Kamen Rider Saber, Episodes 46-47:
Episode 46: Goodbye, My Hero
And so Saber ends. Probably one of the shows that I haven't been really in love with the most -- there were definitely a fair amount of good parts, particularly in the beginning and near the end, but for the most part, I think most people can agree that Saber has been a bit of an inconsistent ride. At least the quality of the episodes have risen significantly in this last batch of episodes, though, which isn't something I expected.
Episode 46, "Goodbye, My Hero", starts off showing Mei meeting the fallen adult-Luna in the streets, fading in and out of existence. And... I guess they really needed Mei to be doing something in the finale? But in the previous episode, most of the characters had been fighting the Lords of the Wise, which means Touma is free to confront Storious in this one. Storious's monologue is pretty much the same as what he has been saying, except this time he has an audience in Touma -- that fate and everything is predetermined and nothing they can do can change the flow of destiny.
Touma, of course replies with a badass speech of his own, and it's a pretty good comeback to Storious's insane rambling. He's no hero, he's a novelist, and in his eyes, everyone is the hero in their own personal stories. And that he and his friends are fighting for things they are protecting and all that. Of course, we appropriately cut away to the other members of the cast yelling about what they're fighting for. Ogami flashes back to his wife and child. Daishinji gets up from his seeming death in the previous episode (I guess he's fighting for his sword?) and the two of them fight against a Lord of the Wise. The actors and the scenes really do a good job at capturing how ragged and beaten down these guys are. Ultimately they defeat their opponent -- with Ogami holding the Lord in place, and Daishinji shooting them both. Ogami survives, though.
The Shindai siblings aren't quite as fortunate, and I feel like they get perhaps the longest fight scene in this episode. They just get quite bullied by the Lord they are fighting, whose powers seem to allow him to replicate the Shindai siblings' moves. Rintarou shows up to help out and freeze the Lord for a bit, but Durendal tells him to move on... which is a bit of a short moment, but it's pretty cool since the show makes it pretty apparent that the Shindais are in a pretty sorry state. They put up a good fight, but ultimately the dual-blade wielding Lord cuts down Reika, slices Durendal's trident and does an ora-ora-ora barrage of sword strikes on him. We get one of the most badass deliveries of Ryoga's "do not anger me" catchphrase, and Reika manages to deliver the final blow, stabbing the Lord (while untransformed!) with the pieces of Ryoga's trident. Both of them seem to fall as they reach towards each other, and if this was an early-Heisei show it'd be a pretty good indication that they're dead.
While all of this is going on, Mei gives Luna a bit of a pep talk, telling her that she needs to go see Touma, and as Luna heads off, Mei runs into her publishing office to type in something that 'only she can do', which is typing Touma's manuscript down. (Meanwhile, Ren and Kento are still fighting the final Lord, though we don't see much of it beyond brief clash).
Storious continues his little speech, and it's probably the first time we actually see his motivations in full? It's still insane, of course, but I can understand it a bit more? Storious used to be a great poet, but then he realized that the Omniscient Tome that writes down everything in fate... has everything set in stone (or, well, paper) which includes all of his creations. Which means nothing he created was original, and it was pre-determined. It's something that would drive you crazy, of course. But since Storious is a main villain in a tokusatsu show, he takes it into such extremes that he wants to wipe out all of humanity because destiny is meaningless and stuff. He tries to make this apply to Touma as well, trying to tell him that Touma's own novels are also pointless since all the creativity pales beneath the grand destiny and all that. Touma gives his own big speech, about how stories bring happiness and bring people together, and says that, hey, even if his stories were predestined to be written... it doesn't really matter, since the stories that are written are new and precious to those who read them. Pretty cool stuff!
Of course, this show isn't going to end with a conversation, so Storious and Touma both transform and face off. We get perhaps the cleanest usage of Touma's Xross Saber form, summoning all the holy swords. And as Touma alternates between his comrades' swords, we get a brief glimpse of them yelling 'henshin' in the previous episode. That's cheesy as all heck, but also very appropriately cool. This isn't the final episode, though, so obviously Storious is going to have the advantage. His red-skies-apocalypse continues, and as everyone struggles, Storious beats Touma down... and kicks him down a conveniently-placed giant hole on the floor. Cliffhanger!
Anyway... yeah, not the most novel story. It's just a motivation rant tossed back and forth, and a couple of admittedly pretty cool action scenes for the secondary characters. But it's also clearly just meant to be a set-up episode. Which brings us to...
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Episode 47: The End of the World, the Story that is Born
This episode is pretty obviously telegraphed by the previous one, if we're being honest, just like most of this final arc. But it's better to have a final arc that's at least 'safe', but is solid and well-executed, right? Anyway, we start off with Kamen Riders Espada and Kenzan fighting against the last Lord of the Wise, who can open portals to reflect the Riders' attacks back at them. They quickly just swap books, and somehow this allows both of them to move really, really fast and stab the Lord a lot of times, blowing it up less than a minute into the episode. Kind of have to feel a bit bad for Kento, honestly... Ren at least had his big moment slaying the first Lord of the Wise, but Kento's been kind of sidelined in this final battle.
Which is where Yuuri comes in! He's been struggling to go through the evil lair all throughout the previous episode, and he comes across the fallen Ren and Kento. It's not explicitly stated, but the way the scenes are shot seemed to imply that at the very least Ren died in this fight, and Yuuri revived them with his magic powers... before Yuuri finally explodes and disappears into freckles of light, talking about how great it is to have friends that he can trust. Again, it's somewhat sad, but Yuuri has already been telegraphed to be shambling, half-dead, in this final arc anyway. I don't think it quite packs the punch of Desast or Bacht's deaths, if we're being honest... which is a shame, since Yuuri's a repretty major character that deserves more.
