he is.

Part 4: Gorgom is (still) to blame

We don't cut to the Professor hastily throwing garbage bags full of Katsumi's butchered body parts off the side of his boat. Instead, we show him in his laboratory, later that evening. He's seems to be having a heart attack, although maybe he's just being a bit over-dramatic about a sudden bout of acid reflux.

Either way, he needs medicine, which he reaches into a nearby cupboard to grab. But right as he's about to drink it, who should arrive onto the scene but everyone's favourite terrorist space wizards from Gorgom. Yes, believe it or not, they have been to blame for this all along. Kotaro tried to tell you this, and you didn't listen!

Yes, surprise of all surprises, it turns out that Professor Takayama was the one behind the kidnappings, and all that weird stuff he was saying was because he himself is the Coelacanth Mutant. The medicine he was so desperate for earlier gets snatched away from him by the Gorgom space wizard, who mocks him, and says that he turned Takayama into a mutant at his own request. Now, he wants to take medicine to keep being human? More like, you want to take medicine to continue being a bitch. Ohhhhhhhhh!

As the transformation-inhibiting elixir is withheld from him, the Professor starts to go through the process of changing into the mutant.

I don’t want to put the show on blast too much for cheap special effects. This is Tokusatsu, after all. It’s just… The guyliner. Did the director think that was scary? It just makes him look like he’s about to launch into a bit of traditional Japanese theater.

And it’s here where the Gorgom space wizards reveal the sinister plot of the episode. The reason Takayama has been kidnapping all these hot women has been for a “surgery experiment,” which will supposedly lead to Gorgom having an army of female warriors!

Does he say why it was important that they’re female, specifically attractive ones? No! He apparently just really likes the idea of having an army of hot ladies at his command. Honestly, the ratio in Gorgom has been dipping into "sausage party" territory, and it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if we had some chicks around to balance things out. We mostly just have the one with the plastic face mask, and she keeps complaining that she has nobody to talk to.

Except it’s not just Gorgom who thinks that’s a cool idea, it’s the script writers. They once again stayed out too late at the Izakaya pounding Kirin lager and Suntory before finishing writing this episode, and were too hung over to remember to explain any of this.

"Wait, what was Gorgom's plan in this episode supposed to be?"

"I don't know, they want to make a fuckin' army of [burrrrp] hot lady warriors, who cares? Hey if I got an order of that deep fried cartilage would anyone else want some?"

What kind of surgery is Takayama performing to create these hypothetical female warriors? Why is it that one successful surgery equates to “as many female warriors” as Gorgom wants? Seems like you're going to have a problem scaling up this operation if the only guy you’ve got on the task keeps passing on potential subjects because he doesn't think they’re pretty.

The Gorgom wizard withholds the vial from Takayama, and says that if he wants his medicine, he’d better deliver on the surgery experiment. He then throws the vial to the floor, and you're totally expecting it to shatter all over the place, and Takayama is going to have to desperately lick the medicine off of the ground. But… No, the medicine vial just sort of hilariously lands intact, and Takayama picks it up off the floor and drinks it.

This reverses the monster transformation process, and the Professor is back to his human self. Presumably still a fish pervert, but there’s no medicine for that. Except, maybe, getting to finally have weird, disappointing fish sex. That would probably do it.

Part 5: Katsumi’s no-good, very bad day

By the way, you might be thinking “Okay, we’re 3,000 words into this post, surely we’re at least halfway through the episode, right?” Nope. Everything I’ve described above happened within a span of 4 and a half minutes. Tokusatsu shows are usually written with viewers with short attention spans (read: children) in mind. An episode of Kamen Rider is like a shark: If it stops moving, it dies.

Speaking of predatory aquatic monsters, it’s time for Katsumi’s bad dream. We to her asleep in her bed. The clock on the wall shows that it’s almost 3 AM, and she seems to be uncomfortable, squirming. The door opens a crack, and in walks the Coelacanth Mutant.

The show at least does a better job handling the "It was all a dream" horror trope than most of the other tropes that it’s attempted thus far, so credit where credit is due here. But this is indeed the titular "Female College Student's Nightmare.”

Katsumi wakes up, but nobody’s there. Apparently she got in her own head about being attractive enough for the fish monster to abduct. Hey, at least she has a positive self-image. You are pretty enough to get abducted by that fish monster, girl! You can get it!

It's also very possible that she immediately clocked that Takayama was the Gorgom monster, and the weird shit he was saying to her earlier meant that she was next on the list. But she also hasn't figured out that Kotaro is Kamen Rider, and it's been 24 episodes of this show. How many times can Kotaro come back to the café covered in bruises and cuts, and give you a flimsy excuse, before you start to get suspicious?

Nevertheless, this fake-out really fucks up Katsumi’s night. She arrives at the café the next day, still wearing her pyjamas, stumbling around like a drunkard, and collapsing on the bar immediately. Probably like the scriptwriters of this episode did right before turning the final draft in.

Kotaro and Kyoko seemed to be having a great start to their day, so unburdened by not having to worry about getting targeted by the monster that only abducts hot girls who are in college. So Katsumi's behaviour here really catches them off-guard. Kotaro, the smart fucker he is, starts to think that something is a bit off. He shakes her violently and yells in her face “WHAT’S WRONG??” with all the warmth that a cybernetic killing machine can muster.

Her eyes open, and in a daze she mentions something about a strange dream. Was “Strange Dream” the name of the Vodka you were clearly chugging last night? After having her circadian rhythms messed up by a single bad dream, Katsumi is so cooked that she completely passes out in Kotaro’s arms. Look, you can just tell the school that you’re sick for this obvious pervert’s biology class. I would have found an excuse to get out of having to talk to that freak too!

Nevertheless, Katsumi's crippling fatigue is not a ruse to get out of having to go to class, and she is rushed to the hospital.

So it seems that Katsumi has indeed figured out that Takayama is at least somewhat to blame for all of this. That, or the script writers realized that if she didn't say this now, Kotaro would have no idea how to follow up on this.

In the emergency room, the doctor injects her with… Something. It’s here that we find out one of the Coelacanth Mutant’s powers, which is that it can disguise itself as other people. The doctor holds up the syringe that he just injected Katsumi with, then the disguise falls away and it’s revealed that it’s been the Mutant injecting her. Thanks, TV show, it’s hard enough to convince my kids to go to the doctor as-is. Now they think every doctor is a goddamn fish monster in disguise.

But before we go any further, I want to recap what's happened here.

• Katsumi has a nightmare about the Coelacanth Mutant, so she has a bad night's sleep.
• She shows up to the café, suffering from extreme fatigue, so she's taken to the hospital.
• At the hospital, she is tended to by a doctor who turns out to be the Coelacanth Mutant in disguise.

That is quite an incredible series of events. It's very possible that Katsumi's dream was due to some sort of power that the monster has. But that still requires her to be so sleepy that she has to be taken to the hospital, where the ambush can occur. It's a weirdly elaborate way for this abduction to take place, and way more work than just, I don't know, kidnapping her from her bedroom in the middle of the night. You really need a lot of things to go right for this to work.

Anyway. After being dosed by the fake-doctor-who-is-actually-Takayama, Katsumi is able to let out a brief call for help, and it’s directly to Kotaro who picks up her distress call with his super cyborg ears. He bursts into the emergency room, but the room is now empty, save for an empty table. After he enters, the door eerily slams shut behind him. To his surprise, it’s Katsumi who grabs him from behind, wrapping the hospital blanket around him.

She seems to suddenly have the strength of an ape, and hurls Kotaro across the room. When he gets his bearings, he sees some wild shit.

Kotaro moves to help her, but she turns her head and hisses a blue lightning bolt at him, which doesn't hit him but does knock him on his ass.

She flies onto the wall, as if the camera has turned sideways gravity has changed direction. She rolls around on the wall, implying that she's being possessed, but then the blanket flies off of her and attacks Kotaro. Was that Katsumi’s doing? No, because Kotaro flings the blanket back at the wall where it reveals its true form, the Coelacanth Mutant.

So the Mutant was disguising itself as the blanket? How ill-defined is this thing's power set? This seems like a good time to remind the audience that this show has a narrator, who could have been explaining why this is happening this whole time, but hasn't. The narrator chimes in somewhat frequently in this show, but right now? We’re left high and dry. This show could really use someone like Speedwagon from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, just so there’s someone screaming out all the complicated action that the audience might not have picked up on.

