[TheJaz]

HOLY MOLY I WAS IN THE EPISODE!

I stumbled across the final-episode video cameo campaign thingy on twitter just before bed a while back, and submitted a video seconds before I had to be asleep to get enough sleep that night, it was also when there was also just a few hours left until submissions closed!

I didn't really expect much to come from it, so I was quite amazed to see myself appear on my TV after I sat down to watch the episode! I couldn't stop smiling and laughing! I even video-called my best friend right away in the moment just to show him!

I actually got so ecstatic that my blood sugar crashed and my wife had to go get me some juice because I felt like I might pass out (I have non-diabetic hypoglycemia, but it's super rare that smth so exciting happens that it actually makes me feel faint, usually it only happens when i skip a couple meals in a row lol) that's just how excited I really was!

Kamen Rider as a whole has meant so much to me, especially during the hardest parts of my life, and to see myself in it really meant quite a lot, even if it was basically just dumb luck!

That was hours ago and I'm still smiling, and feeling full of joyous and moving emotions

As for the actual episode (and the show)

I really really liked this ending! I think this was about the best I could have expected from the finale, outside of some small nit picks (I would have liked to see more clearly some of Storious' backstory), I really loved this episode!

My feelings on Saber as a whole are sort of mixed, I really enjoyed a lot of parts in the early episodes of the show (despite the odd pacing), then the primitive dragon arc really clicked clicked me, and i really really liked most of the ending, but I can't help but feel like a lot of time was spent on fluff and fights rather than giving us character growth and context

Desast and Ren have one of the most interesting dynamics in the franchise to me, but I still don't feel like Ren ever clicked for me; I never fully understood how he felt or who he was. I felt like I understood Desast more but not by a lot... I would have liked to see many more scenes of the two together and bonding rather than watching any number of the fluff fights or stories that I wouldn't have minded seeing cut down or removed all together

Despite a lot of problems I could point out, something about this show as a whole did resonate with me, even if it wasn't all the time, it did a lot of the time, and I can say confidently that I enjoyed nearly every episode

This is definitely a show I'd like to rewatch someday, I enjoyed Ghost the first time around, but enjoyed it a lot more on a recent rewatch, as it felt a lot more consistent and coherent than it did to me the first time around, watching smth over a year can make it a bit hard to process as a whole, it always feels like threads and ideas get lost in my mind over time, on a rewatch things often seem a lot clearer and come together better imo

While there are some problems that do bog down parts of the show for me, I think on the whole I'll probably have a soft spot for Saber forever, even though it's difficult to vocalize what made it special to me, and I can only hope that it's ineffable quality becomes more clear to me over time, and that others are able to have a fun time with it