The Dumbest, Weirdest TV Show Episode Ever Made

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.