Kotaro is also a bit flummoxed by all of this, and demands answers. “What have you done to Katsumi?” Also while I'm at it, why didn't you just leave with her after you dosed her? Did you lure me in here just to fuck with me?

This really got me. Obviously it’s what the villain’s response should be to the hero’s polite request. But “the villain can’t help but explain their plan” is a trope for a reason. If they don’t, and nobody else does, then the audience has to just… Make shit up to fill in the blanks. How is Katsumi currently stuck to the wall like they’re both magnetized? Did the injection change the flow of gravity for her? Is the mutant doing this?

I think the Director may have misinterpreted the line “Go to Hell” as a bit of dialogue for the monster to say, but it was actually the scriptwriter responding in-line to the Director's request for clarification. “Oh, you want us to explain why any of this is happening? Go to Hell!”

This flippant retort from his adversary ends up being the thing that pushes Kotaro over the edge, and now it’s time to deliver a Rider-shaped ass whooping.

After Kotaro transforms, the monster disengages from the wall and meets him on the floor for some traditional fisticuffs, but then the second strange power of this episode’s monster is (finally) revealed. The Coelacanth Mutant blasts Kamen Rider with green lightning, which seems to have the effect of pushing him onto the wall behind him, and causing him to stick there.

Then, he does the opposite with Katsumi, pulling her away from the wall and into his grasp. After that, the mutant and Katsumi both abruptly fall down through the floor. How did that happen? Was that one section of the floor made of paper maché?

It’s only now after a third viewing of this episode that I’ve come to realize that this green lightning is some sort of gravity-altering power. So the green light in this scene must indicate that the mutant increased his own gravity to break through the floor to the rooms below, thus allowing him to make his getaway. Again, this is all stuff that the viewer is forced to infer on their own. Both the mutant and this screenplay are very dense. You really have to go over it with a fine-tooth comb to get all the little details. And again, this has just happened at the… 8 minute mark of the episode?? That can’t be right.

Despite a brief rally there after transforming, this was a pretty big L for our good buddy the Kamen Rider. He finally detaches himself from the wall, stumbles around a bit, but can't seem to make the connection between Katsumi's disappearance and the gaping hole in the floor that's just opened up. I mean, what are the chances that those two things are related?

We cut, and the mutant has brought Katsumi back to the same laboratory where Takayama was getting bullied by the Gorgom wizards before. She's unconscious on a table, but she’s not alone in the room.

A panel of the floor slides aside, and what appears to be a 12 year old boy lifts himself up into the room. He walks over to Katsumi, lying unconscious on a table, and just kind of stares at her for a second. He scurries away as Takayama enters the scene, back to his panel, closing it up on his way. We hit the commercial break with Takayama also staring creepily at Katsumi's unconscious body.

Before we go any further into the episode, it's probably worth taking some time to recap what's already happened:

1. The Creature from the Black Lagoon kidnapped a lady after killing her boyfriend. The news informed us that this has been part of a string of kidnappings of specifically attractive female college students.
2. Katsumi has a weird encounter with her professor where he tried to convince her that it might have been possible for fish to have evolved into humans as well as apes.
3. She immediately has a nightmare about the fish mutant which is so devastating to her sleep schedule that it puts her in the hospital for extreme fatigue.
4. In the hospital, Takayama disguises himself as a doctor to abduct Katsumi, but has to fight Kamen Rider with gravity-altering powers before he can make his escape.

That's a lot to fit in before the commercial break.

Part 6: Kotaro, Crusher

When we return from the break, Kotaro is driving his motorcycle through town. The narrator has apparently returned from his smoke break to inform us that our hero remembered something about the name “Takayama.”

No! Kotaro, you idiot! Takayama was her professor's name!

5 minutes earlier:

Maybe you should be listening when your friends talk, Kotaro! Instead, he concludes that the name Takayama must be referring to this random "Takayama Research Laboratory." Could that have something to do with Takayama? It will turn out that the answer is "yes" but the episode doesn't give you any reason to believe that. It assumes you will jump to the conclusion on your own that there can't possible be another Takayama that this Research Laboratory would be named after. That would be crazy!

Now, in Kotaro's defence, what is this "Research Laboratory" researching anyway? It's a bit suspect to just list your business as a Research Laboratory without specifying what your research is about, especially if your name is shared by an (assumedly) infamous fish-fucking weirdo.

Kotaro's superpower of "Always being in the exact spot where Monster Crime is happening" seems to be in full effect here, because the door to this top-secret facility just happens to be unlocked, and after a very brief exploration he blunders dick-first into what appears to be a... woman storage facility?

Once again, this is either an episode of Kamen Rider or the setup for a very strange porno.

Kotaro immediately recognizes that this is one of the kidnapped college students. He hears crying in the next room, and lo and behold, it's the rest of the kidnapped college students. But they're locked behind bars, as well as some sort of sliding Star Trek door.

Am I right, fellas? Kotaro shushes these women, then hilariously closes the door on their faces. I did say right at the top that this episode was not a sterling example of feminist storytelling. He's not just doing this to be an asshole, though, because he hears that someone's coming, so he covers his tracks and hides behind a filing cabinet.

Takayama and two scientists in lab coats enter the room, to look at how their college girl preservation experiment is going. Ahh, still fresh!

I guess I'm just not seeing the big picture here about this whole "countless warriors" business. But one person who is suddenly seeing the big picture for the first time is Kotaro. From his perfect hiding place, he makes a shocking discovery:

Kotaro, you goof. You're the guy who can't go 5 minutes without blaming something on Gorgom. You were just in a wrestling match with a fish monster who could change the direction of gravity. Is there another supervillain organization that has that kind of juice, and you just haven't been telling us? Of course it's Gorgom, you asshole!!

He also concludes, based on what he's seen, that Katsumi must be here. It's a reasonable assumption to make, but Kotaro also just randomly stumbled his way into the exact spot where they'd been hiding the kidnapped students. At some point he should be getting suspicious of this good luck. We, the viewers know why it's happening, but Kotaro doesn't. He gets to live his life blissfully unaware that his every action was written beforehand by a scriptwriter who's trying to survive the worst Sake hangover of their life.

Takayama leaves, so Kotaro takes this as his opportunity to get the drop on these wimp scientists who've been left behind. Except, one of these curiously strong scientists does a neat little judo throw on him which flips him on his ass. Kotaro fights him off, and grabs the other scientist by the throat. He demands to know where Katsumi is, but the scientist responds to this request in a curious way.

That's right, this scientist files his response to Kotaro’s request in the form of cool vape tricks. Has Takayama been building vape robots in here? I take it all back, Gorgom, you're cool.

The other scientist stands up, approaches Kotaro slowly from behind, and goes for a wild swing. Kotaro ducks, but his scientist friend doesn't. So instead of hitting our hero, Scientist #1 instead punches Scientist #2's head clean off.

That's right, mother fuckers. We've just taken a hard left turn into Robot Town. The second scientist remains upright, despite being unceremoniously decapitated. The wires and circuitry in his neck are now exposed for all the world to see.

Scientist #1 continues his attack, smashing the divider between two empty window frames to show his mighty power. Kotaro lands a punch that makes a "CLANG" sound and sends the robot flying backward, so it pulls out its laser gun and starts shooting lasers that move weirdly slowly at our hero.

Kotaro correctly determines that this situation has gotten out of hand in a big way, so he dives and rolls through a nearby doorway, plummeting to the tunnels below. He starts running, but everywhere he turns, more robots! The place is lousy with 'em!

As this robot attempts to shoot him, Kotaro hits him with the same judo throw that the scientist robot from before gave to him. Only this time, it's super effective! Surprisingly so!

Holy shit! Remember that Kotaro has a cyborg body. So it's kind of hard to know if his ability to rip the limbs off of these robots is because he's super strong, or these very expensive robots are just being held together by pancake batter and prayers. But also, he has no reason to believe that these aren't humans until he sees the wires jutting out of their stumps. So either he's applying metal-ripping force to these potentially-human scientists, or these robots fall apart much more easily than a normal human would.

