Kamen Rider Saber E41-42 Review: Bonne Lecture

Kamen Rider Saber, Episodes 41-42

I am very, very slowly catching up to Kamen Rider stuff. I'm not sure if I'll do episodic reviews for Kamen Rider Revice when it does come up later, or if I'll do bi-episode ones, or if I'll just do larger chunks of episodes? I do have a huge amount of backlog of Kamen Rider stuff to catch up with... the RealXEyez Zero One movie, the Ghost x Saber two-parter specials... anyway, two episodes today. 

Episode 41: For 2000 Years, A Wish Spelled Out

Sometimes you just have an episode that's fully exposition. And most of the time, that's either going to be really interesting or really boring, and... and I really did feel like they could've done more to make me care about Tassel. He's around in the show, yes. He narrates the bonne lecture segments of the episodes. But ultimately, other than some one-off scenes meeting with Yuri and Master Logos, we really don't have much about him. So when he finally meets up with Touma and the rest of the cast, it really feels like 'oh, okay, finally we get this' and it feels... I wouldn't say that it's anticlimactic, but it most certainly feels like it could have been much, much more interesting. 

Tassel basically does a huge information dump and... and it's less new information and more contextualizing the flashbacks that we've had before about the ancient group of people who found the Wonder World and became the Meggido, and how Tassel and the original Logos split up the Book of Knowledge between them. Tassel is also utterly incapable of interfering with the world, because he's... basically just a spirit, I guess? Also, Luna is confirmed to be the personification of Wonder World, chose Touma, and end up causing the chain of events during Touma's childhood that led to the first Calibur's betrayal. There's a repeat of the dilemma of whether Touma will choose Luna or his mortal friends, which... yeah, I guess it's nice to emphasize that. 

What feels like a larger event, interestingly, is the B-plot. I have been kind of complaining about the show spinning its wheels with the Ren/Desast plot, where they quite literally just gather mould in the corner of the show doing nothing but repeat the same 'I want to be strong' complaints and eating ramen. But Desast goes off on his own to confront Storious, angry that Storious is trying to 'finish the story'. Having stolen the Eternal Phoenix book and sword, Desast actually straight-up transforms into Kamen Rider Falchion to fight Storious in his monster form! It's actually a neat way at showing off Storious's new power as the proper final villain of this show. Storious's monologues about how stories are beautiful because they have an ending (that's true!) is also pretty neat -- it's still lunacy, of course, but it's a different brand of lunacy compared to Master Logos's earlier in the show. And it does make Storious's obsession with witnessing other people's deaths a lot more interesting. Desast is mortally wounded, and it would lead to the pretty powerful Desast/Ren episodes coming up soon. 

Storious makes a Charybdis Megiddo to stall the heroes while he goes off to Wonder World. That's the obligatory third-act action scene. And... and after the very clean Desast-vs-Storious fight, the Charybdis Megiddo fighting against Slash and Buster, and later Saber, is kind of just... boring? I don't know. I think I've reached my fill of seeing too many huge Xross Saber giant sparkly explosion finishers. Is this even a new variant of Xross Saber? I don't even know. I did like him allowing Slash and Buster to dual-wield their weapons, though. 

_____________________________________________

Episode 42: The Beginning, of A Beautiful End

41 was honestly kind of a weaker episode, but 42 is so much more interesting. Unaware of what's going on in Wonder World, our heroes are kind of confused why Tassel/Viktor hasn't returned with Luna yet... until Yuuri realizes from our heroes discussing the Charybdis fight that it's all a distraction for Storious to attack Tassel personally. 

And we get to see Storious confronting Tassel in Wonder World, with the two old friends finally arguing with each other. Again, I also like to reiterate that I probably would've cared more if Tassel had a bigger presence in the story. At least he had a role last episode? And if nothing else, his final scene, begging his old friend that they could've done what they should've done in the first place, which is to use the power of the Wonder World to bring peace to the world... Ultimately, Storious stabs Tassel and steals his book, leaving him to die into bubbles. It's actually kind of sad for what's a pretty short scene. RIP Tassel.

Tassel's death causes Wonder World to... it becomes red and creepy and it's causing some sort of dimensional clash with the real world? I'm honestly not quite sure what's going on, but they apparently do what the previous Saber did, and use the various holy swords to create small force-field barriers to lock the dimensional disruption into one area. 

