No offense, but doesn't the word choices "that's what this story is about" sound painting this as objective? Like it seems as if you're pushing your prefered narrative, like wanting to get something like Ex-Aid of "characters constantly being hostile, fighting, and at odds with each other" thus anything is acceptable to get it and it'd have no faults or criticisms (like against those who acknowledge the character's beliefs or characterization, but still feel that they're too much of an asshole in their reaction to this) as long as this happens - and yeah, fanatical belief in system/organization is also one of the roots behind being an asshole (the self-righteous type).

Though for my personal thoughts, Rintaro is someone professional, but he's also someone nice for that (IMO a breath of fresh air); thus he'd be more open minded before, like how he's accepting on Touma's methods when he tries to mentor him before, instead of like, insisting that he's a newbie that doesn't know anything and forcing him to obey and do things their way. By having both of these I'd think he can be conflicted at first, at this early stage instead of immediately fully leaning on the other way.

I only got my own point of view, so everything I say here can be easily (and correctly) written off as subjective. Any analysis of art is subjective!

But this isn't a story where anyone can just go I've Made A Huge Mistake. It's a story where we're exploring why these characters are choosing things like duty over friendship, so I don't know if it's worthwhile to single any particular character(s) out as not doing enough with the information presented, when this story is built around characters make poor decisions with the information presented.

Glad to hear you enjoyed this episode! It's a nice cap off to the two-parter and I especially enjoyed it as our starting two episodes for our new arc of Saber.

I know some people groaned at Yuri technically misinforming Touma of how exactly things worked with the human-hybrid Megid and how it could've been easily solved. But Yuri is one of those dude's who will be extremely literal and vague about a point because he assumes that people would have guessed from those few words.

The argument and discussion between Yuri and Touma too was definitely one of my favorites. Touma is a very emotional guy, more recently to his detriment (given how he acted on his feelings during the whole SoL betrayal and look where that got him). But despite that setback he still keeps hold of what makes him, him. And that allows him to get through to Yuri in some fashion, and it's also just a nice way to sort of reorient the story's direction from a larger stakes war that had been going on prior to low stakes battles where the individuals are more important than the goals.

Still, Touma has a much more solid way to save people turned into Megid now, though his plan (and realization via a toy toaster) was pretty solid all things considered. It also ended in a nice stylish dual wielding fight where Touma gets to wield two Seiken at once again. Touma dual wielding is cool, and I'm glad that Yuri as Saikou allows more opportunities for that.

Speaking of Saikou! We basically get his full debut out of the way these episodes. The sword itself is cool, but the most interesting aspect is the Shadow feature. Which funnily enough gets a special filter for the suit only for that to be completely forgotten about the literal next episode. Though even then Shadow's properties of nothing being able to hit it still ends up coming into play even with the lack of a filter.

But yeah, solid end to a two parter and I absolutely adored your story. It's fun to see you sort of try and get into the minds of the characters to pick at. And you choosing Daishinji as the main viewpoint character this time was pleasantly surprising.

Thanks! I think Daishinji's gigantic heart and crippling shyness is a really fascinating concept for a Kamen Rider, and it's fun to figure out how he'd internally navigate this unacceptable dissolution of his friends/coworkers.

Also, I'm glad you liked this episode, too. I thought this was an all-the-way good episode, even if I could not care less about the Book Club just rolling everything back to Square One and flinging book monsters at their goals until something positive happens.

I'm really enjoying Saber taking the story slow and leaving in more room for the characters to interact, I especially like this episode with its clash of ideals, as you said in your post, it's between Touma's "wanting to save the people unwillingly hosting the Megid" and Yuri's "wanting to destroy the Megid entirely as that's his job", even if technically it's a misunderstanding and they both mostly want the same thing, it's mostly a minor thing in this episode overall, but I like it.

I don't have many dislikes about the episode, besides still not really caring about Yuki, she's fine but I don't particularly feel any distress over her potentially getting destroyed. Aside from that, i do kind of wish we got to see the Sword of Logos more, the cast is my favorite part of the show, so even though I enjoy the plot, I would still like to see some of the Sword of Logos members a bit more, but that's a minor and subjective complaint.

Still, besides that, I really enjoyed this episode. It's a fun ending to this two-parter, it doesn't exactly do any major twists or have many major story advancements, but it's a story that really focuses on what Touma wants to accomplish through being a Kamen Rider, and it gives me a better grasp on his character which I wasn't really feeling before.

Not much to say about the episode personally, so I’ll share some random things about it.

A few people at the time of airing thought Rintaro not believing Touma when he said that the Megido was created from a human was ludicrous. Because “a demon that’s always been born from books in the past came from a human this time” is so much more plausible.

Kyle Takano (the guy playing Legiel) said the Yeti was his favourite monster of the series, even taking a photo with it (he also took a photo of himself and Zoous’s actor, face about three feet apart).

And then, there’s the return of the “sword that restores unrestorable monsters, a gimmick that would’ve been useful 8 years ago.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...4/IMG_4652.JPG

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 18

Despite enjoying the episode a ton anyway, after first watching it, I was pretty hung up on the whole reveal at the end that the episode's central dilemma only ever existed in Touma's head. I guess I thought it retroactively undermined the stakes or something, but ever since then, I've realized I actually think it's a perfect cap for this story, which makes me love the episode that much more.

