I feel like Saber is starting to click with me finally.

I also feel like there's a decent chance that next week's episode sucks now that I've said that.

Yeah, this was mostly one long fight scene, but I honestly really liked the few narrative beats we got. The three Riders pledging to be allies? Really liked that bit. Intrigue from the mystery woman? Definitely has me curious. The super obvious Calibur reveal? Still turned out to be a pretty good scene. Slash's suit and powers? ... well, we can't all be winners.

I still have some issues with the show - mostly the really long belt jingles and stock footage this week - but I actually got caught up in the story finally.

From all appearances, it seems this is just Tetsuo being eccentric.

That's something I've been expecting for a while now, especially with what the transformation jingle for Calibur is:

"Evil Read! Get go under conquer than get keen. Jaaku Dragon! Darkness translation! Stealing the light, the jet-black sword ruthlessly rules the dark dragon!"

Mostly the last part as it talks about ruling the black dragon. Saber has been relatively good with hinting at these twists without calling it out too much until now.

And another thing, yeah, the Seikens were most likely all created at the same time. Someone actually translated the forbidden book that described the path to Avalon and it talked about creating swords that could use multiple Wonder Ridebooks at a time. Which hints that the Seiken's are the newest swords, with Calibur's being the first and the other swords being somewhere in the middle given the fact they can only use 1 book.

We definitely will still see a lot of new toys, but at this point we're out of the phase of the show where they're throwing a LOT at us and it's just upgrades from here on out -- Zero-One similarly slowed down when it got to Shining and Assault, for instance.

I've been thinking. What if "The Truth" that Calibur is hinting at, concerns the Southern Base? Already, one of the members of it is already making the "Me have plans" face and will no doubt be the rival organization that Northern base have to face.

Hayato probably found out about it, betrayed SOL, fought Kamijo, something happens that leads to Kamijo getting Kurayami, and then proceeds to join up with Megid.

Hayato's definitely alive, and I feel like Kamijo is just using Megid to expose the Southern Base or something.

What makes you think Hayato's alive? He's nowhere to be seen. I got a feeling that Daichi defeated him somehow and took up his cause and Driver after hearing the truth. Whatever that is, I don't doubt the heroism of the Northern Base Sword Riders.

I'll have to see the Southern Base before getting suspicious but based on how mysterious Reika's acting, it's certainly possible that they have some kind of corrupt plan for the Book of Ancients and it would be pretty interesting to see a faction war between Northern and Southern Base. Intriguingly, South Pole also has twice as many Sentai villain bases as North Pole.

I mean, you don't cast an actor like that and just do a few scenes, right?

Tell that to Kenshin!

I must have missed it. What is going on with Buster and Kenzan? Why are they MIA

Because now their toys don't have to be advertised anymore the writers don't have to deal with juggling a bazillion characters and can just focus on a select few they actually wanted to write.

Or they're having a cookout in that training room. Possibly both!