The scientist robot from before rounds the corner on him, and rips off its lab coat to reveal his henchman disguise underneath. It struggles with Kotaro, who grabs its head and goes for a snapmare takedown, but wouldn't you know it:

Not again! Aiieeee!! This robot's head was also affixed with silly putty and scotch tape. It comes off easily, as Kotaro looks upon his handiwork with despair. “Is this the monster I have become?” Is Kotaro, with his own cyborg body, not the same as these lifeless automatons? Well obviously not, because when you got hip-tossed earlier, your head and limbs didn't fly off of your body like you had turned on the Bloody Mess perk in Fallout 3.

It's a good thing that the robots aren't putting up too much of a fight though, because the situation with Katsumi is escalating rapidly.

Part 7: A Real "Reverse-Big" Situation

Katsumi is standing and staring eerily off-camera, as Takayama informs her of what's about to happen.

We now see that the whole thing about the "magnificence of the coelacanth" before was about Takayama injecting the coelacanth DNA into Katsumi. This is how he will turn her (and presumably countless others) into Gorgom soldiers. He then tells her that she will become "The most beautiful in the universe." Considering how horny this guy is for fish, one can only assume he's thinking of a really sexy fish right now. Just the most erotically charged fish. What fish do you think is the sexiest? Sound off in the comments. You can't, actually. I disabled the comments for precisely this reason.

Back at Kotaro, he's still being chased through the tunnels by Gorgom's army of shitty robots. They may fall apart at the slightest touch, but they are holding laser guns and there's a lot of them.

They seem to have him cornered, when he suddenly falls ass-backwards through a rotating trick wall. Kotaro found the secret door in the same way that my D&D characters do when I've been rolling badly and the DM just gives up. "You accidentally fall through a rotating wall panel, congratulations, you found the hidden room."

Kotaro falls into a deep, seemingly endless black abyss for a few seconds, before landing with a thud on someone's break room table. He probably squishes a day-and-a-half old box of donuts and some half-empty disposable coffee cups on the landing. He's hurt, but alive. Who does he have to thank for this timely save?

Oh great. 5 Taichis. This episode had been blissfully free of any meddling 6th graders up until now. Dammit.

Except there's something a bit off about these kids. "No need to worry, we're on your side" the tallest one says. Presumably he's the leader because he's the tallest. Because this show hates mysteries, another of the boys comes right out and says it:

Oh sure, I've heard that one before. Let me guess, you're some sort of dragon or elf, so you're actually thousands of years old. Uh huh. Look, I didn't fall off the turnip truck yesterday, kid. I've watched an anime that I maybe shouldn't have watched once or twice in my day. I think I know what's going on here.

That's right, for the sake of Gorgom's future, these children "have been forced to take age retardation medicine." Their bodies are 11 years old, and they've been in this facility without aging for 10 years, so they're actually 21. Who is this for, exactly? It's the opposite of a "Big" or a "Shazam" situation. These aren't kids with the bodies of adults, it's adults with the bodies of kids. Whose fantasy is being fulfilled here? I don't know, but I do know that I want to know their whereabouts at all times.

What does Gorgom even get out of slowing down the aging process for these children anyway? The only thing I can think of is that Gorgom wants to get more time for training in while they're young, so that when they're at prime soldiering age, they will have had that much more time in training? But see, that's me doing the legwork for this script again. I gotta start charging for this shit.

In any case, we're just gonna blow right past that without dwelling on it too much, because this episode has more chaos and madness to get to! One of the 21-year-old kids informs Kotaro about Gorgom's plans to create female warriors. But instead of telling him where this is happening, they'll lead him there! Oh, great. So you're tagging along now, I guess. The kids strap on their shitty little toy guns, and they're ready for battle!

Meanwhile, Takayama starts shooting more of his green lightning into Katsumi from his fingertips. That's not a euphemism.

If this is doing anything, it's very hard to tell. It seems like it's just making Katsumi kind of uncomfortable. She squirms a bit under this lightning assault, but otherwise, nothing seems to change. Takayama's threats have been leading to this, and they seem to have ended up as a big ol' nothingburger.

The soundtrack plays a sort of marching band drum beat as the Action Boys Squad ft. Kamen Rider Black makes their way through the tunnels. They're doing the military "one scouts ahead then waves the others through" which is impossible to take seriously here because they're in the bodies of 11 year olds. It just looks like you're playing "GI Joes" on the playground, which makes it extra humiliating for Kotaro to have to play along with it.

Thanks to their knowledge of the underground tunnels beneath the facility, they find their way into the room where Katsumi was to be operated on, only to find out that... She's not there, and neither is Takayama. Shit.

Execution? Huh? Wasn't the whole point of this stupid exercise to create an army of female warriors? Why would Gorgom be executing them when they went to all the trouble of kidnapping them in the first place?

The answer: "Those who cannot bear the surgery are eliminated." Well, it certainly seemed like Katsumi found the surgery unbearable earlier, but this new information confirms that it didn't really do anything. So the surgery didn't work, but she's not dead either, so... Nothing's really changed except that Katsumi is now marked for execution.

This also means that all the time spent showing ominously Takayama staring at Katsumi or telling her he's going to pump her full of Coelacanth DNA was just one big false scare. Cool.

Part 8: A Dip in the Stats

Hilariously, we arrive at the execution grounds outside of the complex, and... All of the kidnapped women are there. Really? Not one success, out of all of those, huh? I guess this is a "you only need one" situation, but is it maybe possible that Takayama has no fucking idea if this procedure even works? Or what he's even doing in the first place? Look, we've all said some shit on a resumé to get a job we knew we weren't totally qualified for.

Hey, Gorgom? It might be time to cut your losses on this one. You've whiffed a few times already in this series, but it really seems like this one didn't even have a possibility of working to begin with. Your mutant just shot some green lightning into Katsumi, then declared the experiment a failure. At least the "New Mothers" plan would have at least ended with 12 more Crab Mutants. Also, one of the 21-year-old boys knew that the failures were sent for execution, so this wasn't even the first time he'd done this!

In this case, it seems like this perverted college professor told you that he'd give you an army of hot female warriors in exchange for you turning him into a fish monster. Did he specify how he was going to create that army by himself? Did he say why they had to be attractive college-aged women? Did he say why it was important that the warriors were female? Sorry Gorgom, I think you got taken for a ride here. You just enabled this guy's weird jerk-off fantasy, and got nothing in return. Take the L on this one.

Kotaro finds Katsumi in the cages, one of the "failed experiments" awaiting execution. However, before he can break her out, Takayama's maniacal laughter rings out over the courtyard. His mouth doesn't appear to be open while he's doing it. Perhaps ventriloquism was one of the other random powers that he got in the deal?

One power that we know Takayama definitely does have is green lightning, which he uses to do... Something to the cages. They give off some sparks, but nothing else seems to happen, except the kidnapped women are now awake. Takayama says he'll hand the women over to Kotaro, but in return, "this will be your grave!" So the deal is, Kotaro gets to free the women, but... He has to die here? Hmmm. Presumably Kotaro was going to give him the same offer in the other direction, so whatever. We've got ourselves a monster fight.

Takayama's voice changes, and he says "This is my true form" as he holds his hands to the skies and begins a much more dramatic transformation than he's had up until this point.

Considering how much more intense this transformation sequence is than the "guyliner" sequence, you'd be forgiven for thinking that he's entering some second, more powerful form. But no, it's just the same "Legally Distinct Creature from the Black Lagoon" as before.

Yep, that's our guy. It's time for the big end-of-episode fight, but Kotaro can't transform, at least not yet. He's still trying to keep his secret identity safe from Katsumi. All this trouble even though she's seen him go 12 rounds with crazy mutants on several occasions, and for all he knows, she was lucid during the hospital fight where he transformed in her presence. How does he know she wasn't conscious for that? She might not have been in control of her actions, but her eyes were very much open for that whole thing. So for all you know, your cover's been blown for the entire episode and this whole song and dance is a waste of time!

Kotaro's hesitation gives the Big Boy Squad an opening to move out ahead of him and open fire on the monster with their toy laser guns. This seems to have an effect, but Kotaro still has to get into hand-to-hand to give the boys a chance to break the captives out of their cages and get them away from the facility.

Kotaro gets hilariously flung at the wall (which means a stuntman gets... flung at a wall) which gives the Mutant a chance to turn his attention to the fleeing captives and 21-year old children. It soon becomes apparent that Kotaro should have refused the help of those kids, because one of them totally eats it here. Seriously.

