[Switchblade]

A little surprised to say this, but the show is starting to grow on me. It's not capturing me nearly as strongly as Zero-One did, but I'm less pessimistic than I was after the first episode.

The show definitely still has issues. The clown is still pointless, especially the bit where he recapped the episode's ending literally seconds after it happened. Mei is definitely demonstrating the kind of comic relief traits that I hate in Kamen Rider: over-the-top facial expressions, exaggerated posing, excited squealing (and Touma's getting in on the act, too, which doesn't help). The awful dance credits are still here and joined by opening credits that look good, but have possibly the worst opening theme in the franchise's history.

The pacing still feels badly rushed. It feels like we skipped over some necessary scenes that would have better explained what was going on. I am interested by the show's premise, though, and we got some stuff teased here that could turn out to be very interesting. I hope the show slows down once we get through the introductory elements because I think it has some potential. I'm also hoping we get more room for character development, because I don't have a very strong grasp on any of them yet (except Mei - less of her, please).

Anyway, on to the main thing that really struck me about this episode: the action scenes. Now, off the bat, I think the show is significantly inferior to Zero-One here. Zero-One had some fantastic fight scenes with good choreography and stunt work; Saber is almost entirely green screens, stock footage, and CGI. I don't like it, but it does still impress me. For all the talk about Zero-One being the start of a new era, it still felt a lot like another Neo-Heisei show. Saber looks really, really different. I can't say that I love having action scenes that are mostly CGI with little, if any, practical stunt work, but I can't deny that it looks really unique. I feel that this has to be at least partially a Covid-19 thing: cut down on the amount of time and people needed to film by doing a lot of it on a computer. I don't want this to be what Kamen Rider looks like from now on - and I have serious doubts that Toei will have the budget to keep this up for ~48 episodes - but I do appreciate the new and unique feel that it gives the show.