[DecoyBlackMage]

Not gonna lie, Saber was a rough ride for me personally at least.

And those first 14-20 episodes, are rough to get through, a lot of people dropped the show and honestly I do not blame them really considering how much you need to get through to get to the actual good parts of the show.

Now, the show did not become GOOD after that, it was more of a kinda slow build up where it went from this is okay, this is pretty bad, this okay again, oh it is getting better and finally for the final storyline it was pretty good overall.

I ended up really liking the main villain and especially the final episodes.

That said Touma is not a character I really like, I do not think he was a good main character and this is mainly due to the direction and writing and not the actor himself, mostly cause you can see glimpses of him doing pretty solid work. So the main rider is kinda a MEH overall for me.

Blades as a secondary was also kinda meh, I do not think he was used that well, in fact after he gets his final power up he was just kinda there as a third wheel honestly, with Kento being more of a secondary rider overall.

I do not dislike Blades, but yeah it is what it is.

The weird part for me was when Mei and Ren becoming my favorite characters in the show, and that is kinda weird especially considering how much I disliked Ren for the majority of the show, generally due to what I would honestly say pretty bad writing and way to over the top little shit type character style.

Now Mei was comedy relief, but she was honestly a big part of the heart of the show overall, and she honestly had some of the best scenes in the show.

Ren as a character becomes really good towards the end of the show before the final arc.

I do not think the majority of characters where really used that well, they all have some good moments but the overall experience felt kinda wasted here and there as well with a very weird focus on other things instead of fleshing out the actual characters.

Now the suits this season where overall really good, so where the monster designs, as few of them we got sadly, which is just how it is for rider these days, my favorite has to be Dragonic Knight, which sadly was not used much at all, the same can be said for Blades first upgrade form of the same level, hey we have this interesting READING mechanic, lets never use it ! Which was a damn shame overall, and they sure retired them pretty quickly, now that might be due to the suits themselves being problematic or other reasons tbf.

Music wise and soundtrack in general was pretty good, it is kinda weird they saved pretty much every insert song for the last part of the show though, which is quite unusual and I was actually starting to wonder if we would have no insert songs at all for a while, which is always a bit of a shame for me personally as I really do like it when they throw in a song here and there, but we did get some so that overall was fine.

Sound use was overall quite good, effects where pretty good as well.

Now yeah this season has had major issues behind scenes for very good reasons, but those issues does not excuse the writing and a lot of the issues for at least half of the series.
Overall I think it was okay, I will probably rewatch it and it really helps that the second half and especially the final parts of the show are pretty good.

I have recommended to a few people who did drop it, that the second half and the final part overall are pretty good and they could consider giving it another shot, but yeah again that first half is rough to get through for a lot of people.