[Switchblade]

Easily the best episode of the show to date. My biggest issue with Saber so far has been pacing - every episode has had at least one moment where it felt like a scene was missing and we'd jumped from Point A to Point C with no explanation. Not this week. The pacing was spot-on and the whole story felt complete and satisfying.

I really liked the characters this week, too, even if Mei went full Shunpei (I feel like I'd like her at least 20% more if she would just stand up straight instead of bending over at the waist all the damn time - I have no idea why that bothers me so much, but it just drives me right up the wall). If this is more of the Touma that we're going to get then I will definitely be enjoying him; I actually liked Rintaro taking more of the comic relief role instead.

I'm a little surprised that Sword Dad survived (he has a name, I just don't remember it). I've been expecting him to die since he first appeared, but I think that's on me for not reading some of the subtitles in the promo for episode three right. It looks like he's sticking around for at least a little while longer, which is cool. His presence helps enforce the idea that there's a history to this order.

Tinkerbell finisher hit a perfect sweet spot between being too weird and too stupid. I still don't know what the hell that was, but I'm a fan.

I guess I also appreciated Tassel not recapping the entire episode I just watched during the outro. He's still awful, but I suppose that's something, at least.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deepsea

All episodes have been very fast, I do not know why.

Probably because of the pacing issues I mentioned above and the fact that the episodes' runtime is shorter. Same overall length, but you have to factor in all the time eaten up by the ending theme, the Tassel scenes, and the lengthy stock footage transformations.