[Fish Sandwich]

This episode was so weightless it's kind of amazing. Like, you know they're doing it on purpose through how Rintarou is treated especially. He's got these deep feelings he's trying to express to Mei the entire time, and he keeps comically failing to get them out at every turn, with no dramatic payoff or anything -- he just keeps failing. And then just when you think Touma and Kento might have it better because at least they get to transform here, they get to spend their fight scenes teaming up with some random new kid and his excessively flatulent demon buddy. Appropriately enough for an episode that starts with everyone enjoying a nice summer vacation (at home, no less!), you can really tell we're stepping back from any real drama this week. True to the episode nomenclature, Saber's story already reached its conclusion... but the end of one story is just the start of another.

I think it's really great that Saber decided to revive the whole baton passing routine for the next Rider. Again, it's evident from both this show and Ghost that this is a staff that loves telling stories about the value of connections. More so than it ever was for a show like, say, Drive, a crossover of this sort inherently makes sense for Saber. It's neat to get that extra week to breathe, as it were, seeing what all the characters are up to in a low-stakes manner, while looking toward the future for not only Saber, but Kamen Rider as a whole.

As an epilogue to the show, it does its job fairly well, setting up new paths for a bunch of the characters to follow, while also doing a cute story about a group of three friends that parallels Touma's own childhood friends. It's nothing too fancy, but it allows the show to tie a bow on its themes even more than it already has, while underscoring that whole point about new beginnings. They probably won't end a millennia-old conflict in the process, sure, but those three kids have a story all their own to write from here on, you know? It's an episode that's sweet and sentimental, without really making that the priority, since the overall tone is so extremely light-hearted.

Getting a little sneak preview of Revi and Vice in action was also fun, and they communicate the dynamic between the two of them very clearly. And loudly! I think my favorite moment in the whole episode might even be the shot right after Saber and Espada finish off the monster, where it's these two best friends for life calmly celebrating a job well done, and then in the background, there are two weird guys completely absorbed in their childish bickering. It's such a small thing, but it was almost profound in how much it gave me pause to think all over again about the way character relationships work in Saber, and how that compares to so many other Rider shows. Especially when it's Touma and Kento! Two characters so tight, not even Kento's stint as Calibur ever stopped them from caring deeply about one another. I'm looking more forward to Revice after this, yeah, but at the same time, I'm appreciating that what Saber is leaving behind is pretty special.

...Or at least, I clearly think Saber is pretty special, don't I? I'm going to try and give my overall opinion on the series now, but... man, where do I even start?

I recall, albeit vaguely at this point, that I wasn't especially excited for Saber from the earliest news about it, beyond it being the next Rider show. It wasn't until the announcement that this show would written by the guy who wrote Ghost, news that made everyone but me scared, that I began to grasp something it would take yet longer for me to understand the full weight of -- Kamen Rider Saber was made for me. I've made more than a few jokes about that over the past months, but the only part I'm not being serious about is simply that Toei was doing this on purpose. Because the root of that running gag is that Saber appeals to me so much, that being Toei's intention almost sounds more plausible than this all being a stroke of luck on my part. The reality of the situation is just so much more absurd.

The staff, as mentioned, is made up of all the people who made one of my favorite Rider shows in Ghost. The hero alone is already a grab bag of features from Riders I'm also fond of. Form changes like a horizontal OOO; the emphasis on swords from Blade; the heroic red dragon motif of Ryuki; the fire theming and sweet robe look from Wizard -- what doesn't Saber have that I love? And it goes so much farther beyond that, becoming its own unique thing, especially thanks to the choice to make books a central theme. Not only would this show be an epic heroic fantasy in Kamen Rider form, it would also be a story about stories, and the way they inspire people. Saber, the writer and swordsman who would save the world with his holy blade. (His name even has multiple meanings! I love that stuff too!)

I may not have realized it at first, but this was a show straight out of my wildest dreams, and for an entire year, those dreams kept coming true over and over and over again. A straight up Ghost crossover happening twice was easily the thing that solidified this for me the most, but that's only the tip of the iceberg. Saber was just doing everything almost exactly how I'd want it. Aesthetically, thematically, tonally, you name it. And as a result, those episode posts I was initially intent on keeping small and concise eventually became as bloated and lengthy as ever, because there was no way I wasn't going to try and share everything I felt about Saber in return. And despite that change in focus, there are so many thoughts I have about Saber I've never shared at all. It's practically indescribable how much this show has meant to me over the past year. For all I know, this post is already totally incoherent. Really, this whole thing is a fool's endeavor, because my affection for Saber has long gone so beyond even my generally high standards of enthusiasm for Kamen Rider, there's no way to compress it into anything remotely convenient and digestible.

I've talked about how I feel about Saber so much already, and I'm probably going to keep talking about it in the future, so right here and right now, I'll stop for a bit to talk instead about how I felt about watching Saber. Not the episodes themselves, which I can always go back to, but the experience of it being on the air -- the thing that really is done and over with. This next part will explain a lot about why I feel as strongly as I do about Saber, and I don't think it's anything I've ever touched on before, because it's more about me than the show.

Basically, I was actively ensuring I'd be invested in it as soon as it started. Back during Zero-One, really late in, I found out about the episode guides that go up on the website every week, hyping up the next installment while also giving loads of behind-the-scenes info about the one that just aired. I've always had a deep interest in production stuff like that, so it blew my mind a little to suddenly find out about this whole treasure trove of anecdotes straight from people working on these shows. I would've wanted to start paying attention anyway, but I also had one little thought that blew up into something bigger -- "Saber is a show about books." This was a perfect excuse to get into the spirit of the show by doing some reading! On top of that, my ability to read Japanese has always lagged way behind my ability to listen to it, so it would be an opportunity for some "studying", while I was at it. I wanted to sit down every week and thoroughly read through those pages after watching the latest chapter, and that's exactly what I did. At first it was a little daunting. By the end, it was less so. The entire time, however, it was fun, and nearly every week, for around fifty weeks now, I've had this whole Saber Sunday tradition. I watch Saber, I write about Saber, and I read about Saber. It's this whole cozy routine I've created, and it made being a fan of this show a very lively experience for me. Early on, I was even doing actual proper no-quotes studying to brush up on kanji, which I haven't done in forever. (Incidentally, my background music of choice for this was just ALMIGHTY on loop, of course.) Lately, I've been reading a novel or two (in English, I mean), something else I never seem to get around to.

All of that came about because I had Touma and company to motivate me. Just like Touma, I have an embarrassingly earnest belief that stories connect and inspire people in genuinely meaningful ways, and Saber allowed me a chance to reaffirm that, even if only on some small level. I can say as a matter of objective fact that I have been inspired by this show, and I sure as heck feel connected to it and its messages.

Like I said, there's no way I can condense everything I feel about this show into one post, no matter how long I ramble on. It's just so much more than that. The memories it has given me over the course of its run are all treasures I want to cherish forever. Put simply, Kamen Rider Saber is, without a shred of doubt, a story I will never forget.