Kamen Rider Saber E18-20 Review: To Trust A Traitor

Kamen Rider Saber, Episodes 18-20:

Trying to catch up. Honestly, these episodes are a lot more easier to watch because they're a lot more slower-paced. 

Episode 18: The Flame's Obsession, Defeating the Megid

A follow up of episode 17, this one is kinda slower-paced and much to the episode (and show's) benefit. There's not a whole ton to say here, and the plotline is simple. Touma and Mei are hell-bent on saving poor Yuki from being killed and being turned into the Shirayuki Yeti Megid. Yuri, meanwhile, continues to be elusive and continues talking about 'cutting her down' and having some conviction as a swordsman... but turns out that the episode ends with the revelation Yuri's sword-form actually being able to save the humans by cutting them. It's a bit of a cop-out, arguably, but at the same time I can also believe from what we've seen that Yuri's simply just terrible at communicating. 

Reika's still trying to get the other Logos swordsmen to hunt down Touma (and it mostly works for Ren) but Rintarou, Ryo and Daishinji are all starting to show doubts. Again, still not the biggest fan of how Touma's estrangement from Sword of Logos is handled, but these scenes do kind of make up for it somewhat. This episode gives us a bit of an excuse, with Touma protecting the Yeti Megid from Rintarou -- who doesn't know about the human-in-the-Megid thing. Wouldn't it be so much better if they swapped things around, had Touma's meeting with Yuri a bit earlier to facilitate an actual misunderstanding? No? Regardless, the episode's end seems to have Reika slowly becoming an evil mentor to Rintarou.

Still, the Rintarou/Touma stuff is great, and I do love that Rintarou is so desperate in not wanting to fight his buddy that he's trying so hard to get Touma to surrender to the organization. Yuri calls out Rintarou and Daishinji for fighting for the 'wrong justice'... and, of course, we get the fun three-way-fight between Saber, Blades and the Yeti. Slash fights Saikou, and, again, I feel like the action flows so much better in these newer episodes. Saber ultimately takes a blow meant for the Yeti and blows up, but Yuri just teleports them away. 

We get a nice little speech about the editor who got turned into the Yeti. It's simple "I want to make people smile with [X]" fluff that these Rider shows tend to do with a victim-of-the-week, but, again, it adds a fair amount to Touma and Mei's desperation to save Yuki. Their little speech about protecting the world makes Yuri get intrigued about saving the world. After getting an inspiration from a toaster toy, they go to the Toku Warehouse (tm) and fight both Legiel and Shirayuki Yeti. Touma's plan is to break the book right as it pops out, which... also is a kind of a cop-out since I'm not sure how he's so certain that there will be an opening, but sure, why not. The action scene in the warehouse is pretty fun, in any case. Saber dual-wields his own sword and Yuri's Saikou form, and chases Legiel away, and hey, turns out Yuri isn't actually super-murderous in the first place and tells Touma that they could've freed Yuki at any time. 

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Episode 19: Flame and Light, Sword and Sword

We're fully in a two-parter-monster-of-the-week form now, and I can definitely appreciate it. It's still Touma, Mei and kooky ol' Yuri against the world, and Yuri gives a bit of an info-dump about how Southern Base now has a monopoly on both swordsmen and books, and that makes them all the more closer to the Table of Contents. Also a bit more about Luna being able to bridge multiple worlds because she's one of those special anime plot device girls.

Meanwhile, as Reika continues to rile up the North-Base swordsmen (and emphasizes a lot on Touma being able to use the Sword of Light), the Megid Bros go around making more Megids, including this two-parter's victim-of-the-week, Shingo, who gets turned into the Hadashi no Ou-sama (King's New Clothes) Megid. Shingo is introduced as an absolute fanboy of Touma's literary works, which is fun! As a Megid, Shingo uses his ability to make a castle by stealing cars, while he briefly gets some time in his human form fanboying over Touma, but ultimately this side of the plot is pretty slow and perfunctory. 

Much more interesting is Tetsuo Daishinji getting some spotlight! Yuri's condemnation of the Sword of Logos last episode clearly rattled him, and he confides this to Ryo -- that they believe the organization, but really do want to make sure. We get a fight between Saber and Saikou against the King Megid and Storious... but the main appeal here is Slash arriving. We get another "don't attack the monster, it's human!" angst moment, but Storious disappears with the King Megid halfway through the fight.

