Kamen Rider Black And My Problem With Shadow Moon

I may be a fan of Kamen Rider Black, it's my very first Kamen Rider before I saw more Showa era Kamen Riders. I have seen Kamen Rider from Kamen Rider Kuuga and soon I'll be done with Kamen Rider Ghost. Next, I'll be watching Kamen Rider EX-AID (which I feel will usurp Zyuohger in my eyes). But I'll discuss about Shadow Moon. Sure he was a cool concept but he wasn't fully used. It was nice to think that, "DUNDUNDUN! We've got the very first evil Kamen Rider!" I agree but there's one thing I thought went wrong with him.


Okay, the whole awakening of Shadow Moon was badass. The three Gorgom high priests were going to get their cool upgrades. They were going to be more active after getting fed up with hiding in the shadows for so long. Then we have Shadow Moon awakening... he takes the Satan Saber and shows he's a powerful threat. Aside from Bilgenia's sudden demise (to show how powerful Shadow Moon is) but he doesn't really show how much cooler he is. Most of the time, he's just... an oversized paperweight for most of his term as a future candidate to become Gorgom's leader.


Okay, you want to show Shadow Moon's better? There are other ways like they could have made him more threatening than Bilgenia, more cruel than Bilgenia but Shadow Moon's just one-dimensional. If they wanted to show Shadow Moon as a more powerful threat, that the threat level has increased... why not make Bilgenia bow down before Shadow Moon? Bring Bilgenia to his knees but it doesn't humble the prideful warrior. Instead, Bilgenia could have pretended to swear allegiance to Shadow Moon after he's tortured with the Satan Saber but he's still out there plotting to get either which King Stone could be his. But sigh... I felt like Shadow Moon wasn't as good a replacement for Bilgenia. I expected him to be better but he wasn't.


I felt like the Showa era was an experimental era at best. Years later after I saw Kamen Rider Ryuki (and I hated how that show ended thanks to a lot executives... NOT!) I thought that the potential of evil Kamen Riders was more met. During the time Takeshi Asakura/Kamen Rider Ouja appeared, I wanted to say, "MOVE OVER SHADOW MOON!" Ouja himself shows that he's not somebody you can mess with. I'm glad that even if Shadow Moon's concept wasn't so good when it started that it still met improvements along the way. Ouja was more or less what if you gave Bilgenia a King Stone.

Hopefully, we'll be seeing more evil Kamen Riders in certain seasons that will continue to improve what Shadow Moon left behind.