[Sh Ranger]

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Originally Posted by AkibaSilver

I mean, this is Kamen Rider. Various reasons people have caused mass monster attacks include:

- Promote their video game
- Hungry
- Drug money
- Showa villain / showa villain reunion, organisation probably has "EVIL" in acronym
- Funny

The Book Club Trio just don't have enough personality, unique motivations, or honestly enough breathing room to make their motivations that interesting. The show's emotional core is on the Kamijou betrayal, pivoting to the SOL, which leaves the Meggido hanging around because, hey, need someway to produce MOTWs before the show inevitably forgets about that being a thing. Being given something so wooly, in the same episode as the show reorients itself, doesn't really make them stand out as characters, it just adds a little fluff to their goal to remind you "Yep, there is a point to this!".

Well there's only so much focus they can fit in an episode already filled with so much content. Sure, the focus is on Kamijo's betrayal here, but the window is still open to eventually learn more about the Megid trio, other than just being evil book gangsters.

Also, uh, "drug money"? 0_o

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 16 - ?SAVING THE WORLD, THE RAY OF LIGHT?

I was pleasantly surprised by how much this episode came together for me. When Kamijo?s warning took about eight seconds to make Touma an outcast from his friends, hunted as a traitor, I was like That Was Fast. But then the show pulled back the reins a bit, and let the characters? lingering resentments and lack of shared history pit the Sword of Logos against Touma and Mei (and debuting swordsman/sword-man Yuri) in a way that feels inevitable. It?s an episode that starts exploring something I find fascinating, which is how we imbue organizations with power and personality due to the people within them, but then forget that said power and personality is only there because of those people. Touma and the other swordsmen see the Sword of Logos as something worth protecting or destroying, but it?s really just a collection of people. We lose sight of that to our peril, which is what everyone discovered this episode.

This is the first time we get to see Ren's dark side, as he tries to cut Mei, a civilian, to get to Touma. It's not like there wasn't enough time to abort the attack, Ren just didn't give a damn about Mei. Even if a Swordsman declared traitor is a fair target, I doubt SOL can justify any of their Swordsmen cutting civilians who get in the way. Good thing Yuri was there or else it could've been a lot worse.

Rintarou's in a difficult position as well, since this isn't just a blasphemy against the faceless organisation, this is Rintarou's family that Touma's accusing. Regardless of whether Rintarou sides with SOL or Team Saber, he still has to take a side in that family and be prepared to fight people he cares about. Poor guy only recently picked himself up after losing Kento and now he has to deal with the fear of losing another.

Touma was right and brave to stand up for himself and trust his gut that SOL was out to get him, but with Reika leveraging everything she can about the historical correlation of "Saber + big book = betrayal", it's even more sad that this painful conflict between friends had to happen.

Yuri is an enjoyable character though. After Lazer became the first Bike Rider (excluding form change like Accel), Saikou became the first Sword Rider! As all Swordsmen are named after a word relating to swords, Saikou, a Seiken Sword rather than a Swordsman, is of course named after.... Himself!

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Originally Posted by Fish Sandwich

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

Personally, I think TV-Nihon's "prodigious" is the most prodigious way to translate that phrase. It's a word seldom used in casual speech, which makes Yuri sound more like a man of his age.

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Originally Posted by DreadBringer

You're mistaken here regarding anti-villain label. Extreme anti-villains are those who have very little or limited amount of bad traits/moments, edging them closer to outright hero antagonist (if they're antagonistic ofc). Reminder that the 'anti-' part of anti-villain refers to the redeeming qualities which makes them less bad and the more extreme they're the less bad they're.

You're right. Okay, I guess I should've called them mild antivillains instead. Even though their actions benefit only themselves at the expense of everybody else, I think the fact that they do have a (twisted) sense of morality might be barely enough to qualify.

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Originally Posted by Androzani84

One thing I read that made me laugh slightly is someone pointing out that while we get whole scenes of Ogami, Daishinji and Rintaro being misled by Reika, Ren doesn?t even get such a scene, implying hat she didn?t even need to try with him.

Now I wish there was a comedic scene like the montage of Robo Knight asking about emotions. Like, Reika passes by Ren as he's training with a creepy smile on his face and flatly comments, "I don't need to persuade this guy."