[Fish Sandwich]

I love everything about this episode, but it does call a lot of attention to Saber's quirky idea of story structure. It's hard to put it into words, and I'm sure people more critical than me already know what I'm talking about better than I do, but it feels like this entire episode is made solely out of climaxes, with one second act darkest hour twist... that's also the inciting incident. It's a miracle it works as well as it does, honestly, but -- to flip that around -- there's also so much great drama packed in here that, if I may borrow a phrase, you might say it was at a climax from start to finish?

It's a bit surprising to me how lowkey the reveal that Touma has indirectly failed to save a bunch of people is. Again, ordinarily, I feel like that would be done with Storius or somebody gloating to him Kuroto Dan style, possibly as an episode ending cliffhanger, but instead, it's just this montage of him slowly putting two and two together to realize the bad guys weren't playing by the unspoken rules of weekly children's television shows. It could all come off a little jarring in less talented hands, but I think the weighty direction Sugihara gives it does a fantastic job conveying the proper emotional weight it needs.

Oh, and yeah, Sugihara's working on Saber now! You'd better believe I was excited about that! Naturally, he doesn't disappoint, and that montage is but the tip of the iceberg.

The Slash/Saber fight in the middle is solid gold, man. Again, it feels like something that could easily be the climactic end to an episode, because it really steals your attention that way. It's shot utterly gorgeously, with all the smooth and energetic motion Sugihara always brings to the table, plus some tastefully placed use of real fire, as though it wasn't already cool enough.

The writing backing the fight is also quite strong, mining a ton of emotion out of both characters involved, smartly leveraging existing parts of the setting like Touma's propensity for using his books more than his sword. Like, that was something I'd been observing for months now as merely a neat bit of characterization in the action, and now it's directly relevant to the narrative. That kind of thing is always cool to see, especially when it means I get yet more Brave Dragon, because Saber is just too good to me.

It's all moving the story forward, finally breaking the stalemate the plot has been in the past month by having Daishinji pledge his sword to Touma over the organization... and there's also some stuff with Yuri on either end. It feels a tiny bit on the disconnected side, but not in a way that distracts too much. Even Saber being made to look like kind of a chump to shill someone else's new toy at the end, I take more as just a sign this is the midpoint of a two-parter, and that it means Touma gets to be cooler next week, so it doesn't bother me. Similarly, I'm kind of assuming the show will dig more into the significance of why Yuri wanted to become a swordsman again later (there's a very clearly laid out trajectory for his arc at this point), so, for the moment, it's just an ally showing up with a shiny new form to save the day, and it's a fun scene.

X-Swordman's comic book pop style is a very odd break from the norm for the show, but a logical fit for a character who is both abnormal by nature and also trying to embrace the modern world. And really, just the fact that the onomatopoeia are all written in the show's font alone is beautiful. Absolutely perfect.

So yeah, as usual, it's a weird episode of Kamen Rider, but as an episode of Saber, this was a darn good one, I think.