Kotaro investigates something strange in some village thanks to Kyoko's friend getting out from it in bad shape. Said village is also the venue of an upcoming peace conference, which will be attended by foreign dignitaries. Could this be yet another Gorgom plot?
Tokusatsu is no stranger to plots involving a cult controlling a village and this episode of Kamen Rider BLACK is one of those episodes that have that kind of plot. The only difference is that this episode has an actual Satanic figure as the monster of the week in the form of Lord Goat! To those who are not into the occult, the goat is often used as the symbol of the devil. In the case of the Lord Goat, he controlled the entire village thanks to some mystical gibberish and the mind controlled humans want to find the village leader.
Speaking of this leader, where is he anyway? As it turns out, he escaped the mind control thing and is now hiding in a cave with his grandson! This is when we learned what happened to the village and how they were able to escape the mind control. The flashback scene in this episode is quite interesting, aside from the traditional "x must snap out of it" scene, I notice that the mystical gibberish is still on the background and that the village leader was able to escape from it thanks to his hearing aid not attached in his ear!
After learning their story, Kotaro decides to investigate the village with the boy and confirmed that this is indeed a Gorgom plot thanks to Lord Goat doing his mystical chant. What made this creepy is what happened to the boy that he is with; he is mind controlled and attacked Kotaro from behind! It's creepy in a sense that the boy's face has this killing intent in it and that he is not conscious about it. Thankfully, Kotaro put the kid to sleep and brought him to his grandfather.
The events that happened the next day sums up the tone of the entire episode; to put it simply, Kotaro is stuck in a village filled with people who has the capacity to kill him with no mercy. What's more, they are not aware of it, making this scenario scarier! I mean, the villagers hit them with burning spears, pitch forks and torches for crying out loud! Because of the situation of the village, Kotaro fights as Kamen Rider BLACK to finally end this.
This is the first episode that featured a proper night battle, I am not sure if it is just my video that has the problem but I find this night battle too dark. The night battle added the impact of the fire attacks of the Lord Goat and the explosions. But for the fight choreography, it made it dull and uninteresting. I mean, Kamen Rider BLACK's costume is already black and it is hard to see what's happening for crying out loud! Sadly, the finishing scene happened at dawn. At the end, the peace conference went as planned and that Kyoko's friend is back to normal, same goes with the entire village.