And with that, the show that is ostensibly for school-aged boys unceremoniously kills one of them off. He even does the whole "Continue on in my honour" speech. We find out that his name is (was) Yuji, and with his dying words, he implores Kotaro to continue doing what he was already doing.

Yeah, no shit kid. Wanna tell me to keep breathing and drinking water while you’re at it?

The rest of the four that once were five take this death surprisingly well. They're battle-hardened warriors now, after all. Kotaro, on the other hand, is pissed. Considering how bad his child death stats got in the last episode we talked about, he kind of needed this one to go well.

But wait, don't forget! That kid was actually 21 years old, so technically he wasn't a child when he died! Which means Kotaro's child death stats for this episode are still firmly in the...

And with Katsumi off the field, Kotaro can finally cut loose as Kamen Rider and get some fucking work done.

The Rider strikes his coolest pose on the wall of the courtyard, but this makes him a very juicy and inviting target for a big blast of energy from the Mutant. This sends him flailing off the wall, but wait! Ha ha, you fool! This was exactly what he wanted, because he immediately kicks off the wall, into a flying punch! Which the Mutant catches, easily, and then flips him overhead, onto his ass. Well. It looked cool anyways.

It's seeming difficult for Kamen Rider to get the upper hand on this mutant, who still has the green lightning at his disposal. And now we find out that there was yet another secret superpower that this mutant has been hiding from us.

He turns into a glowing ball of energy, like he's in Metroid and he just found the Screw Attack. He bounces around the walls of this tunnel, mostly to no effect except to confuse Kamen Rider. When he re-substantiates, he's got the Rider in a hold from behind. With this Full Nelson hold locked in, he starts cooking Kamen Rider with his lightning.

How does the Rider get out of this predicament? By, uh, exploding.

What happened here? We saw that the Mutant's green lightning was causing Kamen Rider's suit to overload, but the explosion that went off seemed like it should have killed both of them instantly. Instead, the blast sends Kamen Rider flying out of the tunnel, and slamming into the far wall again. At least this time he was wearing a helmet.

But surely, if the Coelacanth Mutant was caught in that blast, he'd almost certainly be dead too... Right? Ha ha. Nope. He's not exactly moving at a brisk pace, but he is moving. The blast seems to have done something to him, but he's not quite ready to throw in the towel.

Luckily, the monster’s hit points are now low enough that Kamen Rider can hit his finishing maneuver. Say it if you know it! Rider kick!

Okay so this time he's definitely dead. Nobody comes back from the Rider Kick. You never saw someone eat a Stone Cold Stunner and just get back up and keep walking around, did you?

The Coelacanth Mutant's destruction seems to even cause the laboratory where they were keeping the captive students to erupt in flames. Computer panels just start lighting on fire and shooting sparks out. It's a mess in there.

With that, "Takayama Research Laboratory" is no more. Did the Coelacanth Mutant have some sort of kill switch attached to his heart, that set off a bunch of bombs on its death? Did the energy erupt from its body on its death, and go straight to the room with all the computers in it? Who knows.

Epilogue: Scram, kids

There's one loose end to tie up. The captive college students, and making sure they're all o-Hahahaha no of course not, who gives a fuck about them. No, we need to see off the remaining four 21-year olds.

The voiceover tells us that now that these kids are free from Gorgom, and they can go back to being normal children. I don't know how these kids can just re-enter society, they'd be so damn annoying. Like, what, this kid's gonna come over to your house for a sleepover, and constantly remind you that "Technically I'm actually 22 years old now" SHUT UP, KID, I DON'T CARE THAT YOU'RE ALLOWED TO WATCH R-RATED MOVIES

In Conclusion

Ahem. With the sendoff of the "Reverse-Big" children, that takes us to the end of the episode, which means it's time to ask once again: What did we learn here?

1. If a weird, sweaty pervert approaches your evil organization and promises that he'll give you an army of the hottest college girls you've ever seen in your life, and all he wants in return is to be turned into the Creature from the Black Lagoon, read the fine print. Set some milestones, get some guarantees up front. Make him explain why he only wants to convert young, hot women into soldiers, even if you think that's a good idea!
2. If there's a monster out kidnapping young, college-aged women, and you're worried that you might be next, take a look in the mirror and ask "Am I a total uggo?" If the answer is yes, then you're probably fine.
3. Robots seem dangerous, but their heads and arms pop off pretty easily. Seriously, just try it. Find someone who you suspect of being a robot, and just windmill punch their head off. It's fun!
4. The Japenese equivalent of making out in a car in a horror movie is putting your head on your beloved's shoulder. Seriously, these Japanese monsters will stand for none of that shit. They hate it.
5. If you're a scriptwriter, and you don't have any confidence in your casting director to cast hot people, you can just have a news anchor say they were hot. The audience will have no choice but to agree!

But what did Gorgom learn?

That’s what we the audience learned, but what, if anything, did Gorgom learn in this episode? Probably nothing, because they’ll certainly be back at it next week. Still, this one had to be bruising. You wasted whatever precious juice you’ve been using to create mutants on… This guy.

Instead of delivering you the army of super-soldiers you were promised, he used the opportunity to act out his “horny monster” fetish by kidnapping the hottest women in his evolutionary biology class and then tickling them with his green lightning. Once again, not a euphemism.

Not only that, but Kamen Rider was also able to bust up both your robot scientist army and your “Benjamin Button“ science experiment, both almost by accident. He turned your (probably very expensive) robots into a pile of assorted body parts, like they were the leftovers of a bunch of “battle damage” action figures from the 90’s. And even though he had the pile of scrap, he didn’t even have to build an Iron Man suit to do it! He had his own suit, that he didn't even use!

The only casualty you were able to extract from the enemy side was one of the children who you spent 10 years doing scientific experiments on! Your stupid mutant killed your own science project! Oh, Gorgom.

No matter which way you slice it, this was a rout. If this were anyone else, you’d have to assume that this would prompt some introspection on the part of the evil space wizards. But nope, we’re not even halfway through the series at this point, and if they actually smartened up, we wouldn’t have a show. Otherwise there’s no way Kotaro has been surviving this long on his intuition and grit alone. He's kind of an oaf, and needs his enemy to be equally as oafish.

Anyway, that’s the episode. And it only took me... 9,700 words?? Holy fuck! Oh well, I'm not getting paid for this, so I get to be as indulgent as I want.

I included hints as to how you might be able to watch this episode in my previous article about the Crab Mutant episode. I also had a lot of fun with that one, so if you liked this one, I’d say there are worse ways to spend your time. There are better ways too! But you could also do worse. That’s all I’m trying to say.

Today's Soundtrack: RichaadEB - Crab Rave

Alright, I have to get something off my chest. I think I might have watched the wildest, silliest episode of television ever recorded. I'm talking about Episode 13 of Kamen Rider Black, of course.

Kamen Rider Black is the 9th entry in the Kamen Rider franchise, the series that gave us such memorable moments as "Starfish Hitler" and "That time Kamen Rider hid inside of Hitler's coffin." Also other, non-Hitler related moments, I have to assume. In fact, this episode I'm about to talk about has basically nothing to do with Hitler! I think. I'm pretty sure it doesn't.

As with most entries in the Kamen Rider franchise, the setting of Black is a godless nightmare. If you lived in an area that had a transforming superhero in it, you'd probably wish you didn't. Every day in a city with a Kamen Rider in it, someone is being abducted, killed, or otherwise bludgeoned by monsters. You can't walk to the bus stop without being clotheslined by some sort of fiend or mutant.

The answer to all of this mayhem is Kotaro Minami. Any time there is monster-related carnage occurring in the city proper, Kotaro is at most a brisk two block power-walk away from the action. If he's on his motorcycle that's even better, he can be pretty much anywhere in the city in like a minute. Very few superheroes have the power of "Conveniently happened to be in the vicinity of monster shenanigans" to the same degree as Kamen Rider.

This time, the perpetrator of said monster shenanigans is Gorgom, a terrorist organization consisting mostly of flying space wizards and mutant animals. Some of these mutants are truly insane looking. I am particularly fond of the Goat Mutant. It's the GOAT for a reason. The reason is because it is a goat.

On the other side of the war on space terror is Kotaro's alter-ego Kamen Rider Black. His origin story is essentially the same as the O.G. Kamen Rider: He had his body replaced with a cyborg body against his will, but escaped before the evil scientists could make him evil.

