General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Kamen Rider Black Sun (仮面ライダーBLACK SUN)

Kamen Rider Black Sun (仮面ライダーBLACK SUN) is a 2022 Japanese live-action tokusatsu (Japanese live-action genre with heavy special effects, costumes) series, a reboot of the 1987 television series Kamen Rider Black, produced as a commemorative project for the 50th anniversary of the Kamen Rider franchise and streamed worldwide on Prime Video.¹^•² Directed by Kazuya Shiraishi, it consists of ten episodes released simultaneously on October 28, 2022, and carries an 18+ rating on Prime Video, a departure from the franchise's family-friendly television format.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Format	10-episode streaming series, Prime Video worldwide exclusive from October 28, 2022, 0:00 JST³
Origin	Reboot of Kamen Rider Black (aired October 4, 1987 to October 9, 1988, 51 episodes), announced April 3, 2021 for the franchise's 50th anniversary¹^•⁵
Director	Kazuya Shiraishi, whose films include Kyōaku (2013) and Korō no Chi (2018)²
Main cast	Hidetoshi Nishijima as Kotaro Minami / Kamen Rider Black Sun; Tomoya Nakamura as Nobuhiko Akizuki / Kamen Rider Shadowmoon⁶
Theme song	"Did you see the sunrise?" performed by Choseinjo (超学生), written and composed by Kenta Matsukuma⁶
Rating	IMDb 7.1/10 from about 1.1K user ratings⁷
Later streaming	Added to Toei Tokusatsu Fan Club, U-NEXT, DMM TV, and other services from November 8, 2023⁸

Spoilers

Story and setting

The series is set in 2022, half a century after the nation declared coexistence between humans and kaijin, mutated beings who live among humans as a discriminated minority. Kotaro Minami, a kaijin living quietly, is a candidate for the next Creation King, the godlike figure managed by the Gorgom Party, and is known as "Black Sun." The young human rights activist Aoi Izumi, who campaigns for the abolition of discrimination, meets him, and through her the truth hidden in 50 years of history begins to surface, along with the imprisoned second Creation King candidate, Shadowmoon, whose human identity is Nobuhiko Akizuki.²

Two timelines. The story alternates between 2022 and 1972. In the flashback, Kotaro belonged to a political group campaigning for better treatment of kaijin; when the group split, the winning faction chose subordination to humans and founded the Gorgom Party, while Kotaro went into hiding for 50 years. Nobuhiko, on the losing side, was imprisoned in the party's underground jail for those 50 years. The two Kingstones needed for the succession of the dying Creation King had belonged to Kotaro and Nobuhiko and were lost in the split; Aoi turns out to carry Kotaro's Kingstone as a necklace.²

Awakening. After Aoi loses her family to kaijin sent by the Gorgom Party and is herself modified into a kaijin, Kotaro's rage drives him from his kaijin form into the further transformation of Kamen Rider Black Sun, awakening in episode 5. Nobuhiko, leading kaijin against the party, similarly awakens as Kamen Rider Shadowmoon from rage and despair, and the two former friends move toward a fated confrontation.²^•¹³ In the rider's design, the broken "∞" mark on the left chest was drawn by Aoi with her own bitten finger when reviving Kotaro after he was defeated by Shadowmoon.¹³

Cast and characters

Hidetoshi Nishijima, known internationally for Drive My Car, plays Kotaro Minami, and Tomoya Nakamura plays Nobuhiko Akizuki; the two characters are childhood friends turned enemies.⁶^•⁴ Kokoro Hirasawa plays Aoi Izumi, a 14-year-old schoolgirl activist.⁶^•¹⁴ The kaijin roles are played by a supporting cast including Takahiro Miura as Bilgenia, Takuma Otoo as the bat kaijin, Gaku Hamada as the whale kaijin, and Baku Numata, Yō Yoshida, Pretty Ota, and Mew Azama as the three priests Darom, Bishum, and Baraom and the anemone kaijin respectively.³^•¹⁵

Production and announcement

The project was announced on April 3, 2021, the 50th anniversary of the Kamen Rider franchise, at a press conference held in Tokyo at the exact time the first episode had aired 50 years earlier, 7:30 p.m.⁹ Toei described Kamen Rider Black as a landmark work of the series and chose director Kazuya Shiraishi, whose films include Kyōaku (2013) and Korō no Chi (2018), to retell it from a new perspective.¹^•¹⁰

Main staff. The screenplay is by Izumi Takahashi, who had worked with Shiraishi on Kyōaku and Hitoyo; the concept visuals are by Shinji Higuchi, who directed Attack on Titan and won the Japan Academy Prize for Outstanding Director for Shin Godzilla; and the special effects direction is by Kiyotaka Taguchi. Kenta Matsukuma composed the music, with art direction by Tsuyoshi Imamura, creature modeling by Kakusei Fujiwara, and character design by Daisuke Kobayashi.²^•¹ A crowdfunding support project ran alongside production, offering a reissue of the 1987 TV Power DX transformation belt as a reward.¹¹

The release was originally planned for spring 2022, then announced for autumn, and the Japanese date was fixed at October 28, 2022 at 0:00 (24:00 on the 27th), with exclusive worldwide streaming in more than 200 countries and regions on Prime Video.¹²

Themes and reception

Unlike the original 1987 series, which aired in a family timeslot, Black Sun is rated 18+ and depicts strong violence, hate marches against kaijin, and political conspiracy.⁴^•¹⁴ Critics described it as political theater: the Gorgom are no longer a cult but a political party ruling Japan, and the story engages with xenophobia, the treatment of minorities, and the co-option of the 1970s protest movement.¹⁴^•¹⁶ The series also includes callbacks to the original, such as the revival of the machine Road Sector and the use of the original Kamen Rider Black opening theme, sung by original actor Tetsuo Kurata, as episode 10's opening.¹⁷

Scholarly view. Ruth Barratt-Peacock of the University of Huddersfield, writing in the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, argues that the series refuses the cathartic release and melodramatic justice expected of the franchise, making explicit its underlying pattern of endless cycles and repetitions of history, and notes that Black Sun was the first Kamen Rider series created for an international streaming audience.¹⁸

Audience response. On IMDb the series holds a 7.1/10 rating from about 1.1K users, with episode ratings declining from 7.3 for the first episode to between 5.9 and 6.2 for later episodes.⁷ On the Japanese review site Filmarks it averages 3.4 from 3,908 reviews.¹⁹ Japanese reviewers on Filmarks praised the supporting cast's performances while criticizing roughness in the script and the characters' emotional arcs, and found much of the fight choreography mediocre; praise elsewhere focused on the practical costume work, the two leads' performances, and the series' political ambition.²⁰^•¹⁶

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026