Yeah, I like Reika overrall from the season, but her role here is to turn the ambiguity of "Man, I wonder if the SOL is doing anything suspicious and aren't just set in their ways against the radical Touma" to, well, "Yep SOL being very sussy." I get why the other swordsmen believe Reika, they don't know they're in a story like this, but it does make them look a little gullible.

Lol, Reika's the one who kickstarted this fascinating ambiguity and compromised morality arc, yet you don't thank her for doing that? :lol Otherwise, though I know it's the execution, Reika here gives Kusaka vibes too for some people thus making her despicable for them. But good that Reika here isn't viewed as tough and competent due to her demeanor. And, to pull the "putting an organization ahead of people" here, for the group of morally-upright swordsmen, Ren is sorta the exception; while him doing SoL's job shows that he's not a bad person, he still has prevalent severe problems in his psychotic bloodthirst for power (also it's his primary reason to fight), and also petty jealousy, both leading for him to just picking fights with Touma, without caring of the actual threat like Qusama Megid (Shingo's) that they're supposed to fight (again, his reason to fight is different). He's someone that can be even worse than the Riders on Ex-Aid main group at the beginning (t̶h̶o̶u̶g̶h̶ ̶h̶e̶'̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶k̶i̶n̶d̶a̶ ̶m̶a̶l̶e̶ ̶v̶e̶r̶s̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶N̶i̶c̶o̶,̶ ̶a̶ ̶b̶r̶a̶t̶t̶y̶ ̶t̶y̶p̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶j̶e̶r̶k̶). Touma will of course put his faith on him though, as his archetype of a character implies.

The Mei and Yuri's henshin sequence is an ironic moment, usually that moment is used for someone who started to become a Rider, like some main protagonists such as Takumi (with Mari), and Ryotaro (with Hana). But here, it's done on someone who isn't only a longtime Rider, but also holds the most knowledge regarding what happened surrounding the Rider world, at least in the past, but this happens due to his absent-mindness. Touma claims in his fight that understanding pain (like taking hits from Qusama Megid) is what makes him want to protect others, which is true as it makes them understand what others are going through, but this should also be implemented in those who revolves around tragic backstory (Touma has it for 1 moment but he doesn't seem to revolve around it other than promises), which people'd expect to turn one bitter or outright villainous.

This'd still also prove that the swordsmen at SoL except Ren shouldn't be totally blind in their judgment against Touma, which it does here. Though it's good that believing in one thing doesn't mean agreeing with the other is highlighted here, Rintaro would believe Touma after further evidence is given about the humans being turned into a Megid. Also due to how the ones who's less close to Touma than Rintaro like Ogami and Daishinji also believes him. I like that Touma tries to confront Reika that she's the one behind this dispute though, albeit ofc Rintaro would defend her due to her position in SoL (and seems to be the only one explaining why he believes Reika). Yuri causes miscommunication again with his words, that saying Touma is destined for great power would mean he can still seem suspicious to Rintaro when Reika stirred-shit. That said, yeah Touma's the chosen one type which is something that really sounds generic to many people.

I think it's also an issue where too many participants, on the production side, are trying to make sure that the audience is suspicious of Reika. The actor's giving everything a layer of menace. The director's framing her shots to increase your discomfort as a viewer. The writer is including additional scenes of her having secret phone calls, and having her show up to conversations in order to blow them up. The set designer is making sure her base of operations is the most uncomfortable, foreboding location imaginable. And the musical director is giving her Suspicious Music. It's too much!

Man, I wish I was getting Kusaka vibes off of her! Kusaka's hilarious!

That explains why Daishinji seems to be on the verge of defecting to Team Saber. Those German kids are his important comrades, Hanselnuts To Gretel.

You mentioned Mei doing Yuri's Henshin, but I thought all of the Mei and Yuri shenanigans in this episode was comedy gold! Yuri is a Kamen Rider who doesn't even know how to ride a manual bicycle, as those didn't exist in his time. It's like the time when Hibiki crashed Tatsumaki, but even more ironic.

However, Yuri's experience of using an escalator shows that the old ways had their good points. Sure, anybody seeing one for the first time is going to be excited to take a ride. But when you have to go all the way up to come back down, I have to agree with him that it's inconvenient as hell, especially when you have to deal with people standing in the walk lane. It was created to assist people with poor mobility, but when young and fit people use them as well, it kind of defeats the whole point!

The four-man free-for-all is awesome for sure and I also love how ridiculous it is. Kenzan wants to take back his Kento-kun's sword, Legeiel wants revenge on Saber for merely killing too many of his MOTWs and our friendly neighborhood Swordsman Killer and Twitter-poster Desast is here specifically to add to that chaos!