Because of Gorgom's meddling, Kotaro now hilariously assumes that every single weird thing that ever happens is because of them. Missing persons? That's Gorgom. Got audited on your taxes? Gorgom is surely behind this. Bus left a minute before you made it to the bus stop? Gorgom is to blame. Luckily, Kotaro is almost always vindicated by the end of the episode.

Part 1: What is Coming Outta The Ground

As usual, Gorgom is to blame for the mayhem that occurs in this episode. How? You'll see. But first, we start in the hospital maternity ward, looking over a veritable smorgasbord of newborn babies.

This might seem like a cute way to start your episode, but if you've ever watched this show before, you'd know that this is extremely dark. In almost every episode of these shows, someone has some sort of monster-induced misfortune befall them during the intro. So if you're in the early segment of an episode of Kamen Rider, you're likely moments away from a monster attack. None of these children are safe. Sorry kid, can't win 'em all.

We cut to the back of a taxi, where the new parents of one of the aforementioned babies is talking about how great things are going to be for them now. It's this dad's second time being a father, and he says he'll do his best. That's a fine attitude to have, but we'll see if this guy is able to keep his promise.

The taxi lets the new parents out at their stop, but something's wrong. A strange hissing sound is emanating from the ground nearby. Dad turns around to investigate.

White goop bubbling up from the ground might seem a bit odd, but there's nothing intrinsically sinister about it. "Don't worry honey, it's probably one of those underground laundromats having problems with the suds in their washing machines. You know? The underground laundromats? That we definitely have?"

Unfortunately, this dad was not properly informed that he's in an episode of Kamen Rider Black. He gets closer to it, as he can't help but wonder... What is coming out of the ground??

This new dad has just unwittingly stumbled onto the set of the worst Nickelodeon game show ever. What is this stuff? Aiiieee!!

The force of getting hit by this Peter-North-esque blast (turn Incognito mode on if you're gonna search that) is enough to knock this daddy to the ground. Something is wrong! Surely Gorgom is to blame for this indignity!

We don't have to wait long to find out, because this show's got time cues to hit. A huge chunk of the ground is moved aside and the Christian Devil from the Bible pops his head out of the hole. His mouth is covered in the same foam that got all over that wet dad writhing on the ground nearby, so we've found our culprit. Open-and-shut case! Good episode everyone.

The monster emerges from the ground and makes a bee-line for the mother and her newborn child. Luckily her screams alert the nearby Kamen Rider, currently in civilian garb. Kotaro is so omni-present in this city that you have to conclude that any time something bad manages to happen to someone in this town, he had to deliberately allow it to happen.

Satan Himself immediately rushes the mother and grabs the baby out of her arms. And if you thought that a demon ripping her child away was going to be the worst thing that happened to this woman today, get ready for this next sentence: The baby gets tossed through the air like it's the bouquet at the worst wedding ever.

Thankfully, Kotaro arrives on the scene in the nick of time and makes what might be the most miraculous catch of his entire life.

He probably didn't shut up about this for weeks. And for good reason, because if he had arrived on the scene literally a second later than he did, this article would be about the new saddest 6 word story in the English language. For sale: Baby football pads. Touchdown. :(

Instead, Kotaro makes the save and prevents certain tragedy. This just further cements how poorly this baby's semen-soaked dad is doing on his first day on the job. If it wasn't for the timely intervention of that cyborg bug man, the Christian Devil would be doing an endzone dance over the crumpled body of your newborn child. It would be pretty hard for anyone's first day of fatherhood to go worse.

Kotaro gingerly sets the swaddled child on the ground, before engaging this red-shelled bastard in hand-to-hand combat. Is it safe to just leave that baby there? Who knows. Kotaro just got here, he has no fucking idea what's going on. He heard a scream, rolled up at the exact millisecond he needed to in order to catch whatever it was that the monster just threw into the air, and now he's in a fistfight with what appears to be a nightmare monster from beyond space and time. In other words, Wednesday.

Unfortunately it's not Kotaro's best Wednesday ever, because he gets completely rinsed by this subterranean fiend. Goop Dad is probably starting to feel a bit better about how bad he's doing. See? Not so easy to go ten rounds with the actual Christian Devil, is it? The monster then goes for the jizz attack again, and we get to see the results:

But Kotaro wasn't born yesterday. He instinctively knows to avoid Satan's cum instead of moving his face directly towards it, unlike someone we know. Instead, Kotaro dives behind a tree which ends up looking like it's been hit with Christmas flocking spray. This turns out to be a distraction, however. It's the opening that Lucifer needed to achieve his sinister goal: To kidnap the newborn baby's mother! He grabs the screaming woman and immediately leaps back into the Hellmouth, which closes behind him.

Another kid walks onto the field of battle to survey the wreckage. This is Taichi, the older brother of the baby-turned-football, the firstborn of this family. Taichi immediately runs to his disappointing father's side, who is still covered in white goo and writhing in agony. Kotaro sternly looks on in disbelief at how poorly this all went, with the football baby that he caught back in his arms. And now, we get the opening title card for this episode:

Wait, the mom is the mutant? I thought the mutant was the Christian Devil, and he was abducting the mom. So does that mean that they're going to transform the mom into a mutant nanny? That's kind of fucked up, but considering we just barely-averted a dead baby scenario, that's probably the least challenging thing that's going to happen in this episode. Wait, what would a mutant nanny even do? Now I'm just imagining a fucked-up version of a 1990s Fran Drescher... Actually, this is doing something for me, if anybody needs me I'll be in my bunk.

Anyway, sit tight true believers. They're going to explain what this all means soon, and it's real fucking dumb. But before we figure out what any of this means, we're treated to a charming little montage of the monster going around town, beating people up and kidnapping women.

A news reporter announces that this is "Another incident of new mothers being abducted" and that this was the "Eleventh victim." Kotaro's friends Kyoko and Katsumi are idly fretting about the news in their café hangout, wondering aloud why the monster seems to be targeting only mothers who just gave birth. Haha, oh just you wait ladies, because when you find out, you are going to wish you hadn't.

Kotaro arrives at the café, and sullenly announces that he couldn't figure out where the mutant is hiding. It's not really important to the scene, but it should be pointed out that neither Kyoko nor Katsumi know that Kotaro is Kamen Rider at this point in the show. They just assume that he's constantly bombing around town on his bike searching for Gorgom's agents so that he can... what, call the cops on them?

Taichi, the older brother of the Football Infant, arrives at the café and immediately implores Kotaro to find his mom. He claims that it's his fault she got kidnapped because he's such a bad kid all the time, but I think we can all agree that there's a certain jizz-encrusted individual who needs to shoulder at least part of the blame here. Dad.

This precocious little shit also seems to have clocked that Kotaro is the Kamen Rider, or at least some sort of superhero. Otherwise why would he be beseeching this random passerby to sort out his family drama instead of, oh I don't know, the police?

Nevertheless, Kotaro swears to get Taichi's mother back, and drives off on his sweet-ass motorcycle. Taichi wants to help, so he gets on his own shitty little bicycle and gives chase. Kyoko and Katsumi try to stop him, but either they both have terrible arthritis in their wrists, or this 12 year old boy has the strength of a pro wrestler. Whatever the case may be, the child pries himself free of the grips of these two adult women easily and rides his bicycle off in pursuit of Kotaro.

Part 2: Crab Rave

Alright, we've put it off for long enough. We cut to an interior shot of Gorgom's headquarters. Our friend Satan is celebrating his victories over all those newborns with what appear to be three space wizards, who are wearing white robes and fucked-up face masks that make them look like complete goofballs.

We are finally told that this mutant is not actually The Dark Lord Satan, but rather the Crab Mutant. That makes quite a bit more sense, especially the part where he sprays caustic jizz-foam out of his mouth.

What is important is this next part. One of the space wizards announces, with no hint of irony or hesitation, that "Mothers that recently gave birth are required to care for [Crab Mutant's] eggs." Um, okay. Indeed, we are then treated to the sight of the abducted mothers, now dressed in nursing gowns, walking eerily towards a set of 12 tables, each with a translucent sphere sitting on it.

