Kamen Rider Saber, Episodes 37-38:
I almost published this a couple of days ago, but that was unfairly negative because I was in a bit of a bad mood. I still really am not the biggest fan of Saber's newest episodes, but I was being pretty harsh on it. Anyway, another two episodes this time around.
Episode 37: Change the Future, Who?
Kento sort of becomes the focus of these couple of episodes, and his return to being one of the good guys instead of an emo anti-hero is something that we have been building up towards in the background. I don't think it's quite as underwhelming as the Luna subplot or whatever is going on with Ren and Desast, but it's also something that I really think the show could've given us a whole lot more gravitas? As it is, it just really seems that Sophia and Yuri are particularly terrible at communication to either Kento or the other swordsmen. Yuri finally talks to the others about the potential futures and the whole 'Kento is trying to stop Touma from dying and sacrificing himself' reason.
Touma obviously goes off to talk to Kento and stop him from sacrificing himself, but Ren shows up and demands that Touma duel him. Since Ren was left out of 'Touma duels everyone' batch of episodes in the middle of the series, I guess we finally get some Ren focus! Only... only it's basically repeating the same story beat that we've gotten for Ren for the past couple of episodes. His old master told him strength is everything and strength is justice, and he is obsessed with that but is too immature to actually admit that he needs to join up with the other good guys. Even when Touma gives his regular speech and tells Ren about Kento's sacrifice, Ren buggers off. And... and it's nice to see that Touma's speech-of-friendship doesn't solve a problem, but it also made this encounter feel particularly pointless.
The B-plot has Yuri and Mei go off to try and convince Bacht to see the good in humanity. And, no joke, Mei's plan to do so is to try and introduce Bacht to Instagram. God bless your heart, Mei. It's a nice attempt, honestly, with Yuri trying to get Bacht to see how humanity has changed in 3000 years, and while the ending is basically the same with the Touma/Ren interaction (Bacht doesn't give a shit), I felt like it meant more for Yuri -- who is a more stoic character and who we saw as a lot colder prior to his character development. Or maybe I just like Yuri, Mei and Bacht a lot more than I do Touma and Ren.
Rintaro meets Kento and tries to talk him down, but before they really get anywhere, Master Logos gets bored of sitting on his throne. We get a fight between the three of them, and Touma jumps in as well. Again, we get another moment of friendship in battle as Touma and Rintaro refuses to let Kento get harmed. Speaking of harm, Master Logos activates the magical floating book and turns the entire city into dust. This bit is actually surprising -- around halfway through the Heisei period, the Kamen Rider shows have been particularly bloodless when it comes to civilian casualties, and Saber has been no different, but then suddenly an entire city gets absolutely vaporized! I mean, it's obvious that this is going to be reversed, and we don't see any people actually dying, but it's still pretty surprising.
Oh, and also Kento tries to seal away Master Logos in the Huge Moment of Destiny (tm), but then Touma jumps in and stops him. And... and I really wish that this scene impacted more since we have spent so much time building up to this, but I honestly felt like it was just kind of there. It felt a bit less dramatic compared to the flashbacks to the visions that Kento had during his original return. Though admittedly, that was the perfect usage of Touma's "the ending of this story will be decided by me!" catchphrase.
Master Logos blasts Touma out of his transformation, but then Yuri shows up, dual-wields the swords of light and darkness, and creates a black hole to suck away Logos. Pretty cool! Master Logos pops back out of the black hole at the end of the episode, but it's nice to see someone other than Touma actually harming the main villain. Kento still refuses to play nice, but at least he has no more excuse to sacrifice himself. Overall, it's honestly an episode that in theory should be dramatic, but I really did feel like they should've really focused a lot more on the Kento/Touma destiny moment in the final act of this episode, which really felt underwhelming for how significant it really should've been on paper.
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Episode 38: Uniting the Holy Blades, the Galaxy Sword
Following up on the previous episode, the other Swordsmen basically tell Touma to go off and finish his business with Kento and bring him back into the fold, while they hold down the fort and fight off Master Logos. Okay, that's kinda nice of them, actually. We basically cut around the different parties as well (Ren/Desast, the Shindais, Kento brooding on a rooftop) before we cut away to Master Logos facing off against four swordsmen -- Kamen Riders Blades, Buster, Slash and Saikou. They predictably get beaten up, and then Kamen Riders Sarutobi, Sabela and Durendal show up one after the other. And... and okay, the action scene is honestly pretty standard and formulaic, but the five-year-old in me really find it cool for these guys to show up, say their catchphrase and do a special move or two.
Touma talks to Kento and leaves the lightning blade Ikazuchi while telling him that they'll be waiting, and then the glowing ball of yellow light that has been following Kento all throughout the previous episode perches on it. Kento gets brought into an illusory realm (???) where he meets with the ghost of Kaido Naoya his dad. It's... it's a pretty well-acted scene, even if we're admittedly just going through the very expected redemption arc for Kento's dad. I really felt like I probably would care more if we actually saw a bit more out of Fukamiyo Hayato? It's a pretty simple 'be true to yourself' speech, but this leads Kento to finally pick up the lightning blade. I really wish that there's something to add here, but I really don't feel like Hayato's much of a character in this series. It's neat, I guess.
