Kamen Rider Saber E15 Review: First Arc Ends

Kamen Rider Saber, Episode 15: Beyond the Resolution, and Beyond

Well, uh, that sure is kind of messy. I had planned to do 15 and 16 together, but this was thematic enough that I decided to let it be a standalone episode. 

At the end of episode 14, Saber and Calibur enter the infinite book world, the Table of Contents (hee hee), while the battle on the ground level sort of peters out as the three Megid blow away all the other Kamen Riders. The Table of Contents contains all the history of the world or some such, and is the gateway to ultimate power. Or something. Calibur and buddies want to take it over. I think? I'm pretty sure the Megid have their own agenda to recreate the world, and Calibur is... uh... something something predestination? It's kind of hard to tell with every one of these villains giving their monologue basically simultaneously. We get a pretty cool no-suit fight, although most of the stunt is on the part of the bad guys. The good guys have the dilemma of whether to destroy the huge giant portal books as well, which would trap Touma in the other world. 

Meanwhile Saber uses King Arthur to do a huge glowy early-2000's video game cutscene battle, before the two of them land in some autumn grove and Saber dual-wields his own blade and Ikazuchi to fight Calibur, while Calibur rants about predestination and the fact that the world was created by someone else. Touma goes through a bit of an existential crisis, wondering if Kento's death was also predetermined, then gets over it when Kento's ghost shows up... and it honestly feels like something that should be extended to at least take up a whole episode. One big problem with these sort of scenes is that we don't really get that good of a pacing to really let Touma's angst and resolution sink in, so it feels like he gets over his huge existential crisis immediately. Granted, that scene where Touma dual-wields the fire and lightning blades in his human form as they explode with energy is pretty cool. 

Meanwhile, the secondary riders get beaten down, but Mei's speech about Touma's promise gets them all to stand up. This is a lot simpler since it basically calls back to just one of Touma's oft-repeated traits, but I feel like it lands a lot better. We get a four-Rider transformation scene and... okay, the following huge rumble is actually a lot more fun and easier to follow than the previous episode's. 

Daichi Kamijo gives this huge speech about how there was a huge battle 15 years ago between his generation of swordsmen, but Hayato Fukamiya (Kento's dad) betrayed them, using Luna to connect the two worlds and obtain the truth. In the ensuing battle, Kamijo-as-Blades kills Hayato-as-Calibur but got so traumatized that he ends up picking up Calibur's Kurayami sword. Daichi gets obsessed with learning the 'truth' about how his friend became evil and corrupted, and blames the Sword of Logos organization. Which... okay, sure, nice to get some answers, but the flashback feels pretty rushed and I genuinely do feel like we could've spaced this out a bit more. Which, I feel, has been a running theme throughout so much of my Saber reviews. 

Like, on paper, a villain like Daichi should be interesting. Someone so obsessed with finding the truth that he sacrifices everything else, even his best friend's son? But we only really learn Daichi's whole motivation in the last five minutes before he gets taken out, so it really does feel kind of hollow.

We get a series of finisher montages as Saber fights Calibur, Blades blows up the book portals while the other three beat up the rest of the Meggido. Saber goes Dragonic Knight, and both him and Calibur ride their respective dragons as we go back to the PS2 video game boss fight cutscene, and... it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's just Touma giving a speech about fighting alongside friends and whatnot. It feels... kind of generic. 

Daichi is defeated and immediately goes "oh shit, maybe I'm wrong, you're so determined!" He gives a speech, telling Touma to find the traitor in the organization... then gets shish-kebab'd by Desast. Desast steals the Jaou Dragon books, while Daichi passes on the blade Kurayami to Touma... and the blade disappears. Oops! The Megid escapes, Rintarou blows up the portal and Avengers 2012-style, Touma returns to the last world at the last possible second as the portal collapses. 

And... and the first huge arc ends. Zero-One also ended similarly, and I remembered last year I had a lot of the same complaints about how quickly Horobi and Jin were seemingly dispatched of. But unlike Saber, at this point in Zero-One only the conclusion of their stories felt rushed, whereas the buildup and what the characters are all about have already been told to us. I know they're filming with a pandemic going on and all, but I really do feel like they could've spared an extra episode or two specifically exploring the Touma/Daichi dichotomy. Sure, it's a "friends-vs-single-power" trope that anime really likes to use in general, but... I dunno. This arc really does feel like it's so rushed and tries to build up on the mystery too much before rushing through all the explanation in an exposition dump that's not the most interesting thing out there. Oh well, maybe the next arc's going to be better? 

Random Notes:

• The Table of Contents is one of those things that sounds so dumb on paper, but actually is kind of very cool because it fits a lot into the whole book theme. 
• Legeiel gets to do some fun flip-kicks in this episode, that was neat. 
• I really do like Blades's all-blue King Lion form, that's such a clean-looking suit.
• The "special" sound effect that Saber's Dragonic Finish thing does really does sound like it came from Kamen Rider Wizard's belt, huh? Or is it just my ears? 
• So it appears Desast isn't Hayato, like my wild guess was last episode. He sure turned out to be pretty relevant, though! 
• "Episode 15.5" is the Kamen Rider Blades episode. While the past point-five episodes have been either standalone character backstory focus, or an actual 13-minute special that felt like it should've been part of the episode (the Espada one in particular), this one feels like more of an epilogue to episode 14. It's set after 15, of course, but it's mostly just Rintarou being in a funk after the whole chaos and seeing Kento die, and then Mei cheering him up by reminding them of their family and what they fight for.
• ...there's a Decade and Zi-O crossover teaser at the end of episode 15.5, what in the absolute buh-whaaaa, that's actually pretty awesome.