The abducted women begin to eerily chant "Grow... Oh, egg... Grow..." The camera zooms in on the mother from the beginning of the episode, now smiling creepily at the egg that she's caring for. It begins to glow, and then in a flash, a newborn Crab Mutant fetus appears inside of the translucent egg bubble.

From context clues, it appears that there must be some sort of mind control happening here, but nobody says that. All we know is that the Crab Mutant needs new mothers to care for his eggs. Why do the people caring for his eggs need to be women who have recently given birth? The show does not explain this.

The burden of explaining this insane decision instead falls on the viewer. Is it something to do with their pregnancy hormones? Or does it have to do with their innate need to nurture infant life? Is there even mind control happening here at all, or are these women giving their care and attention to these eggs out of some misplaced sense of maternal instinct? I'm not sure, but all I can say is some men will literally write an episode of Kamen Rider instead of going to therapy to confront their deep-rooted mommy issues.

Instead of explaining any of that, the space wizards tell us that this will create for them an army of Crab Mutants, which they should then be able to use to take over the world. And you know what? Sure, I'll go along with it. It did seem like you only had 12 eggs in that room, and the fact that you deliberately showed that each egg has one single gestating Crab Mutant in it? That means that you're only going to get a dozen mutants out of this batch. Considering how much havoc one of these fuckers managed to cause, 12 more ain't nothing to sneeze at, but I hardly think that's "Take over the world" numbers.

Never mind that though, because we're already back to fantasizing about murdering the Kamen Rider. The same space wizard from before claims that she has a plan that will "kill two birds with one stone." Oh, this should be good.

Part 3: A Stroll in the Park

We cut away to Kotaro, riding his motorcycle. Once again, he hears the sound of a woman screaming. The last time this happened, he barely prevented a baby from getting spiked into the pavement like a volleyball, so he's now on high alert.

The commotion turns out to be due to a baby stroller that's started to roll down a hill. It's gaining a concerning amount of speed down this concrete path. So what does Kotaro do? The most sensible thing anyone could do in this situation: He parks his motorcycle and takes off his helmet.

Smarty-pants chooses to give chase on foot, instead of easily catching up with the stroller on his motorcycle. Whatever, you're the professional Tokusatsu hero, I'm just some asshole with a keyboard.

To his credit, the procedure that turned Kotaro into a Kamen Rider gave him an un-killable cyborg body, so he is able to really haul ass to get in front of the stroller before it completes its journey. He's managed to keep the city's infant mortality rate commendably low today, and he's not about to blow this hot streak.

Kotaro hilariously dives over the carriage and rolls onto his back in front of it to stop it from moving, which looks totally unnecessary and seems to just be the director's way of fucking up some poor stuntman's day.

In any case, Kotaro manages to stop the stroller. Chalk up one more averted infant death for the K-man. He immediately tries to reassure the baby that he assumes is inside of the carriage, but wouldn't you know it-

The Crab Mutant's claw rips through the (hopefully) baby-less stroller, and immediately clamps down on Kotaro's neck.

So to recap, Gorgom's big plan here was apparently to distract Kotaro by presenting him with the possibility of more needless child carnage, and in the brief moment he spent patting himself on the back saving this hypothetical baby, that would be the perfect time to strike. I guess the plan kind of worked. But all the Crab ends up doing is throw Kotaro by his neck, which leads into yet another monster fistfight.

Taichi hits the scene on his 5-speed just in time to see Kotaro once again getting his ass handed to him by this crab monster. Why this kid thought this wispy bachelor was ever the answer to his problems, we may never know. But he then sees the gaping hole in the ground that the mutant emerged from, still open. It's at that moment that young Taichi has the worst idea he'll ever have in his (probably short) life.

Taichi jumps into the hole that the Crab Mutant crawled out of previously, and immediately regrets his decision. He finds himself in some sort of tube with handholds for climbing, which are now just things for him to bang into while he plummets into the abyss. What did you think was going to happen, genius? You jumped into a random hole in the ground, did you think you were going to end up in fucking Narnia?

Nevertheless, Kotaro sees that his child endangerment rate is rising perilously. He finally takes this as his cue to cut the shit and HENSHIN.

In one motion, Kotaro leaps into the air, does a front flip, simultaneously transforms into Kamen Rider Black, and executes a glowing punch. It admittedly looks fucking sweet. Hey, I'm not made of stone. Every once in a while this show does something totally bad-ass.

You know who doesn't think this is bad-ass? The Crab Mutant, who completely no-sells this punch. His fist was glowing and everything! Kamen Rider tries some more karate on Mr. Crabs, but even his strongest attack bounces off of the shell of his enemy. It's nothing to be ashamed of, 1 in 3 men will experience this in their lifetime...

Taichi continues to hilariously scream his way down the tube that he's fallen into. He plummets through the ceiling of some underground storage room and bangs his head into the side of a furnace, knocking him out instantly. That's a wrap on Taichi, everyone! Kotaro's attempt at preventing further child death was admirable, but pobody's nerfect.

Meanwhile, the Rider continues to get his shit rocked by this invincible Crab monster. The mutant goes for its signature maneuver: Semen blast! Kotaro doesn't avoid it this time, and is now covered in... Purple foam? What changed there? Did they run out of the white suds they were using before?

The Rider sees the solution to his problem: A nearby stream. Weird coincidence, the Crab Mutant uppercuts his ass completely off of the ground and into the exact stream that he had been lustily staring at. Thanks, Crab Mutant! He thrashes around in the water, desperately trying to wash the grape jelly off of his armour, which pollutes the stream and probably really fucks up some downstream picnickers' day.

The Rider emerges from the stream, cleaned of the foam, and suddenly has another great idea: Run the fuck away! To that end, he summons the only thing in the world that truly understands him: His sentient motorcycle named "Road Sector."

The Crab Mutant says "Road Sector?" as the motorcycle barrels towards him, which I found to be very relatable. I also yell out the names of things that are about to run me over. "2005 Toyota minivan being driven by an 86 year old who should have handed in their driver's license years ago on account of their poor eyesight!"

Part 4: Science Break, with Science Rider

Having bravely fled the scene, Kamen Rider and Road Sector return to their garage. Kotaro, armour literally smoking from the foam attack, stumbles into the corner to rest. It's here that we finally find out the real arc of this episode, which is that Kotaro can't abide this apparent loss to the Crab Mutant, and has to figure out how to stop his attacks from bouncing off of its shell. There was also something about new mothers being kidnapped but... Ehhh, I'm pretty sure Taichi's got that handled.

What happens next is one of the most mind-boggling things that a writer has ever gotten away with in a TV show. Kotaro starts to reminisce about past monsters he's fought, hoping to find some clue in his past battles. This takes the form of a flashback montage, where the show replays a bunch of previous fights that Kamen Rider has been in over the course of the season.

Ah yes, who could forget Bat Mutant... Surely, this random stroll down memory lane is going to come to something, and not be a total waste of time, right?

....

....WHAT.

That's it? The flashback ended up being completely pointless? There wasn't even a clue hidden in one of the past fights that you replayed? And then you just cut to commercial?

This has to be the TV writer equivalent of a teacher who's too hung over to teach today, and instead puts a movie on to keep their students busy for a bit. Hey look, I get it, we've all tied one on during a weeknight once or twice, and had to go into work the next day feeling pretty rough.

But seriously, was there no way you could have tied one of those past experiences into the current situation? Anything at all! "Boy, that Rhinoceros Mutant sure also had a thick hide..." You could have said literally anything to justify the fact that you just deliberately ran out the clock to get to the commercial break!

Well, anyway, I guess I started this stupid article and I have to finish it. See, Kamen Rider Black writers? This is what professionalism looks like.

We return from the commercial break to see that Kotaro is still just sitting in the garage, now out of his Kamen Rider suit. He's looking broken down and despondent, but suddenly gets a burst of inspiration to look at his bike Road Sector, for some reason.

The reason turns out to be that Road Sector has on it some of Crab Mutant's purple... blood? He refers to it as "Crab Mutant's blood," even though it has the same colour as the foam that was sprayed on him during their last fight, so was that foam its blood? Has the Crab Mutant been spraying its acid blood on people like a goddamn Xenomorph?? That's actually kind of awesome.

Kotaro puts the blood into a petri dish, which he conveniently has nearby. Having been transformed into a fucked-up insect-human hybrid isn't the only thing this guy has in common with Peter Parker. He's also a surprise science genius, at least when the script needs him to be. The Thing starring Kurt Russell came out 5 years before the release of this episode, so Kotaro gets the sudden inspiration to light the blood on fire.

