[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 16



I only sort of realized it at the time, but if there was exactly one moment where I can say I truly fell in love with Kamen Rider Saber, when I knew it was going to be a show I'd pretty much never stop thinking about, that would stick with me forever, it was probably watching all the other Riders gang up on Saber this way. There's that part in there, where everything slows down and the sad music kicks in, as we see Touma's face and hear his thoughts, and he's just scared and confused and hurt by what's happening, as much emotionally as physically, and I found that kind of profound in a way I'm still not sure I can properly articulate.

But you know, I even tried again in the episode thread a few hours after already saying basically the same thing in my original post, so looking back, it's clear this really did leave an immediate lasting impact on me:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

Thinking about this episode even more after I made that last post, something jumped out at me about this episode that I think really sums up why it's worthy of some praise -- they made Kamen Riders fighting each other feel like a big deal again.

That's shocking to me, especially rewatching so much Kabuto at the moment. That whole trope is so baked into the franchise at this point there's no way it should ever come off as fresh, but this episode made me instantly grow a huge appreciation for all the plotting decisions the first quarter made. The way it actively pushed the "yay teamwork" message so hard, and the specific character traits the show did make the time to properly establish, and all these other things; it felt like they were really coming together in a meaningful way.

(Oh yeah, and I guess this episode also aired while we doing the Kabuto thread! Still a little spooky to me that Die has caught up to himself like this!)

But yeah, the gist of it is like I said at the time: I was shocked to be watching a Kamen Rider show where I felt this level of emotional significance to the heroes beating each other up, and putting how wrong Saber managed to make that feel in context of the show up until that point, it kind of locked in that I was never going to complain too hard about anything the first quarter had done to get here. For whatever flaws the storytelling in Saber had up to this point, they did an amazing job building to this twist in the narrative, and the moment itself was delivered in a way that exceeded any expectations I had about how well the show could pull it off. And I was on-board with this show from day one!

...All of that means I'm also extremely relieved to see it worked well enough for Die, too, naturally, because this episode means so much to me it'd just feel vulgar trying to argue about it? It's sad enough watching Touma fight his friends! I don't want to be adding onto that in real life!

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

(I still wish somebody would've translated Yuri's use of saikou as "brilliant", by the way, but this is actually about as good?)