The reason this stretch of the show ended up making Touma finally become a character I loved ahead of guys like Rintarou is because, the way I see it, this whole storyline is specifically digging into what being Saber means to him. Now that it isn't just a fun fantasy to live out with cool coworkers, it's really testing just how much saving people means to Touma, and how far he'll go to do it. So on top of loving that we've reduced the scale down to a single person to be saved, emphasizing how individual lives matter, I actually love even more that all the effort he puts in here turns out to be pointless with Yuri around. Because it's like, if he'll go to lengths that extreme, with that much determination, even when he could easily be doing less... imagine what this guy might be capable of when the chips are truly down.

So yeah, no argument from here that this was a very well done two-parter, of course. It's cool to see Saber being so awesome and heroic, and it's cool how his emotionally vulnerable and empathetic approach to fighting evil starts to win over a more stoic hero so old-school he's literally a millennium old. The odd couple dynamic with Touma and Yuri really works wonders for this show.

So here Mei would have no qualms criticizing Rintaro for making stubborn decision against Touma, even if Rintaro's the one she falls in love with, she's not clouded by it here which is good, though that makes her accidentally hurt Touma. Mei's quite lucky that she got an editor who is principled by focusing on bringing happiness on the people who read the books, though... there are multiple genre of books and there are multiple feelings and emotions various type of stories can give, like giving fear for tenseful suspense, sadness for something tragic, etc.

I agree that this is probably something that can be overlooked, including in real life, that saving the world doesn't necessarily mean saving the population on it. The cases I've found however, is that the reverse that some people think saving the world would necessarily mean caring for the population inside, of which can be used to paint like, villains who fight other villains that threaten the world, as good guys for saving the world, even when the reason they do it is because they won't have places to live otherwise. And as said here, individual lives' struggle is something that is really important in heroism, which also can be overlooked by some audiences to deem characters who simply do their job in fighting monsters and putting themselves at risk as 'true heroes' ignoring for example, their blatant negative traits of their disregard.

I'd think that Yuri seems standoffish not due to being wrapped up in their duty though, Yuri is just extremely odd including in his perspective on life due to his lack of understanding of human world which leads to this (like Philip?)... not Touma which Yuri calls naive (though perhaps some can blindly agree to Touma being naive... even if it's Yuri who didn't understand human world).

The misunderstanding is also on Yuri's behalf, Yuri has no intention on killing humans at the first place, but he didn't understand why Touma would think the humans can be killed when he destroys the Megid head-on, and that Touma interprets Yuri answering to Touma wanting to save Yuki by striking her as mercy killing her. Of which actually Megids work like Dopants from W that destroying it would free the humans, so Touma's victory actually also had him creating unnecessary difficulty, though Touma realizes this and is upset over this misunderstanding at the end. I still like that Touma's problem-solving is still touched upon here in how he seizes his chance to strike the book. Rintaro IMO is more in-character here in how he deals with this situation, he's conflicted thus he'd mediate by denying anything bad about SoL, but also trying to talk his way with Touma about stopping his path, which'd be why Reika needs to convince Rintaro more at the end.

Hmm.. so that seems to be where your arguments from Gai came from, thinking that he genuinely had a goal of human improvement... I'd say, his human supremacist claim is the cover of his crimes, I've said that Horobi never lives up to his claims of saving Humagears, but Gai is even worse for that as he just consistently hypocritically contradicting it, like him thinking humans deserve Ark's judgment, and also how he had cold and data-focused approach even more than Humagears due to his profit-driven approach, and as Rider he won't improve/evolve but acting as a parasite stealing from people around him, it's also revealed later his true view of humanity is using them as tools, he doesn't actually care about them, all his actions are only for himself and his greed.

I wonder if you'd have an example or ideas to make victim of the week stories like this worth following (for what this threads deem, example is Shouko from Den-O), as I feel that, to display heroism particularly from the likes of Touma here, it shouldn't only involve taking care of your own circles (e.g. comrades in Sword of Logos) alone. A̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶p̶e̶o̶p̶l̶e̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶'̶d̶ ̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶e̶c̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶c̶a̶r̶e̶d̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶r̶t̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶I̶M̶O̶.̶

It's the downside of these classic Monster Of The Fortnight stories, though, that it's harder to make the mega-arc stuff feel prominent and addressed. Writing-wise, these shows can either gives us a fleshed-out monster plot with personal stakes and a defined metaphorical struggle for the hero, OR they can give us a gigantic cast grappling with massive stakes and longform developments in the status quo. There're only so many minutes in an episode, so the SoL has to get backgrounded for a couple weeks in order to tell a story about Touma and Yuri trying to save Yuki.

I mean, that description of Rintaro's incredulity is sort of willfully missing the point of what's happening in the episode? Rintaro's scared that his friend has gone off the same deep end Calibur did, and here's Touma a) accusing the Sword of Logos of undefined treachery, b) accumulating power that he won't surrender, c) battling other swordsmen, and now d) protecting Megid lives over human lives. Touma not only isn't explaining the situation well, but Rintaro is watching the exact same shit Kamijo did play out all over again with one of his best friends. In an episode all about how communication is impossible without trust, there's nothing else Rintaro could've done but doubt Touma.

The most amazing thing about this show's cast is that you can pair off any two of them, and something fascinating is going to happen. Yuri absolutely continues that trend!

I think that quote is more about hoping that stories enrich people's lives, making them happy and fulfilled in that way, even if the genre is mystery or drama or Spooky Monster Superhero Action. I don't think Yuki is literally saying that all stories have to make people, like, smile and laugh in order to be worth telling.

Yes, it's really cool and unusual that instead of going from smallest to largest, Saber started off saving an entire city block, and now dedicates two whole episodes to saving one person. Also, today's story is great.