To his surprise, the blood is highly flammable. How did he know to do that in the first place? Who knows, I'm sure everyone has had the experience of being stuck in a puzzle in a video game and just trying shit. Kotaro tried the flashback earlier, and that didn't work, but maybe lighting some of this weird-looking blood on fire will do something. It'll surely kill a few minutes of screen time!

Kotaro sees... Something in the microscope. He's hit with another sudden bolt of inspiration, and turns around to find what turns out to be the exact book he needs in that moment, sitting in a pile of other books, second from the top. I can't stress this enough, screenwriting is so fucking easy you guys. Any time your protagonist needs something esoteric to push the plot forward, you can just decide that the thing they need was within arm's reach of them the whole time.

He flips through the pages of this book that just happened to be right behind him, and finds the exact thing he was looking for in like 5 seconds. The precise image that he was looking at in the microscope is present in this random-ass book he's just pulled out of Hammerspace.

"Karado Amoeba... A single-celled creature that thrives in polluted oceans..." Holy shit. You just found exactly what you were looking for? Thanks to this insane pull he's just made, he deduces that this monster must make its home in polluted water. That will be important. The other stuff, about the flammable blood? We'll see.

Despite this astonishing scientific breakthrough, Kotaro is nowhere closer to cracking the real problem. He needs a solve for the Crab Mutant's shell, and he needs it soon. So he does the only thing a Shounen protagonist knows to do in this situation: Lengthy training sequence!

Part 5: Barking up the Wrong Boulder

Kamen Rider goes out to the favourite filming location for Tokusatsu action, the nearest rock quarry. His plan seems to be to jump around like an asshole and punch trees, in the vain hope that a new technique will spontaneously occur to him. Like if he grinds enough tree XP, he'll get to a high enough level to unlock a new type of punching.

While Kotaro is busy demolishing owls' habitats, the camera cuts back to Kyoko and Katsumi, wondering aloud where Kotaro and Taichi are. We know where Kotaro is: Committing heinous acts of deforestation which he thinks will teach him to punch better. But what's Taichi up to? Well, Taichi's finally emerging from the horrible concussion he's incurred after slamming into that furnace, which was presumably hours ago now. He gets up, apparently not dead, and starts exploring the underground facility he's found himself in.

But enough of that, back to Kamen Rider who has now graduated to smashing rocks. He starts throwing huge chunks of rock into the air and trying to break them with his fists and feet before they hit the ground. It looks like a lot of fun, and a great way to blow off some steam.

Unfortunately, a bit of cathartic physical activity is about all he's getting out of this. These rocks simply won't break, no matter how hard he flips.

He's about to find more rocks to smash, until a horrible, upsetting sound rings out over the quarry. Someone plays a tinny recording over a speaker of their dog being strangled! Kamen Rider spins around, searching for the source of the noise-

Oh now you've actually got to be kidding me. There just happened to be a tiny, adorable, and extremely vulnerable animal nearby? Boy, if I didn't know any better, I'd be starting to think that this whole ordeal is some sort of Sisyphean punishment to teach Kotaro the virtues of... not killing infants? Whatever the case may be, once again our hero has been put into a situation where a small creature is in mortal peril in his vicinity, and he needs to act quickly or it's surely going to die.

Hilariously, once again Kotaro has to put his years of sports practice to use, because for some reason...

Wow, that dog really got some velocity off of that ridge. Is it also a grasshopper cyborg? Also, whose job was it on set to hurl this dog through the air? If the director asks who the designated person for dog-hurling on set is, and everyone points at you, that should probably be cause for self-reflection. How did you get to this point?

At least that's the only thing that's gone wrong in this situation, now to take a big sip of water and-

Somehow, the world's dumbest dog managed to dislodge the biggest boulder on the most precarious perch in the entire quarry. You know what, KR? Maybe just write this one off as a loss. That dog was going to get itself (and probably a bunch of other people) killed eventually. They can't all be winners.

But no, Kamen Rider has already prevented one infant death and another hypothetical one (if you count the baby in the runaway stroller that turned out to not be real). He's not about to break the streak.

This time is different, though, because now he's got two problems: The flying dog that's about to become ground dog meat, and the boulder that's about to turn that ground dog meat into a smash dog burger. No time to think, only to act. Kamen Rider leaps into the air, and catches the puppy before it splatters onto the ground!

The boulder may be taking its sweet time getting there, but it's still on its way to crush both of these dopes. Good one asshole, now we're both going to die at the hands of this extremely drunk script. Who's saying that to who? Dealer's choice.

This peril turns out to be the exact motivation Kotaro needs to level up the Rider Punch and Kick. He leaps into the air and punches the boulder with a glowing green fist. It makes a very odd noise that sounds like a church organ player rolling their face across all of the keys.

Blissfully, Kamen Rider finally unlocks the secret of punching through styrofoam rock. All it took was a little bit of animal endangerment, so clearly this means that all he needs to do is ensure that there's always a small creature in mortal danger nearby, and he'll be able to replicate the attack. Now he can go back to all those places where there were rocks blocking his path and get the collectibles hidden behind them!

If I was feeling a bit more charitable, I'd say that maybe, just maybe, you could make a case that a theme of this episode has something to do with the innate parental instinct all humans must have that gives us the strength to protect the young when they're in danger.

But remember, this is the drunkest a screenplay has ever been. It's just as plausible that the writers couldn't think of a second way to create tension aside from "Endangerment of a small defence-less creature," and instead chose to go back to that well for a third time. You can give these writers the benefit of the doubt if you want, but I've seen a lot more of this show than just this episode and I know better.

Part 6: Wait... Why were we doing this, again?

While all this is going down, Taichi is still wandering aimlessly through the underground tunnel network that he's fallen into. Presumably this is the place where the Crab Mutant has been launching his attacks from, and it's surprisingly extensive. How the hell did nobody notice this was there before?

Kotaro begins the search for the polluted water that he thinks signifies the location of the Crab Mutant's hideout. It sure seems like he could literally just jump into a random hole in the ground and he'd find the secret network of tunnels that Gorgom has been using to smuggle the Crab Mutant around with. But again, I'm not the superhero.

As a reminder, we haven't been told why the kidnapped mothers have taken to their new jobs of "mutant nanny" so cheerfully. Taichi finally finds his way into the Gorgom stronghold where he sees his mother eerily chanting at her egg to grow. Once again, she seems like she is having a grand old time. She fucking loves this egg!

Does this look like the face of a person who's working under duress? No, so the only conclusion you can arrive at is that she must be under some sort of hypnosis. Was that one of the Crab Mutant's powers? Gorgom are known space wizards, so maybe one of them prepped that spell for the day?

But this theory is immediately shot to hell when Taichi bursts into the room and alerts his mother and all the others to his presence. Instead of pointing at him and howling like she's Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, she's overjoyed to see him. But not just her, so are all the other new mothers. If they were under some sort of mind control, it wears off immediately upon this random child's arrival. So they were just waiting for anyone else to show up before they stopped acting like weirdos?

I'm seriously at a loss here. The closest I can get to a satisfying explanation is that Taichi's appearance has broken his own mother out of the strange trance she's been in. But that doesn't explain why all the other mothers are similarly broken out of their own trances. Did the appearance of a small child in distress override their motherly brainwashing? I'm beginning to think that Japanese screenwriters of the 1980s had some very challenging attitudes toward gender roles. Might be worth unpacking, but not right now.

Whatever the reason may be, all of the kidnapped mothers immediately agree to follow this random 12 year old boy out of the room where they've been working. So all this time, they could have just left? I guess Taichi found his way through the tunnel system to get here, but how the hell does he know how to get out?

It ends up not mattering too much, because the Crab Mutant appears on the scene, having kidnapped yet another woman to dote upon his monster eggs. The Crab sees Taichi and is very frustrated by his stubborn unwillingness to succumb to that horrible head injury he certainly got moments earlier. It locks its claws around Taichi's neck, which doesn't seem to prevent him from yelling for help in the loudest, most annoying voice possible.

Kotaro is driving his motorcycle around the city when he hears this cry for help (he has super hearing by the way, he's a cyborg bug monster). He starts to zero in on the entrance to the underground lair of Gorgom, hopefully in time to prevent the Crab Mutant from finishing the job on Taichi by popping his head off of his body like a festering pimple.

