[FairyKing]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The thought I kept having with this one is how anti-Sentai it felt, funnily enough? It's a story about five heroes coming together as one that ends with a giant robot fighting a monster, and yet, it's everything about how it plays out that makes it more clear than ever to me this is very much a Kamen Rider show.

Sentai teams just don't have to work for these things the same way, you know? The swordsmen here, we see so much of them standing around in the same rooms, but they don't give off any real feeling of unity until the very end of the episode, and I thought that really worked in favor of what the plot was about. It felt earned seeing Touma literally write the conclusion to this story, and everyone putting their fists together at the end was more satisfying than I expected.

So, yeah, I guess that's pretty much the short of it. Not a lot of detail I really feel the need to go into (the direction's still great; loved seeing Gridon and Bravo for no reason), but I thought this episode was super solid and totally works as a sort of mid-season finale deal since the show's taking the next week off. Good times as always with Saber.

I'm not as familiar with Sentai, but I think part of what made this feel not-Sentai-ish was that Touma was learning the value of friendship himself, not preaching it to someone else. That's even a bit of a departure from other recent Rider seasons. I mean, getting so focused on unlocking a new power that you forget to reach out to your allies is the kind of behavior I'd expect from a second or third rider, not the main one.