Kamen Rider Saber in a nutshell. The show keeps getting better, but Reika keeps getting worse. And yet she's only my third least favorite female Rider of the Reiwa Era.

Ren tried to steel himself, but his expression looked more constipated instead.

I think Angela is too hard on herself. The problem with Reika is that she's Reika and also that Saber's producer Takahashi is the same guy who previously gave us that bigoted a**hole MosaRex in Ryusoulger.

We're very much at a point in Saber where every fight becomes an open question about what other weirdo might jump in from out of frame to be an obstacle for Saber. This one had a Book Club guy who hates Saber, a SoL guy who hates Touma, and a chaotic demon swordsman who hates not being in sword fights. It made for a very fun brawl.

Ren's version of events in that story is maybe not to be taken at face value!

The thing I remember about this episode years later is Touma speech at the very end. It a bit out of nowhere but to me it sold me on the character for the entire show. It too me cemented me liking Saber.

that is one of my favorite fights on the show. You really got the sense that the deck was stacked against Touma and it made for a very tense and chaotic action sequence.

Yeah, it's his first big But Why Heroism speech. I don't know if it completely landed for me (I'm not really connecting with the actor's performance, if I'm honest) but I appreciate the show trying to give his struggle a little more depth than Honoring Promises, which is a very surface-level motivation. I like that it's him as a writer, where he has to know characters inside and out, and he has to see himself in them and vice versa. Him getting pummeled to save someone is just a reminder of what they're going through, so he can fight even harder on their behalf.

It's the culmination of the last few fights where you can feel Touma's frustration reaching a breaking point. He's just got to get over there! To do one thing! And he can't get free to do it!

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 21 - “SHINE SPLENDIDLY, IN FULL COLORS”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/saber/saber21a.png

X-Swordman! Pretty great suit, and a pretty great debut. Look at the comic book panel layouts! Look at the Saber-text (whatever it’s called) sound effects! Gorgeous.

I assume that’s the thing that most people are going to care about from this episode, and I can’t really blame them. The suit design itself, like if Roy Lichtenstein worked for Toei, is one that I was in love with before I even saw Saber, before I even knew what his character was all about. It’s garish in the best possible ways, with them Ben Day dots from old-school comic book coloring adding even more colorful nonsense to a suit that almost literally embodies colorful nonsense.

Beyond the aesthetic delights of a suit that makes Slash look like Shadow, there’s the way in which it debuts: I sort of love that this episode has Tassel appear in a plotline that intersects with the main narrative? (I also just like the Old Buddy comedy of Tassel and Yuri. It’s really well done.) It’s Yuri opting to step off the sidelines, where Tassel lives, and join the fight for justice alongside Touma. You need to have Yuri in the Avalon/Wonder World set for at least a little bit in the same episode where he becomes a swordsman once again.

It’s all part of this episode’s broad statement about Touma’s true power, which is his empathy and conviction. The SoL and Reika are scared of him because of how much power he’s accumulated through swords and books, but this episode – and Touma’s recruitment of Daishinji – proves that all of that extra crap was only serving to obscure Touma’s actual power, which is his dedication to helping people, no matter what.

(That said… this is a very half-and-half episode, which is hilariously apropos for the episode that introduces the Charybdis half of Scylla and Charybdis. The Daishinji fight and the appearance of X-Swordman are tonally and dramatically different, and it really feels like each one should’ve been their own episode.)

The Daishinji fight, which best expresses Touma’s strength of character exceeding his collectibles and power-ups, that was my favorite part of the episode. I’m never going to be too mad at a finale where an awesome suit debuts to detonate a monster in a quarry, but the heart of this episode was Touma figuring out (accidentally!) how to sway reluctant swordsmen to fight for his cause. It was never going to be sowing doubt about the SoL leadership, or begging for help, or saying the word Promise a lot, or even trying to rekindle feelings of friendship. The thing that was going to convince someone like Daishinji was force of will, and amount of dedication. Daishinji’s suffered, and lost, and lived to fight again. He’s lost his sword for years, but stood by the SoL until he could swing his sword in battle. He needed to see if Touma could fight with that same spirit, that same fire. He got his answer this episode, in the best Touma fight to date.

It’s a couple good plots in this maybe-overstuffed episode that had me enjoying myself a bit more than recently. Touma’s fighting style of screaming a lot about his motivations gave him a newly-returned ally, and Yuri’s debut as a comic book superhero was a visual feast. Good episode!

—

THE DAY I LOSE MY MIND

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/saber/saber21b.png

He wasn’t sure if he was going mad or not.

It was a situation he’d never experienced before. His life to this point had been normal, but in a good way: school, work, love, family. His life was unexceptional, but not unhappy. He’d never had an unexplained illness, or an emotional episode. He was happy with his simple life.