While all of this is going on, we get to see an aspect of Storious's book-apocalypse, because (somehow?) as a result of Wonderworld being corrupted, all stories and books, including the ones in Touma's bookshop and Northern Base, are disappearing. I did remember that they said something about the Wonder Books disappearing, but I didn't think it'd apply to all stories. Mei, of course, keeps typing, asking people about what stories truly mean to them.
Touma survives the big cliffhanger of falling into the dark hole on the floor because... of the Primitive Dragon book! Oh yeah, there was this whole sub-plot about Touma befriending the dragon inside of that book. Okay, sure. Touma transforms into Primitive Dragon and manhandles Storious with his CGI scorpion-whip... right until the book-rapture happens, and Touma is forced to de-transform when his Primitive Dragon Book vibrates and disappears. Luna shows up but she's unable to really stand up, while Rintarou and Kento manages to push Storious away even without needing to transform.
Luna gives a speech to Touma about how she would like to hear her stories, and that he should keep creating, and then Luna floats up and creates a blue version of the red magical circle that brings all the swords to life, animating Rekka, which flies around and starts fighting Storious on its own. The swords of the six main Riders fly up and combine with Luna, all of which transform into a single new book: Wonder Almighty.
So it's a final episode new form, and Touma equipping that book also somehow summons a copy of Nagare and Ikazuchi for Rintarou and Kento. Okay, sure! It doesn't make sense, but so does not having the two other main characters transform. Just like Zero-One before him, Saber's final form is exactly the same as his Brave Dragon form. We get a bit of the three main Riders fighting in their base forms, before Touma summons all the books and starts summoning the CGI animals to beat up Storious. Some of the power-up books even get to help... although, tragically, we don't get to see the return of Buff Tinker Bell from Peter Fantastista.
While all of this is going, Touma basically tries to beat the love-for-stories back into Storious, all the while he's being beaten up by CGI beanstalks and cartoon pigs. Blades, Espada and Saber finally each get one hit each to beat up Storious. Storious gets a flashback to how he enjoyed writing stories in the past, sees the 'new story' on Touma's belt before disintegrating.
But the apocalypse is still happening as the world is being consumed by the apocalypse, and even Touma himself succumbs and starts to disintegrate as well... but then we cut to Mei, who's still typing on the computer. And as Mei also gets consumed by the waves of disintegration, apparently her words reach all the other people all over the world... and then Touma wakes up in the void as vignettes of random children show up and talk about their favourite stories.
And then we cut to one year later. Apparently Touma vanished, returning the rest of the world to normalcy. The Wonder Books can't be opened, Yuuri is still a sword (for around five minutes), and the Shindai siblings survive off-screen. And apparently, Touma's book, 'Eternal Story', won an award in the meantime. Apparently Touma got shunted off to a brand-new Wonderworld, writing stories while he was in there. All while he's doing that, Touma returned all of the disappeared people who Storious trapped in books a couple of episodes back. Touma also apparently met with the ghosts of all the dead people... including the villains, who are at peace.
And... and that's a neat ending. Other than the bonus episode that's going to be a introduction to the next rider, Revice. But... yeah. That's basically as good of an ending as this story can get. Ultimately it's still bogged down by the ambiguous and overblown backstory about the Omniscient Tome and the nature of Luna and Wonderworld, which I really did feel like the show spends a lot of time building up but never really explaining all that well. So Touma's sacrifice and ultimate return feels... I can't really say it's convoluted, because I really wasn't sure what was supposed to happen and what's not supposed to happen. These final episodes are at least paced well? Particularly the (admittedly simple) action scenes? I think my real conclusion from this is that 'it could've been worse', but ultimately while I did have fun with this series, I still think that it's probably one of the weaker Rider shows. It suffers from having a bit too many characters, plotlines that are dragged on a bit too long, and while the villains are competent enough there's also not a whole ton of depth to it. I understand the show's made with a lot of restrictions put on shooting and stuff, but I don't know. I just really hope the next show is a bit better!
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Random Notes:
- Power-scaling is a bit useless in the newer Kamen Rider shows, but Daishinji and Ogami are two characters that have mostly been relegated to secondary roles and have never gotten power-ups, so I felt like they are definitely two of the less 'safe' characters. The Lord of the Wise they're fighting also has the cool energy-absorbing scythe, too!
- I know Touma's sword-power-barrage isn't going to actually defeat Storious, but while the SFX team got pretty good mileage out of most of the cast... all they did for Durendal's sword was have it slam down? Really? The sword that can stop time, and that's the most interesting thing they could do with it?
- We get a very rare appearance of Kamen Rider Espada's genie and tri-cerberus! The Lord of the Wise reflects it back!
- Since Yuuri disintegrates and he is a sword, and Ryoga's sword got sliced and blown up, I guess that's why only Saber, Blades, Espada, Sarutobi, Buster and Slash's swords got summoned.
- I've always been a bigger fan of Saber's original form and never really quite got into liking the looks of either Primitive or Xross Dragon, so I'm actually very happy to see them pushed aside in favour for the original look for Saber.
- It's been a bit of a wild ride. I don't think I'll be reviewing the next season, Revice, as closely as I did with Saber and Zero-One. I'll probably do chunks of it at a time, maybe around ten or so episodes in one go, the same way I do One Piece anime reviews? Unless Revice really grabs me the way Zero-One did.
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