[Fish Sandwich]

I don't know if I've ever mentioned this in one of your threads before, Die, but uh... I think I'm actually an executive at Toei? I know that's an absurd claim, and ordinarily, I wouldn't believe it myself, but ever since Kamen Rider Saber aired, it's been much harder to believe that it exists based on decisions made by anyone that ISN'T me. Like, for starters, who else but Fish Sandwich would've been out there clamoring to give the producer and writers of Ghost another shot at a Rider show? Right away, things were suspicious, and although I have no direct memory of working on the series, that nagging feeling that this was all being done solely to appease my personal tastes only become more palpable as time went on.

This is all a very elaborate way of saying I completely adore Saber.

And you know, I say variations about that regarding pretty much everything Rider-related, so hopefully I can make you better understand the true weight of that statement as we go along in this thread. I've kind of fallen into taking a break from posting on the forum lately, but like, I've got a responsibility to make sure I show up for this one, so here I am.

First of all, one reason Saber is special to me -- it's another show I can do this for:

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 1

As with Zi-O, I made it a point back when the show was airing to actively dig into it in writing each week. After all, it's the one *about* the writer, so I mean, like probably a lot of us that choose to spend our time participating in discussions like this, I think I immediately connected with that on some level.

Really, I connected with a lot of things pretty quickly. I remember not thinking much of the very first reveals and stuff, but as soon as the staff was announced, it sort of hit me that, uh, actually, I thought a whole lot of it! "High-fantasy storybook swordsman Kamen Rider by the guy who wrote Ghost" is pretty much my ultimate dream show, and I got hyped real fast after realizing that.

I mean, just for starters, you have no idea how much I love Brave Dragon as a suit design. Please allow me to regurgitate this snippet from when I picked it (alongside Zero-Two) as my favorite suit of 2020, where I put it in context of another suit I loved for the opposite reasons:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

The thing I love about Rising Hopper is that it's a very easy design to draw correctly, and can be scaled to any level of detail. The actual suit has fairly complicated texturing on the black parts, and little touches like the red lines, but all that was also designed to be ignored in favor of the simple and striking yellow armor on a black body. There's nothing too complicated about the layout, and that makes it easy to reproduce.

Brave Dragon is maddeningly complex in terms of details, but what I realized that made me love it is how it's a design that's easy to draw incorrectly, and still have it be instantly recognizable. The broad strokes of it are easily remembered and very specific. The red/white/black colors being split into thirds down the body; the dragon head on the right shoulder; the cross shape of the eyes; or the blade poking out of the head; they're all great points of focus. The whole reason I'm using this drawing criteria is because I always put Rider base forms in terms of "can a kid draw them?", and Saber nails that in a surprising way. Some small child's crayon drawing of Brave Dragon will be likely be missing a ton of details, and not have the shapes anywhere near correct, but you'll see one or more of those broad strokes and instantly know what you're looking at all the same. It's a busy suit that remembers to have strong iconography, and that makes all the difference.

The complexity was a very conscious choice, which I know from reading the website every week (another facet of my attachment to the show I'll maybe get more into later), but my love for the suit goes even beyond how it mixes that absurd amount of detail with surprisingly strong readability. My absolute favorite thing about Brave Dragon? It's Brave Dragon, of course! Specifically, whoever came up with the idea to make the eyes that shape. Your typical cool dragon has narrow, aggressive looking eyes, but (perhaps just to fit more detail in there), Brave Dragon has these adorable proper round eyes that make it look a lot friendlier than your Dragredders and your Wizardragons. It's seriously charming, and I can't help but think of the whole design with the dragon wrapped around Touma as basically just a hug now, which only made me adore the design even more. Needless to say, I am also a huge fan of the Sword Crowns, but I'm not sure there's much point in going into detail about that when I've yet to even convey the obvious coolness of beetle horns to Die.

Where was I again? Oh yeah, the first episode! Long story short, I had pretty similar sentiments to Die on an analytical level, but I didn't even remotely give a s*** emotionally speaking, which is always going to be more important to me. It's like, sure, Saber's premiere has problems, but why is that a problem? (<- thoughts like this reveal a lot about how I approach media.) I'll refer you to my post from the time for further elaboration, but needless to say, I was totally enamored with the series from the word go, and it only got better from here. Looking forward to talking about all that more as you make your way through the series, Die.