[DreadBringer]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 18 - “WITH FLAMING TENACITY, STRIKE DOWN THE MEGID”

I like how the entire story is sort of commenting on the necessity of these small-scale Kamen Rider adventures, you know? It’s very much in the camp that these sorts of battles, where it’s all about saving one person from a horrible fate, are as crucial to understanding heroism as the gigantic world-in-peril mega-arc stuff. After a few months of epic battles to save the world, this story is all about not missing the trees for the forest.

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It’s all in that really well done Yuri/Touma debate, where Yuri’s unemotional pragmatism – defeat the Megid at any cost, because that’s your job – runs up against Touma’s emotional decision-making, because Touma can’t sacrifice someone that he can still try to save. Touma’s point is that people like Yuri and the Sword of Logos, they’re so wrapped up in their duty and grandiose mythology that they’re forgetting that the only reason to Save The World is so people can live in it. They’re literally trying to save the world, by preventing a global apocalypse, but they can’t see how individual lives are caught up in that struggle. Touma’s a writer, and he’s used to empathizing with people to see how they tick, to better understand a world he wants to write about. He’s only doing all of this for his friends, and for the people whose stories make up the world. It’s a nicely humanistic view of a show that almost exclusively traffics in large-scale metaphor.

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).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Despite the appearance of the Sword of Logos, and another crucial misunderstanding (Touma is terrible about quickly explaining that the Book Club is now turning people into Megids), this episode is a great big win for Touma. He saves Yuki, he wins Yuri’s respect, and he gets his head on straight in regards to his quest. He’s not skeptical about Kamijo’s claims, or fearful that he might be on the wrong track. He’s resolved that he’ll have to fight to get at the truth, but he knows his methods can work.

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

A lowly thief would deny their crime as pragmatism to get away with it, while a phantom thief would take credit, an honorable trait that makes them more respected. Oma Zi-O is like a phantom thief in how he embraces his destiny and public image, while denying to himself that he's become an evil demon king instead of the great and kind one he hoped to be. I'll admit, Gai is harder to argue for using the same analogy, since he totally covers up his crimes, including blatantly immoral and petty ones that clearly don't serve his main "heroic" goals of human improvement or indulging his love for Hiden Intelligence.

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.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nokination

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.

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.̶