Oh, while all of this is going on, we get a couple of short scenes of Mei meeting Luna, who has manifested in the physical world. We get a couple of honestly rather eye-rolling physical comedy scenes of Mei face-planting into a pile of mud... god bless Mei's actress for having to put up with this. 

Touma confronts Storious, who mocks Tassel's last moments as lacking any sort of beauty because he really wants to drive that jackassery home. Storious gives a typical villain motive rant, and his theme is endings and deaths. Meanwhile, Touma is of the opinion that endings and stories are supposed to inspire the next generation, transcending time. 

On the Desast/Ren side of things, Desast demands Ren fight him seriously. The audience knows that Desast is basically dying, and he's desperate to basically leave something, do something with this weird wind ninja guy that he befriended. Ren aborts the fight after a brief clash, however, noting that there's "no point to the fight", because finally after a dozen episodes, Ren takes Touma's speeches to heart? Or something. The two eventually just hang out and eat cup ramen again. While discussing why Touma and the rest can get stronger, Ren almost insensitively notes that Desast "don't need for a reason to fight or live"... and we get this absolutely cool black-and-white shot of Desast slowly disintegrating into tendrils of smoke. 

Desast eventually shows up and interrupts the Touma/Storious confrontation. I really do get a feel for Desast's desperation to find some sort of meaning in all this, and he ends up fighting Touma in yet another pretty well-choreographed fight. Again, just to drive things home even further, Storious mocks Desast as an unnecessary part of the story, as something that he would be happy to see Saber help him erase. Poor Desast is just being told that he's useless and has no reason to exist over and over, isn't he? It's at least for good narrative purpose, though. Storious leaves Saber and Desast to fight each other, and Desast gets super angry at Touma because he blames Touma for causing Ren to falter all the time... while Touma is of the idea that humans are meant to falter, and they'll be there waiting for him, something that Desast expresses confusion towards since it doesn't relate to gaining strength. Touma realizes how alike Ren and Desast are, and acknowledges that Desast is more human than he would care to admit to. After a clash of finisher attacks where Desast is knocked back, we get to see that Desast's body is slowly disintegrating, and he walks off. 

Ren sees all of this going on, and... and you know what? While I really don't care about Ren since he's kind of a flat character, these two episodes have given me such a huge, huge appreciation for Desast. He's a bit of a weird and complex character, and yet somehow he's quickly risen into being one of the more compelling characters in the story. The obsession with finding a purpose in life and his odd-but-cute friendship with Ren is most certainly something that I didn't expect to be really caring about, but I definitely end up enjoying episode 42 a lot more than I thought I would, and look forward to the conclusion of the Desast story next episode. 

Random Notes:

• Okay, 41 starting off with the team celebrating and playing around with the huge flowing soumen set-up is actually kind of hilarious. Highlights include Yuuri using a fishing rod to catch the noodles, and Sophia's disappointed face as she fails to get the soumen. 42's little skit is Daishinji eating an overly-salty onigiri made by Sophia. 
• Rintarou going "so you're not a regular Homo sapiens" at Tassel saying that he's 2000 years old is low-key pretty funny. 
• Ren has a short scene in episode 41 brooding by a river, and Touma exchanges dialogue with him, but it's literally the same thing as what we've seen before.
• The Charybdis Meggido in 41 enters a super-powerful state where it uses Desast's powers, and visually this is represented by an Attack on Titan style exposed musculature that rips out of his chitinous white skin. That's pretty nasty! I like it.
• There's a huge Zeronos/Deneb vibe with Desast demanding that Ren eat red ginger with his cup noodles, and demands that Ren apologize to said red ginger. 
• Touma is honestly a very basic protagonist, but one thing that the show has been consistent with him is showing how much he values friendship. And that brief shot of him getting visibly angry before catching himself at Storious's comment about Tassel's death is one of the best moments of acting in this episode.
• There's a particularly cool shot in the Saber/Desast fight where Desast lands in a shallow pool, and the camera briefly enters underwater to give us a shot of Desast's feet before panning back up, showing us both the scene above and below the water surface, just as Desast himself picks himself back up. 
• The location of the fight is pretty cool; it's in someone's fancy mansion-pool thing. It's nice to have a break from all the quarries and warehouses.