[Fish Sandwich]

I think the most excited I was this whole episode was when Brave Dragon managed to finally squeeze in an appearance in the 30's when Touma struck Bacht down. I know that sort of line is usually a setup for calling everything else boring, but all I'm saying here is that I really like Brave Dragon and that was a very nice surprise.

It's also just the punctuation on a really dang good scene. Even once he finally showed up on TV, I really didn't expect Bacht to have more than a quick guest villain appearance, but they looped him so thoroughly into the themes of the show and made it pay off fantastically here. It's pretty simple to describe, but it's super satisfying to see Touma look at how resigned this dude is to his own pain and suffering and just be like "well maybe if you tried doing something about it...?" A lot of Saber has been about the need to trust in the best of things, whether it's your friends or the future or whatever else. It's been pretty unsubtle about that ever since Kento came back, obviously, and as such, it feels deeply on the mark for the big final form debut to have a scene where the titular hero calls out fanatical nihilism as nothing more than stubborn self-indulgence. Centering the drama here on their confrontation was a smart move.

And right there, you might have realized I'm indirectly saying Master Logos is not an interesting enough character to hold dramatic weight, but, kind of against all odds, at least for this one episode, they honestly made that work in the story's favor. You wanna talk punctuation, how perfect is it to have Touma write off Solomon's sword as being weightless while blocking a massively oversized version of it? Again, the show has spent a ton of time, including with Falchion literally right here, building this idea of the feelings and convictions these swordsmen put into each swing of their blades, so this is basically the show's way of explicitly saying that Solomon is, entirely by design, little more than a poser. He's just some jerk messing with everyone for extremely shallow reasons and now Touma is going to shut him up with his new friendship sword that came raining down from the heavens like a shooting star. I love this show so much, you guys.

Not that it's perfect, or anything. I definitely think having Kento's dad come back to push his son in the right direction is an unnecessary step in that arc, and it probably would've been far more satisfying to see Kento deciding to move forward all on his own, but at the same time, I didn't find it was executed in a way that was too grating, either. I do especially like the callback to Hayato affectionately running his hand through Kento's hair, which is very specific reference to make.

It's worth noting that this episode was written by Hiroki Uchida again, and with each one he writes, I just want to see more and more from him. It's legitimately impressive how little disconnect there is with his scripts even though he was brought onto Saber when it was already in full swing.

And then you top all that off with Xross Saber's debut? I mean, dude -- forget about it. It's a shiny blue Brave Dragon that flies around just destroying the special effects budget! Shibasaki is evidently a madman, and I'm glad he was the director here, because I feel like something gunning for this level of spectacle might not have worked as well coming from someone else. The entire sequence is absurd, and I adored every second of it. Especially the seconds where it turns out that sword can also work like Gridman's Fixer Beam, as though Xross Saber wasn't already everything I could possibly want from Saber. Fantastic debut in a fantastic episode.