Touma, meanwhile, shows up on the huge Kamen Rider rumble, only for Bacht to show up and give a grand speech about how humanity sucks and everyone is fated to battle, citing Kento and Touma's conflict as a prime example. Touma actually gives a pretty damn good speech about how Bacht has been continuously shoving blame onto others -- even if he was sealed within a book prison for a thousand years, he's also the one who adamantly refuses to change or listen to other people's arguments, actively choosing to wallow in anger instead of trying to overcome it. Touma asks Bacht why he can't change if he's supposedly so strong. Every other one of Touma's allies gets a badass line, they talk about believing in people, and then Touma, un-transformed, cuts a massive gash across Bacht's body that overcomes his phoenix powers and he finally dies, admitting that Touma has a point.
You know what? Bacht was pretty damn cool. After the Megiddo trio and the Shindai siblings have been pretty lackluster, one-note antagonists, Bacht was pretty dang cool. Sure, I'm never a huge fan of the 'talk no jutsu' trope, but this was a pretty neat one.
Master Logos does a 'Solomon Strash' and summons a gigantic CGI blade to smash down on Touma while the entire world around them turns dark, but Touma, having clashed swords with every single other member of the cast, rebukes Logos for having no conviction or hope behind his blade. The eleven swords stand against Master Logos, with the ghost/spirit of Hayato showing up to wield Kurayami. And then all the eleven holy blades fly into the sky, and all the random plot devices we've been collecting throughout the series -- Mei's book, Daishinji's master's prophecy, and the holy blades -- resonate and create a brand-new sword for Touma. It's final form time, and we get the Sword King's Blade, Cross Saber. No, wait, Xross Saber. It's spelled with an X, because X is read as 'cross' or something.
Touma transforms into his (presumably) final form, Xross Saber, and it's pretty cool -- it's a form that looks a lot cleaner than Elemental Dragon, and the sparkly star pattern on the suit's blue colour works very well in the darker shots of this episode. Using this form, Touma summons the eleven blades, which fly to the different parts of the world to summon giant facsimiles of their respective Kamen Riders to destroy the books. Kamen Rider Solomon summons a bunch of giant CGI not-Gundams, while Xross Saber displays a power similar to some other final forms (like Kiwami Arms or Grand Zi-O) where he can just summon a bunch of other power-ups previously seen in the series. After a CGI battle displaying this power, Touma blows up Solomon's robot minions, and everyone celebrates his final form.
And... and as far as final form debuts go, I've seen better. But I've also seen much worse. Again, I guess part of it is just that it all basically happens in the most predictable and standard way, which isn't always a bad thing, but it also felt kind of just there, you know? There isn't really anything that I particularly dislike about these two episodes, but I bet that there really isn't going to be anything I find super-duper memorable out of these two. Anyway, we do get the final form, and I think we're basically in the end-game. We've, what, around five, six episodes left? Again, what needs to be wrapped up is relatively obvious, and I honestly don't think we'll be getting too many surprises down the road. The episodes themselves are fine, but overall I look back at Saber as a whole and I really do feel like the pacing and the plotting structure could've been done a lot better.
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Random Notes:
- Hoo boy, yeah, when the belt noises play at the same time while the relatively longer soundbytes play their entire verses, it's a bit painful to listen to.
- There's an unintentionally hilarious line where Ren demands Touma tell him how he got stronger and Touma replies that he got stronger by 'fighting everyone'. He did that, sure, but I'm pretty sure the reason he overpowers Ren so much is that he's got like four different power-ups from legendary holy books while Ren is still stuck with Three Little Pigs.
- Is the pier where Bacht is brooding the same one that Makoto broods all the time in Ghost? It looks like a similar pier.
- It's kind of eye-rolling that we start off episode 38 with the heroes declaring that "the only course of action is to beat Master Logos!" ...isn't that the whole crux of the past couple of episodes? There is exposition-recap, and there is just sounding dense.
- Granted, if there was a great comeback to 'you can't just shove blame to other people', it is probably 'I was sealed for one thousand years after a betrayal by my friend!'
- The eleven swords form a constellation that I am pretty sure is based on the Sefirot. I'm not sure if there's any real symbolism to the positions of the swords or if it's just there to look cool because 'holy blade'.
- Speaking of the 11 holy swords, I guess Bacht's sword just wields itself since Bacht is dead when this happens?
- Xross Saber in this episode summons a gigantic version of Gekido, a rain of Ikazuchi blades, two spinning Hayates, a gigantic Suzune sound cannon, plus a bunch of spinning Rekkas.
- Desast steals the phoenix blade while everyone isn't looking. I mean, I know that Reika has been doing exactly that for like a dozen times, but Reika at least can turn into smoke! There's no excuse for the thirteen people there not to see Desast.
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