Things were a lot less simple now.

He’d begun seeing the floating world a few weeks ago. At first, he’d pointed it out to his wife as a peculiarity: was this marketing for some new movie, or the launch of some new appliance? Her reaction was puzzlement, which he’d thought was a joke. He’d pointed to the bizarrely colorful tableau that hung in the sky, its airborne whales and copious amounts of dragons. Her puzzlement turned to concern when she realized he wasn’t joking, and his amazement turned to alarm when he realized she wasn’t joking.

They’d talked about it at home, later that day. His wife suggested that stress might be causing a hallucination, but that diagnosis only added to his fear. He wasn’t stressed, whatever his wife might think. Work was routine, but enjoyable enough. Their finances were stable. His friends were a constant presence in his life, but never demanding. His life was good, up until now.

But this vision he’d seen, and kept seeing… it unnerved him. He’d stopped mentioning it to his wife, in hopes that ignoring it would make it less present in his daily life. It hadn’t worked. He saw it constantly, and his wife could tell he was hiding it from her. She’d catch his gaze lingering a little too long out the window, and ask if he was still seeing the fantasy world. He’d make up some lie, the first ones he’d ever told her, to try and allay her fears. She wasn’t convinced, and he wasn’t less afraid.

It was strange, to fear your own perception. He didn’t know why his brain was making him see something that wasn’t there. He didn’t understand what message his subconscious might be trying to send him, or if (god forbid) he’d become a danger to the people around him. He went about his routine, and tried to concoct a shell that looked like the man he used to be. Inside, he longed for the last few weeks of terror to make some sense, to clarify this insanity.

He was walking home from work when he received his clarity at last. As the smirking man with the long length of hair came around the corner and pressed a small white cube to his chest, he understood the truth of his situation. It was a comfort, briefly.

He screamed in agony, and realized he was damned.

Okay so while X-Swordsman is cool, let me say this to start! I loved all of this episode but I absolutely adored the Daishinji vs. Touma segment! It's my favorite part of this episode!

This was the episode that fully sold me on Daishinji and Kamen Rider Slash!

Just... man, this episode does a lot of things and it really reiterates my earlier points about the prior episodes. The King Megid Two-Parter was very mundane and almost boring outside a few instances, like we were doing a repeat... and I feel like that was on purpose and the revelations this episode basically reoriented my opinion on them.

I don't find them spectacular obviously, but I appreciate them a lot more now. Last time we got another Human turned Megid plot and there was just a needless amount of padding in universe to where it took Touma forever to actually deal with the issue. Like say had everyone been on the same side, and coordinating, they would've dealt with the King Megid in like... the span of one fight scene.

But no, because everyone is splintered... it took a lot longer. And in the time it took, more people got turned into Megid's and their books actually got completed. That pile of red books in the Megid base? All victims and people Touma failed to save and might've had the Northern Base crew not been splintered.

And we get a very much defeated Touma, realizing that he couldn't save everyone being confronted by Daishinji and Ogami and begging them to come back. But of course Daishinji's not going to come back with begging, he wants a fight. And this time we get a true duel between the two, one that's very spectacular in that we also get the burning sword prop back! It's such a very highly emotional sword fight between the two and the ending where Daishinji just says "I heard a small echo" or something along those lines as he does a cool sword wipe is really great.

Then you've got Ogami being like "Hey man, follow your heart!" and not being hung up about Daishinji leaving to fight alongside Touma. It's a good scene between the older members as they choose to part ways.

I also found the structure rather interesting in that we have the Daishinji subplot go across three episodes. While it definitely made this episode a bit more packed, it definitely let that subplot breathe for a bit.

Anyway X-Swordsman! Pretty cool and I love the panel changing gimmick of going to the arm, etc. It's cool. Also Charybdis is an interesting Megid for the fact that it uses an entirely new mold for its design instead of just being top armor for the standard Megid suit.

But yeah... what a great episode. Probably one of my favorites in Saber if I'm being honest.

As for your story... I got goosebumps and chills from that! It was such a nice inner monologue this random nobody we've got no idea on is saying before it turns into absolute dread at the very end. You definitely captured a good creepy vibe with it, and I like that a lot.

===Zero Presents: Desast Walk===

Desast Walk #3:

http://www.tokunation.com/forums/att...1&d=1675570339

http://www.tokunation.com/forums/att...1&d=1675570339

http://www.tokunation.com/forums/att...1&d=1675570339

"Hello, humans.

I'm Dessert.

It feels good to lie down on the grass and look up at the open sky.

It's like I've got the whole world to myself.

What do you think?

Would you like to be a resident of my world?"