[Fish Sandwich]

This was an extremely crowded episode with a bit too much going on in the story for its own good, and an emphasis on a style of action I fundamentally don't really want to see in a tokusatsu series. And yet I still really loved it?

It's a bit difficult for me to even try unpacking. I guess starting with the action, since that's a little simpler to explain, I'm a little too impressed by all the CG to be upset about it. I would never, ever want this to be the standard going forward, but, right here, for Saber in particular, finding new ways to make a show is apparently an explicit goal for the production staff, and that is absolutely coming through in the finished product. I haven't seen an episode of Kamen Rider that looks like this one does before, and on a technical level, the visuals they're pulling off here are a real technical achievement for the franchise, even if they don't always look as good as something more simple can. But even when it gets a little ugly, there was a creativity to all the wild bike chases and giant beanstalks I can't deny I had fun with.

The plot... maybe has a weird structure? Except maybe not? I'm thinking through this as I write it, and there's a pretty straightforward beginning (man on lion comes invites hero to exposition), a middle with a conflict playing out (man on lion and hero need to save chunk of city), and of course the resolution in the end of that chunk of city being saved. So maybe it's just the sensory overload of the action making it seem more chaotic in my head than it really was.

At any rate, this was a fantastic introduction for Rintarou, who quickly proved himself to be an endearing character with a refreshing dynamic with Touma. It was maybe a tiny bit less good at giving attention to Touma himself. Not every show does this, granted, but a second episode of a Rider series, ever since Kuuga, is often the point where we see the protagonist get to lay out their beliefs and goals in a way that sets the stage going forward, and it feels like Saber kinda half did that here. Like it was actively attempting to, but couldn't quite stick the landing. There's not a lot of conflict for Touma here, not that heavy of a decision for him to make about being Saber. He just wants to save people and keep promises. And, admittedly, I appreciate the consistent theming when his Rider name is in fact deliberately meant to also sound like "Saver", but those are two things we already knew about him. Not a huge detriment to the episode, but certainly something that had room for improvement, I think. I do like that the exposition dump included giving a clear and explicit definition for what a Kamen Rider is to this show, however.

I feel like there's more I could dig into again, but overall, I definitely enjoyed this one a whole lot. It's maybe not as good as the premiere, but if it isn't, it's no huge gap in quality. It's definitely still got me looking forward to next week and also hopefully strangers bursting into Touma's house becoming a series-long running gag.

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShyGuy

One thing I'm trying to figure out, though, is Rintaro's Rider name. I've seen both Blades and Blaze, but I'm starting to see Blades used a lot more. But when I look at the actual Japanese writing of it, ブレイズ , wouldn't Blaze be correct? That reads a lot more like Blaze than Blades to me, since there's no character in there with a "d" sound. I'm still pretty new to learning Japanese, so it's extremely possible that I'm misunderstanding somehow, but from looking at that word I just don't see how it's getting translated as Blades over Blaze.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Blades is the romanization Toei are using and it fits the sword motif but you can use whatever you prefer, even though "Blaze" makes no sense for a water elemental Rider.

Regarding which name is more correct, ズ (zu) and ヅ (dzu) sound the same in Japanese so they're both valid.

Saber is usually written as サーベル while Saber, the Rider, is written as セイバー to match the kanji 聖刃.

The way I understand it, Blades is written the way it is because strict accuracy to the English pronunciation of the word is a lower priority than being smooth and easy to pronounce to a Japanese-speaker. This goes extra for a marketable character in a popular children's television series, but I'm pretty sure there are plenty of examples of English words rendered in katakana deviating pretty heavily from how you might expect them to be written.

This is also as good a time as any to bring up the title card from episode 1, which had the names of seven whole Riders written out in Rider-Moji.



For anyone who hasn't learned this yet, the runes are just heavily stylized alphabet letters rotated 90 degrees. Tilt your head to the left and read them top-to-bottom, and you get SABER, ESPADA, and KENZAN on the left, plus BLADES, BUSTER, SLASH, and CALIBUR on the right. So if we need to argue about the official spellings for any of these guys, the matter's been settled already.