Indeed, when we cut back to Taichi, he's getting rag-dolled by this monster which is totally hilarious. It's about to finish the job when Kotaro tumbles down from the ceiling into the room (although he does manage to avoid giving himself a concussion in the process, point Rider).

Kotaro is already heating up the butter and putting on the novelty bib in preparation for the absolute steaming he's about to lay on this crab dickhead. But before dinner can be served, one of the Gorgom space wizards appears hovering in the background. She busts out a killer villain laugh. Oh ho ho ho ho indeed.

Thankfully Kotaro remembers that there's a gaping plot hole in this episode, so he uses this opportunity to try to get an explanation: "What have you done to the mothers?!" he beseeches. Come on, just give me something, anything! Say you used hypnosis, say you used gas, anything! Instead, we get:

That's not a real answer! That doesn't explain why these women were acting like the eggs they were tending to were just as precious to them as their own children! But oh well. We gave you a chance to give us a real reason for this bizarre behaviour, and now the Kamen Rider is just going to have to turn your stupid Crab Mutant into Seafood Linguine.

Kotaro grabs the Crab Mutant and does some sort of reverse piledriver where he jumps in the air and smashes both of their heads through the ceiling. It kind of rules.

This Tekken stage break sends them sprawling from the warehouse where they were fighting into a totally new, different warehouse. Now free from the prying eyes of Taichi and the captives, Kotaro can finally quit farting around and transform. He probably could have done it sooner, since the Gorgom space wizard had already referred to him directly as Kamen Rider in the previous scene, in front of everyone. Ah! Nevertheless. Henshin!

Despite now being in his much cooler Kamen Rider form, Kotaro still can't help but get mercilessly clowned on by this walking seafood platter. They tussle amidst the cardboard boxes, and then the Crab Mutant reveals a new ability: It can break off its leg-like appendages and throw them like they were spears. Imagine you were in a fight and your opponent just snapped their own leg off and tried to stab you with the now-fractured bone? That's basically what Crab Mutant is doing here.

One of the crab legs punctures an oil tank that happened to be sitting nearby, because we're secretly in a DOOM level. The oil starts to spill out onto the floor of the warehouse. Flammable liquid, why does that remind me of something... Oh right! Kotaro remembers the science experiment he did earlier to prove that the Crab Mutant was The Thing in disguise had flammable blood.

Kamen Rider throws another can full of flammable liquid onto the ground, and then lights it on fire with sparks from a severed electrical wire that the Crab Mutant had chopped with his leg spear earlier. I've been giving these scriptwriters a lot of shit, but they at least thought to establish a reason for there to be a live wire loose in the room, so credit where credit is due on that I suppose.

Despite all that setup, this stunt really only serves to do a couple of things: Slowly roast the poor stuntman inside of that Crab costume, and to stress the Crab Mutant the fuck out for its last 15 seconds on this Earth. Because it's now time to put all that boulder-punching and puppy-saving to good use.

Even though there doesn't appear to be a small infant or a newborn baby kitten being hurled through the air, Kamen Rider is still able to use his newfound power of upgraded punching and kicking. The show's theme song has started playing at this point, so it's safe to assume the Crab Mutant has already resigned itself to its grim fate.

Now instead of the ineffectual red Rider Punch and Kick, we're now doing a green Rider Punch and Kick. This is what you get in lieu of real character growth for at least the first 30 episodes of this show, so savour it.

Thanks to the armour penetration upgrade on Kamen Rider's attacks, the Crab Mutant finally runs out of hit points. It has a brief moment where it looks like it's going to rally and get back in the fight, but then it bursts into blue flames like all of the previously dispatched mutants have done.

Because the Crab Mutant's death is happening in almost the exact same way as all the other monsters, it seems that the whole "flammable blood" thing didn't amount to anything. Maybe you can say that the fire caused it to be distracted, on account of the whole "my blood is flammable" thing, which allowed Kamen Rider to hit the Rider Punch/Kick combo on it. But again, I am not feeling quite so generous toward these writers.

Epilogue: Hey check out this cool torch

The day is won, another great job by the Kamen Rider. But oh right, there was that whole thing about the mothers and the annoying little kid. Kotaro, still in his Kamen Rider getup, sprints back towards where the captives are hiding. For some reason he's brandishing a burning piece of lumber like he's trying to chase Frankenstein's monster out of town.

He even does a fruity little skip-and-jump before coming to a stop. Yippee!

Let's remember, all these captives know is that some guy ran into the room, did a reverse Final Atomic Buster on a guy in a crab costume, went straight up through the ceiling, then there was some wrestling off-screen, and then an explosion. Now this new guy who they haven't seen before wearing black Grasshopper-themed armour is sprinting towards them, brandishing a lit 2x4 and jumping like a maniac. If you were one of these people, you'd be forgiven for panicking and immediately trying to make peace with your god. But miraculously, this bug-shaped lunatic is actually there to help them for a change.

The captives immediately fall in line behind Kamen Rider, leading me to once again ask why these women were behaving like weird freaks before. Maybe pregnancy hormones are just way more powerful in Japan for some reason, something to do with the diet? Fuck it, I don't know why I'm trying to make excuses for the script writers here. This is 1980's Japan, you know what you signed up for.

Apparently not satisfied with just obliterating the Crab Mutant, Kamen Rider takes the added step of wiping out its entire bloodline. With that burning piece of plywood he was previously swinging at the captives, he lights each and every one of these eggs on fire. Is this the payoff for the discovery about the Crab's blood being flammable? Sure, let's say it is just for the sake of a satisfying conclusion.

However, this also means that Kamen Rider has totally blown up his child death stats for the day. He was doing so good! He prevented the certain deaths of that baby and that puppy, and also did that dive roll to stop that stroller (that had no baby in it after all, but still, it should count)! But then right there at the end, he unceremoniously torches an entire clutch of Crab Mutant eggs. Oh well, there's always the next episode. Considering how much implied child carnage there was in this episode, there will almost certainly be plenty of future opportunities to get those stats back up.

Kamen Rider sends the screaming souls of these unborn mutants down to Hell with the casual demeanour of a restaurant server at the end of their shift, ensuring that the place settings at their tables are arranged properly before they get to cash out their tips and go the fuck home for the day. His dark work having concluded, he runs out the door of this facility as it burns to the ground. Hooray!

Our last shot of the episode is of Kamen Rider on his cool motorcycle, riding through the city. The narrator explains that even though they were foiled this time, Gorgom will almost certainly have some other wacky scheme next week. God dammit! That wasn't it? What else could they have in their pocket that's worse than abducting the mothers of newborn babies?? Are they going to build some sort of cancer-giving ray to point at a No-Kill animal shelter? Fuck these guys! I hope Kamen Rider ends their whole careers!

In Conclusion

So what did we learn here today?

1. That if you throw a baby or a small animal into the air, or push it down a steep hill, a Kamen Rider will spawn out of nowhere to stop it from dying every time;
2. That new mothers get extremely weird when separated from their babies by the Devil;
3. That crabs shoot caustic foam out of their mouths as a weapon (I think), and also their blood is flammable (I think), but that part doesn't really matter;
4. That flashbacks are a great way to pad out the run time of your TV show so you can kick back and have a couple of Sapporos, which you clearly earned for all of the great work you've been doing;
5. That if you see semen bubbling out of the ground, don't put your face close to it, that's the Devil's jizz.

And that's the episode, as well as this article. Thanks for humouring me, as I hopefully have provided humour to you.

If you're wondering how to watch this show, I've got good news and bad news. The good news is that the official Toei Tokusatsu Youtube channel has uploaded the first two episodes for free.

The bad news is that if you want more than just those two episodes? Well, let's just say that you're probably going to have to get your hands dirty. If you don't know where to look, let's just say that there's a Subreddit dedicated to the act of Nautical Thievery 🏴‍☠️ and within that Subreddit there is a Megathread 🧵 and inside of that Megathread there is a section about the best places to find Anime 🇯🇵 and inside of that section there is a list of sites, and a couple of those 🌊 sites have a Goat 🐐 icon next to them. Look, you're gonna have to do a little bit of work here, I'm not getting myself clapped in irons for writing 8000 words about the Devil's jizz.