[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 43

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

All I want to talk about is the fantastic direction of this episode, and how it elevated every single storyline.

An understandable reaction to a Kamihoriuchi episode! But uh, yeah, obviously this one is real good. Pairing this director with Fukuda seems to result in stuff like this a whole lot, and I'm all over the symmetry of them being the same team that introduced Kenzan to begin with. Oh, how obnoxious we all thought that kid was! The show as a whole had maybe come a long way since episode 6, but together with Desast, Ren in particular had managed to turn himself completely around, and it's just great to see.

Like, I'm not even sure what real insight I could offer about this episode, because it landed so well for people already I'd probably just be saying things everyone knows already.

Funnily enough, though, one of the most memorable things in here for me is actually just Rintarou's little conversation with Luna. It's a scene that comes to mind a lot when I think of how much I love that dude, and the adorable light tone of it sticks out in an episode that's otherwise juggling both a very poignant story with Desast and majorly dramatic overarching Plot threads. Ryouga's trouble expressing gratitude is great too, but something about Rintarou being his usual not-suspicious self makes for a perfect bit of levity.

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

Though as to why it?s sung by Mei?s actress - maybe neither Ren or Desast?s actors can sing?

Apparently Kamihoriuchi just thought Asuka Kawazu had a particularly pretty and clear voice, which I don't think he was wrong about. I really appreciate the extra effort to just make a whole song for this one episode, by the way? There have been a few moments in Kamihoriuchi's Saber episodes (Tassel's death last episode, for example) where it seemed to me that he clearly had this very specific vision for how he wanted a scene to play out, and would use stock music to allow the editing and everything to fit *exactly* the right way, but the music itself would end up sticking out as sort of "wrong" to me, even though it's a totally valid way to go about that. Here though, we've got an original composition from Shuuhei Naruse, which fits Kamen Rider without a doubt, and while it's still very different from Saber's usual musical style, the result sticks out in a good way instead of a bad one for me. It really does add a ton to the scene that you probably couldn't quite get with the usual BGM or just silence.

Oh, and just for the record, this episode is also the one before the crossover special originally aired, if that's of any real relevance, given how little the exact placement matters. It was very polite of Storious to delay his apocalyptic plans for a week to give everyone time for goofy spinoff adventures!