Kamen Rider Saber E13 Review: The Knight Appears When You Sigh

Kamen Rider Saber, Episode 13: I Will Stay True To My Convictions

Turns out that Kento isn't really dead at the end of the last episode! Not yet, anyway. I decided to separate this and 14 into individual episode reviews because of the length. It's nice to have a lot to talk about in a single episode for a change. 

And... and for all my complaints about the Saber characters being pretty hard to juggle, I did like the amount of focus that Kento got in this episode and the couple of episodes before it. Perhaps not so much that we got Touma's memory restored in the previous episode and all this episode does is just make allusions to the vague childhood friendship they had... it's honestly kind of lukewarm and feels like it's a pretty tiny reveal for something that they dragged on for pretty long. Kento starts off this episode wounded in bed, with a vague explanation that he's being overtaken by Calibur's darkness. Okay?

The rest of the Meggido are still just scheming to open the book with the massive multi-element ritual ring thing, and they need to stop the Meggido from... fusing the dimensions together or something. They need either Kento's lightning blade or Calibur's darkness blade to finish the final slot, which is why there's an urgency for our heroes to stop the bad guys instead of just, y'know, holing up in the North Pole with the lightning blade. Okay. 

Mei and Daishinji stay behind -- Mei a bit less willingly so, but they gave her the job of looking after Kento. Meanwhile, Saber and Blades confront Calibur, who is sort of reduced to just giving speeches about 'seeking the truth' and be ominous and evil. Kind of... disappointingly simple, but at least it's something. It only takes a single cutaway scene for Mei to basically step out of the room and for Kento to, of course, sneak off to fight despite his wounds. It's honestly a bit silly, and a scene that has so, so much more weight with the "extra" episode that really gives Kento's private monologue the screentime it needs to have an emotional oomph. 

The fight against Calibur continues and both Buster and Kenzan show up. They all do a multi-book finisher that Calibur reflects, but then Kento shows up, all wounded and bandaged, to block Calibur's blast. Calibur does his crazy evil ritual thing (though the lightning sword showing up probably is a factor, too), while Kento and Rintaro have a pretty short-but-sweet moment of reconciliation that's a neat callback to the previous episode, talking about family and personal biases and stuff.

And the following action scene is... it's chaotic, but I do like that the focus isn't on the huge glowing effects or the fights, but rather of Kento's monologue, naming Ogami, Ren, Daishinji, Rintaro and Kento one by one while poor Mei panics next to him. Calibur blasts everyone aside, though, and they all get de-transformed... but Touma gets up, and with the power of burning determination and a promise made in his flashback to Luna, he summons a thick book that Daishinji is working on. And... and I dunno, it's cool and all, but Touma has kind of been so out of focus throughout the whole episode that I felt like this definitely could've been far, far more emotional had we spent more time in Touma and Kento's respective heads or something. 

Anyway, we get the debut of Touma's first proper super form, Dragonic Knight. It's a very clean suit. It's a new toy that gets to fight last week's toy, so yeah, Dragonic Knight absolutely no-sells everything Calibur can throw at him, and Touma gives a pretty cheesy but appropriate speech about how he gets power because he has friends that believe in him and all that jazz. Again, would've worked a lot better if we had more time to breathe for the Kento and Touma scenes, but... but it's fine. And the scene of Saber beating the shit out of Calibur while the sword-belt screams "FLAME SPICY!" is pretty damn badass. 

There's the mysterious man in a hood that observes everything from behind a tree... that's still kind of weird, and isn't he, like, buddies with Tassel? It's honestly something that I feel like is a mystery that I'm sure will be important but there's so much going on in the show that I really don't care about this specific ominous subplot. 

Ultimately, Calibur tries to fly up by turning into an energy ball, but with a fun chorus of grammatically-questionable English boasting about 'ride on dragon, fight', Touma summons the CGI dragon from his transformations, rides on it and clashes and beats the shit out of Calibur. 

...and that triumphant CGI clash with everyone smiling and grinning and shit cuts away immediately to Touma running down a scene that's shot with a slightly grimier lens, and we get to see poor Kento surrounded by black fog as he is straight-up dying, with everyone surrounding him. Touma and Kento get to say goodbye, talk about Luna a bit, and we get the expected bit where Kento asks everyone else to protect the world for him... and he gets consumed by the black fog as everyone screams in grief. 

Except... except we get a bunch of terrifying flashes of Kento screaming in a void with his eyes glowing red. What's up with that? After the past couple of years I really would be more surprised if Kento didn't return in some way in the series' run, but having him actually be possessed by darkness would be pretty interestingly tragic.

And... and that's pretty damn well done, actually. I did complain a bit in my review about how I kinda wished that the episode focuses a bit more on Touma and Kento, but the fact that the two don't have a quiet time to say farewell until quite literally Touma's last moments is something that makes their parting all the more tragic. And on Kento's side of things, at least the 'extra episode' helps to fill in the blanks. Ultimately, it's an episode that really had me go 'it could be paced a lot better', but for what it's worth I did really enjoy this one. 

Random Notes:

• One of the many, many "extra" episodes that came tied to this one is something they called "Chapter 13 Behind" or something, which focuses a lot on Kento and his mindset as he recovers in his bed and runs into battle. And... man, the episode works so much better after watching that, y'know? Even the vague 'the darkness is overtaking him' bit is something that's communicated so much better in this extra episode. Out of the many, many random extra episodes, this is the only one that I would say is a 'must watch' that really enhances the original episode 13.
• Also communicated in the extra episode a lot better is Mei's interactions with Kento, making it look less like she just fucked up in watching the wounded boy. 
• Dragonic Knight gives me pretty strong Metal Cluster Hopper vibes. I'm not 100% sure what else it reminds me of, but it sure is a pretty neat suit. The colorus are kinda Faiz-y, and the visor has strong Zi-O vibes, but I really do love the knight mouthplate the best out of everything in that suit.l 
• "I am a fellow homo sapiens" is such a corny line. But it works so well. 
• "Dramatic Booster, Dynamic Rider, Dragonic Knight!", "SPICY!" and the fun sing-song "the knight appears, when you sigh~ you have no grief and the flame is bright~ ride on dragon, fight! Dragonic Knight!"
• Ah, yes, the mood whiplash after a character dies screaming in pain while his friends surround him and cry out in grief... cut away to energetic dance ending! God damn it, ending credits. 
• So what happened to the Goblin Meggido? That dude shows up early on, but we never get to see him fight or get destroyed or whatever.