[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 38



Gosh, I was just pretty much in heaven by this point in the series?

Not only had we gotten the crossover of my dreams out of nowhere, but the answer they came up with for what Saber's final form could be was pretty much the best answer they could've found to make me happy. Saber's got that thing going on where no matter how cool the suits get, Brave Dragon is always kinda still the coolest, so like, just do that again. Give it a blue color scheme so I'll like it even more! Give it an even bigger headsword, which I'm sure Die really appreciates too! Make it all sparkly as heck, for a bit of that Mugen vibe! Tie it all together with that cosmic theme to justify everything, because stars are sorta the ultimate fire, so it's still on-brand! Spell it "Xross Saber" in English and make sure to give the sword the usual kanji reading in Japanese, just to maximize the awesomeness factor.

Really, there's basically nothing I don't love about Xross Saber. (Big shout out to how slick Asai always makes working the gimmicks on the sword look, by the way.) There's even the whole super clever reason Kyomu isn't counted among the 10 swords that make it up, even though it is part of them, but I'm not smart enough to explain what the sefirot is off the top of my head. Needless to say, a lot of thought was put into this.

The debut episode itself then, I adored no less. There's a lot of really really smart decisions I think it makes in how it summarizes the themes, the way your final form debut generally does, for sure. I adore the way Bacht is given the real emotionally weighty confrontation, and how that contrasts with Solomon being exactly the false swordsman I made him out to be, someone who dresses himself in the same way superficially, but is the fundamental antithesis of all these people, all at once.

More than that, though, I remember the episode as sort a party, more than anything. I mean, Kento's even back! Everything starts going real right for the heroes for the first time in a good while here, and we celebrate that with just, the most absurdly cool fight scene imaginable. 38/39 were Shibasaki's last episodes of this show before he went to go get Revice off the ground, and I'm reminded of the adage "quality over quantity" when it comes to his work on Saber. All the heavy special effects stuff in this one is legit glorious, from swords raining from the heavens, to swords dancing around Touma in a crazy long transformation sequence, to swords swinging about in the air, cutting up giant robots made of swords... there's a lot about swords, as you might expect! And it's all so much fun. One of the best bits of action in the entire series, and all scored by a new insert song with lyrics by Shouko Fujibayashi, because Saber would not let me stop winning. I'll remind you that not too long after this, I got the crossover of my dreams *again* as if the first time wasn't enough. But uh, I guess that's a conversation for the next couple days, isn't it?