And then we get a very cool "show me your conviction" moment between Slash and Saber. Power scaling has never been something Kamen Rider really cares about, but holy shit, Saber goes through King Arthur and Dragonic Knight, and Slash just uses his wacky rainbow musical scale effects to deflect everything. Absolutely love Yuri parroting Slash's moves in the background, and while the battle is interrupted by Shingo appearing elsewhere, I did really like the fact that Slash is slowly seeing the bigger picture, even if he does put his duty first. Much slower than the previous two episodes, but again, still very enjoyable. 

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Episode 20: To Destroy the Stronghold, the Will of the Sword

The conclusion of the Shingo two-parter, I'm including this here mostly just so my next review can be an uninterrupted two-parter review. The first chunk of the episode is just our heroes trying to hunt down Shingo, while the other secondary riders in Sword of Logos are trying to figure out what they think of the revelation that, hey, turns out that Touma's claims that humans are turning into Megid is actually accurate. Unfortunately, Reika spins this around to "we need to gain the Sword of Light for ourselves". Poor little gremlin boy Ren, who's still conflicted over Kento's death, ends up being the surprising focus of this episode since he's the one is the most confused about the whole thing. 

We get a huge rumble-fight between Saber, Saikou, Legiel, the King Megid and the arrival of Ren. If nothing else, what Ren seems to focus on is Kento's death and the fact that Touma still has Kento's Ikazuchi blade. Ren is just super angry and ignores everything that Touma is saying, beating him up savagely -- some great voice acting on the part of his actor! Oh, and Desast shows up and beats up Legiel, saying that he's free and he's going to fight everyone. Poor Ren, though, is just confused, especially when, well, he's so much wrapped up in the warped notion that Saber is evil and is besmirching Kento's death and that the Sword of Logos needs the Sword of Light. Poor kid! When the fight finishes and poor Ren is reduced to tossing his sword aside and screaming, it's actually well done.

Rintarou wants to work with Touma to save the humans, but Touma ends up, well, saying the absolutely worst thing he could say and talk about the enemy within the organization. Poor Rintarou and his blind loyalty to the organization that adopted him ends up being real angry about it -- though, to be fair, Touma's source of evidence is pretty dodgy. Reika shows up and also says the rather hard-to-argue-against point that Touma is also gathering power, like the supposed traitors. 

With some simple deduction from last week's castle model, Saber and Saikou fight against the King Megid and Storious. Touma gives a speech about how him suffering in battle helps to understand the victim's pain, and ends up going through a pretty badass little maneuver where he copies Slash's little jump-spin trick last episode. Shingo is freed from the Megid, and all is well! Anyway, it's more of a build-up chapter as we see the different opinions of the other swordsmen. Again, it's nothing too spectacular and I'm still not really feeling the series as much as I did the past couple of Rider seasons, but it's still a couple of pretty solid episodes. 

Random Notes:

• 100% approving of how much more relevant Mei is in these couple of episodes, even if it's as a sidekick. 
• Is "Megid" the official spelling now? Sure. "Megiddo" feels a lot better since it's an actual word, but it's not a deal-breaker like Izu and Is.
• How well-done if Reika had actually been shown whispering in the ears of the other swordsmen and actually building up the suspicion against Touma since her first appearance? If she had done so and our other secondary riders are starting to feel like they're being played now, it would've been so much better. 
• Are they making fun of Rintarou's "Homo sapiens" line from a couple episodes ago? His usage of it in episode 18 ("normal Homo sapiens do not become Meggido!") actually flows a lot better, though!
• There's a whole background plot of Yuri trying to steal Mei's phone in episode 19. It's kinda cute. Yuri also wipes the editor's memory in episode 19, which is convenient. Episode 20 has Yuuri attempt to ride a bike in the most uncomfortable way ever, and Mei basically forcing Yuuri to transform by putting the belt and the transformation device on. 
• Early on in episode 19 we get a very, very well-shot and cool montage of the three Megid Bros turning random humans into Megids. Zooius doing a couple of unnecessary backflips was probably my favourite part of that. 
• I didn't realize that the fake-X-Men comic book that Yuri has been reading is actually the basis of his "Shadow" humanoid form, that's a nice touch. 
• Desast has a magic scarf just like Zi-O's  Woz, apparently. 
• Mei gets wrapped up in a whole lot of random comedy bandages, the poor girl! 
• I'm 90% sure that "chinchinpuipui", the spell that the King Megid speaks, is the nonsense spell that Shunpei from Wizard likes to repeat.