[Tokumonkey]

The last several episodes have taken me from "kinda enjoying Saber" to "you know, there's all this other TV I could watch instead..." I didn't buy the speed and ease with which Reika Shindai turned the rest of the swordsmen against Touma, and since every episode since has hinged on that easily-resolved misunderstanding... yeah, I don't buy any of it. The show pulled a finishing attack on my suspension of disbelief.

Nobody seems to find Shindai having replaced Sophia, and reversing course on Sophia's belief in Touma, at all surprising or concerning. The show could fix this is a short scene just by showing us that Reika Shindai has mind-control powers, but it doesn't seem the showrunners care enough to put in the effort.

I've always had a problem with the toy line: I find the WonderRideBooks ridiculous, the sounds more absurd than cool, and the sheer number of upgrades, suits, and TOYS are choking the show. I'm wondering in retrospect how Zero-One managed to handle its out-of-control toyline so much more deftly than Saber is managing.

And I just... kind of don't care. The villains haven't done anything interesting since Calibur died. The Luna plot has dragged on forever without appreciably moving forward. Mei rarely gets to be a character since she keeps being written as overly-broad comic relief. At this point, I think I'm enjoying this even less than Ghost, and I didn't think that was possible.

I'm curious to see whether the show can recover from its current dead-end creative choices. At this rate, I may actually fully give up on Super Hero Time until Zenkaiger debuts.