[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 17

My old post for this one opens up with me mentioning how Die's Kabuto thread apparently kept me too busy to get around to it for days, which I straight up don't remember? But I guess that fits nicely with what I do remember about this next stretch of Saber, that I was planning to talk about soon anyway. I ended up getting to a couple of the next few episodes pretty late, in part because I was watching with subs from GenmCorp, who unfortunately ended up dropping the series entirely after generally getting the episodes out hecka fast (and at hecka quality!) to this point, which left me scrambling around for other options for a bit there.

I bring this all up because, looking back, I guess I had this kind of weird synergy going with Touma in this stretch of the show. I had a whole routine going that I was very comfortable with, and out of nowhere, it kinda shattered on me. Granted, it was hardly very dramatic in my case. I'd watch the episode, write my post about it, and then go take a thorough look at each week's episode guide, a little endeavor I made during Saber specifically to get myself actually reading Japanese for a change. I greatly enjoyed getting to just smash all that into one Sunday every week, you know, just really soaking up the series for a few hours straight, but it wasn't the end of the world to have to shuffle that schedule around slightly for a few weeks.

Which I guess means maybe I didn't have that much synergy with Touma after all, because this episode makes it abundantly clear what a huge disruption this sudden influx of drama is in the lives of our favorite swordsmen. Yuri's great, instantly -- right up there with Rintarou as one of My Guys from Saber -- but what this new status quo truly achieved was putting Touma on the path to being up there himself. It's just such an interesting new scenario to throw him in, where there's suddenly WAY more weight put on him personally. He used to have this whole squad of tight friends he was (more or less) always on the same page with, and now he can't even figure out working with the one Rider still willing to hang out with him -- some weirdo old dude who constantly seems off in his own world, frequently making basic communication alone a struggle enough to put Saber's battles with the Megid to shame.

Plus, speaking of the monsters of the week, gotta love that new format for 'em! I see what Die is saying about the further potential of this particular formula, and we'll see if he feels Saber gets anything more out of it later or not, but either way, I think even just the basic benefits of it already add a lot to a plot, even before any deeper emotional connection. Speaking for myself, just in general, I like how monsters of this sort inherently reframe the stakes from broader notions of saving The City, or Humanity, to saving a life, which I often find more tangible and engaging, despite being smaller in scale. And specific to this show, going smaller in scale fits the overall mood of the episode quite nicely, where we're finally letting off the gas for a second to really take in everything that just happened at the end of last year's run of episodes.

I don't know, I could ramble about this episode for a while, but I might be too excited here to actually be saying anything of substance right now. There are a ton of little facets and big broad strokes that make this new era of the series crazy exciting to me, and it's hard to get that condensed in my head. I'd probably like this stretch of Saber anyway for borrowing that W-era gold standard formula I never tire of (I was a Wizard fan before I was a Saber fan!), so how well that formula genuinely fits this point in the overall story of Saber on top of that just takes it to the next level. I'm not sure if people consider this When Saber Got Good, or just the transitionary phase, or whatever, but I adore the show's new vibe at least as much as I adored the old one, which you might recall -- I adored a whole lot.