Kamen Rider Saber, Episode 2-3
Yeah, this series is definitely not going to be one that I can do episodic reviews particularly well. I'm not sure whether it's a conscious decision by the writers to have a more light-hearted, minimal-plot show in the vein of Fourze that was also conceptualized and created after a great tragedy; or if it's simply the pandemic getting in the way. There's a huge vibe of this show being a lot more... Sentai-esque. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, because I do enjoy my Sentai almost as much as I do my Rider, but it also means that these earlier episodes are going to be pretty repetitive episodic affairs that are just here to showcase the new characters and forms.
Episode two, "The Water Swordsman, Along With A Blue Lion", is the debut of Shindo Rintaro and his Time-Jacker-cosplay outfit and his little lion buddy. He's basically the go-to man for Touma meeting the good guy organization, the Sword of Logos, which is fighting the bad guys, the... Meggido? Again, I just find a lot of what's going on here kind of indifferent. They sure put a lot of thought into the setpieces (I love the huge train model in Touma's bookstore) and the actors are decent, but I feel like a lot of what's going on feels like... they're just there, nowhere as fantastic enough to elicit the over-the-top reactions that some of these characters have. Also, a lot of exposition (mostly about Logos) that, unfortunately, I don't think worked quite as well in this second episode.
Touma and Rintaro's dynamic is... it's not terrible, but I also don't feel like they have quite the same amount of chemistry as any of the previous primary-Rider/secondary-Rider duos. Perhaps it's the oddity of Shindo being such a character with a lack of conflict with Touma, or that he alternates between a pleasant yes-man or an exposition machine... again, the actor's decent enough, but he just doesn't leave me with much to talk about. We also have the rather annoying trope of the show telling us that Shindo and his Lion Senki powers makes him a far more experienced fighter than Touma, but Touma has main character protagonist powers and is able to utilize the Wonder-Ride Books far better than experienced-fighter Shindo.
There's also a decent amount of grumbling made online about how a lot of the action scenes feel like they're cheapened thanks to constantly cutting away to 'stock footage'. Whether it's the books flipping to show the Riders posing when they are unleashing their final attacks; or the CGI background for transformation sequences; or the Reboot/Beast-Machines style CGI background for the huge action scene, I've seen a lot of complaint about it online. The bad CGI is honestly not something that bothers me (and if anything, the fact that they had a reason with Corona makes me just shrug it off) and the transformation sequences being stock footage isn't anything new (Ex-Aid and Ghost did it) but I do have to admit that the flip-book finisher bit did distract me.
The enemies in this episode is based on the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper, giving us a pair of neat bug-monster designs. I like the grasshopper, he probably could be buddies with Zonjis. In the CGI world, Kamen Rider Blades and Kamen Rider Saber show off the debut of their vehicles -- the very awesome Ride Gatriker (a god damn weaponized go-kart)... and the very underwhelming Diago Speedy. We get a cheesy CGI bike-fight against a bunch of CGI bugs, then Touma uses the Jack and the Beanstalk book to create a gigantic beanstalk (Shindo can only use it to shoot seeds). They each blow up one of the lesser Meggido.
Kento isn't actually the focus of this episode, though. Nope! That honour goes to Kamen Rider Buster, the "King of Parenting" Ogami Ryo, who has the hands-down coolest design so far, with the chunky armoured turtle vibe, those long Den-O-style tapering eye-visors, the central horn, and a huge-ass sword. He one-shots the golem meggido from episode one, and shows off that he's not only a veteran member of Sword of Logos, but, for the first time in a long, long while, our first older-gentleman Kamen Rider. He transforms with the Genbu Shinwa book, and he's also a dad whose kid looks at his fighting from a distance. A very, very cool trope that is certainly not original in fiction, but definitely new in Kamen Rider. Also, while we don't see too much of it, Ryo isn't a particularly big fan of Touma because he's the new kid on the block and isn't experienced yet, Brave Dragon or no Brave Dragon.
The villain of the week, the Hanzaki Meggido, sends out smaller books to kidnap people into the alter-world, and this includes Buster's kid Sora. Sora's personality is 'scrappy likable kid', but he doesn't like books (the horror!) and while on a walk with Mei, finds one of the books and cracks it open only to be abducted. Oh noes!
I do like that while Ryo's utter anger and concern for his missing son is evident -- he is extremely brusque at the others -- he doesn't antagonize Mei or Touma. I feel like it would've been too easy to make him a dick to our characters (especially since the character already has an 'out' for making him likable in making him a good doting dad), his reaction makes a fair bit more sense for a character that's implied to be a veteran of battles. He's obviously worried about his kid, who wouldn't be, and he's rude and angry but he's not like, picking fights with his allies about it or anything.
Not the biggest fan of this episode's fight scene, though. We randomly get the Peter Pan Fantasia Wonder Ride book, which gets used briefly by Saber (who has trouble with the Captain Hook chain) before Blades uses it to do some weird portal-teleporting spam. But Blades can't even kill the enemy with his new Wonder Ride; Touma has to show off his Jack-kun form again, and then Buster shows up to claim the kill. Buster has a very badass walk, though, slowly walking up while giving proclamations that reminds me of Kamen Rider Stronger, another cool older guy. "The rage of the earth trembles before you" indeed. Episode 3, interestingly, ends in a cliffhanger, because the kid isn't returned yet. So I guess this is the start of a traditional early-in-a-series Rider two-part episodes.
Other things to say about the show? Each episode starts off with a "Bonne Lecture" segment with a green-haired narrator in a set, but I honestly don't feel like it really adds too much to the show other than the obvious trope of this dude definitely going to be an important character somewhere down the line. The villains are... they're there. I still like the very cool-looking suspended metal hand, and Not-Gaisoulg Calibur is a cool suit, but I really tried to say something about them and couldn't beyond 'they sure are shifty guys'.
Overall, I feel like they are still stuck in the 'let's introduce characters' segment, but... I kind of feel like they're going a bit too slowly and I can't lie, it's a bit hard to hold my attention at parts of the show. Part of it has to probably do with the reason that a lot of the exposition scenes are just ambiguous discussions of ambiguity, and that the characters for Touma and Shindo are pretty generic 'likable nice person'. Ultimately, while I understand why they're doing this, episode three kind of shows off something a bit better in introducing multiple characters at once. Even if Kento isn't immediately relevant to the plot, I really do like that they gave us an idea of who he is and gives him a bit more dialogue. Ultimately, Saber is still enjoyable, but I feel like it gets a bit too simplistic and too basic at times that I really kind of wished that they did something more with it. Still enjoyable, though not to the degree that I devoured the early episodes of many other Rider shows.
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