[Fish Sandwich]

Yeah, the Saber movie here is pretty clearly not THE Saber movie, so it makes sense it's not the big topic of discussion. Given it's called gekijou tanpen, which basically means "short film", instead of the usual gekijouban, I'd assume it's a half-hour at most, essentially taking the place of a—

...of a Sentai summer moive. Man this show is making it really hard to deny these comparisons...

Anyway, I'm not usually one for speculation, but after thinking about it a bit, I'm pretty on-board with the "Izu is Zero-One" theory. The trailer specifically highlights Aruto's discomfort with dragging her along on adventures after *you-know-what*, which would give him a clear and obvious character arc to be the emotional core of the story. Maybe Hell Rising Hopper is some super dangerous thing he tries by himself that doesn't work out, and the actual final showdown is that one where Zero-Two and Eden are all glow-in-the-dark? And Aruto would have to be Zero-Two, of course, so he could do a bit where says "there are only two people that can stop you, and that's us!" It might be worth noting the previous Rider summer film/epilogue Yuuya Takahashi wrote also just used the TV show's final form for the ending rather than the movie-exclusive one.

Or I don't know maybe Zea just makes a dumb Zero-One robot for one random scene and Hell Rising Hopper is a form Aruto assumes after the villain hurts Izu again and he gets sad because the production staff is totally out of ideas. I'm probably right about at least parts of one of these!

...Look, no matter what, this movie is going to have Sugihara directing, so it will at least be amazing to look at, if nothing else.