Kamen Rider Saber E21-22 Review: The Reason To Fight

Kamen Rider Saber, Episode 21-22

Episode 21: Shine the Best, Full Colour

Another pretty simple pair two-parter, and... I'm pretty happy, honestly. So much of Saber is moving at a non-breakneck-pace recently and I'm so much happier to enjoy these episodes. I also like that each episode is starting to have a proper focus on one of the secondary characters without having to rely on special point-five episodes to actually give us the scenes we need to be invested in them. 

This episode's focus, sort of, is Daishinji, who gets a nice flashback to his mentor talking to him about what swords are forged for, and after finding Touma's sword lacking last episode, this episode has him find it in Touma. Touma and Mei, meanwhile, are going around investigating the disappearances, and it's interesting that we don't actually get any immediate resolution to all the missing and Megiddo'd wives, husbands, children and parents. After so many recent Kamen Rider shows have gone out of their way to be without casualties, this one was pretty surprisingly mature about it. 

Daishinji confronts Touma, talking about how if he doesn't get the weight of sacrifice and saving people, he has no right to wield Flameblade Rekka. It's a pretty cool sequence, with Slash needing to be 'convinced' by the blade. I also like that the older Ogami is also there to observe, and how he and Mei discuss about the difference between wielding a blade and becoming a swordsman. Ultimately Touma's desires to fight and protect the people end up making his blade 'resound' and while he seemingly lost the fight against Daishinji (he destransformed early), Daishinji is satisfied. Realizing that Touma has the potential to be the swordsman that his mentor taught him about, Daishinji full-on leaves Sword of Logos to help Touma. Which, honestly, is something that makes sense particularly with Daishinji's recent screentime. Plus, this also gives Touma's heroism some actual meat -- I don't think I'm exaggerating when I'm saying that Touma's motivations is murky and generically heroic in the first dozen episodes or so. He's still generically heroic, but at least we double down on that and actually make it a very strong moment. The simple act of him going and meeting the relatives of people he doesn't know and failed to safe, and that this fact weighs on him? That's a pretty good moment. 

Meanwhile, the Megiddo Three make a brand-new combined monster, the Charybdis Meggido, out of our victims-of-the-week, twins that compete in speed-eating contests. We don't see much of the twins, but only Charybdis when it starts rampaging and eating random construction vehicles. Saber gets eaten by Charybdis, leading to the debut of Kamen Rider Saikou's X-Swordman form, which... finally fills in that 'Shadow' body with bright comic-book panels. Which, frankly, is something that I should have seen coming with Saikou's obsession with his Not-X-Men comic book. In one of the more fun uses of a suit design ever, apparently with 'full colour goes to arm', Saikou moves all of his coloured parts (and presumably his power) to one limb. 

The episode ends with a relatively truncated ending after Saikou blows up Charybdis, and Daishinji ends up agreeing to work with Touma. A fun little new-power-up debut, but ultimately I do think that the meat of the content here is the Touma/Daishinji moments. 

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Episode 22: Nevertheless, I Want to Save People

This time around, it's Ogami's turn to defy the organization! I still think that Sword of Logos turning against Touma is kind of rushed and out of nowhere, but it's neat to see them slowly realizing that this Reika chick isn't quite trustworthy. Touma and Mei goes off to investigate the twin-eaters, while we get a hilarious and very meme-able scene of Daishinji's attempts to 'investigate' the living sword Yuri. Including one where he jumps to the air to dive after Yuri, and talking about his 'throbbing' desire. Oh, Daishinji. 

The surviving twin begs Touma to save her sister, and we do get a little sub-plot about the victim. It's a small detail about how the twins think they're worthless without their gimmick; Touma gives them a pep talk about individuality; and at the end of the episode they decide to actually fight for themselves as individuals. It's simple, it takes up maybe a minute full of total screentime, but that adds so much more weight to us caring about these victims-of-the-week!

Ogami gets a nice little moment with his kid, telling the little boy that Touma has a reason that he has to fight apart from Sword of Logos. Ogami's own reason is also reiterated -- he's here to protect the next generation. Which is why he ends up confronting Touma. Always cool to see the Buster sword, and Touma ends up taking a finisher to the face and gets buried in rock and rubble. Touma stands up and holds his sword anyway, still determined to "save Remi-san", and even goes unconscious in the middle of it. Pretty damn cool moment for Touma! And an interesting view into Ogami's mind, I think? He's basically an old-school 'honourbound' warrior of sorts, but he's also open-minded to not completely beat up Touma. 

Ogami steals King of Arthur (I think?) and gives it to the organization... then Mami-Charybdis ends up attacking and consuming Remi, and the two fuse together. Then we get the monster rampaging part of the week! We get a three-way fight between Charybdis, Storious, Slash, Kenzan and Saikou. Apparently, the gimmick here is that the two humans are going to fuse together, and that combined mind is going to cause the Sword of Light's separation technique to be impossible. 

Poor Rintarou looks the most conflicted as he tries his best to convince himself that 'there's no choice to cut them down, right?' because he's a good egg deep within, but he's also so unwilling to believe that the organization is evil. Touma gives a speech to the sisters, allowing them to break free on their own. He does a slash while un-transformed, Saikou frees the sisters with 'Full Colour Goes To Leg', and destroys Charybdis. Again, the remaining Logos-loyalists (Ogami's basically converted, isn't he?) bugger off, and I'm interested to see who gets to join Team Touma next. 

Again, these two are pretty solid. The whole 'each swordsman gets convinced by Touma' bit is pretty fun, but I will still admit that we are losing a fair bit by already having huge scenes showing them all being buddy-buddy friends earlier in the season and the rather rushed attempt to show the supposed betrayal. Still, some great moments for Touma here for sure!

Random Notes:

• So as the opening to episode 21 shows, Yuri and Tassel can meet each other randomly. I'm still waiting for Tassel to be relevant, honestly. 
• We get an actually pretty animated sequence in 21 showing the war of the swords and the creation of Sword of Logos. Nothing we couldn't already infer, but one that's pretty nice to have spelled out. 
• Did Storious's human form always had that ridiculously long lock of hair? I've only noticed it watching these episodes! 
• Desast, apparently, was born similarly to Charybdis! A random almost-throwaway line from Legeiel and Zooius mentions that. I like that little detail. 
• Very Ninnin-Comic vibes from the Saikou comic form, and the fact that part of the colour moves around has some vague Faiz vibes, too.
• A bit subtle and nowhere quite as dramatic as Touma or Daishinji, but I do like the little moment of Yuri having his own reason to fight -- he still wants to save the world, but now he wants to save the people in it too. Not quite as dramatic but still nice that he gets a small moment in the middle of all this.