[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 18

Despite enjoying the episode a ton anyway, after first watching it, I was pretty hung up on the whole reveal at the end that the episode's central dilemma only ever existed in Touma's head. I guess I thought it retroactively undermined the stakes or something, but ever since then, I've realized I actually think it's a perfect cap for this story, which makes me love the episode that much more.

The reason this stretch of the show ended up making Touma finally become a character I loved ahead of guys like Rintarou is because, the way I see it, this whole storyline is specifically digging into what being Saber means to him. Now that it isn't just a fun fantasy to live out with cool coworkers, it's really testing just how much saving people means to Touma, and how far he'll go to do it. So on top of loving that we've reduced the scale down to a single person to be saved, emphasizing how individual lives matter, I actually love even more that all the effort he puts in here turns out to be pointless with Yuri around. Because it's like, if he'll go to lengths that extreme, with that much determination, even when he could easily be doing less... imagine what this guy might be capable of when the chips are truly down.

So yeah, no argument from here that this was a very well done two-parter, of course. It's cool to see Saber being so awesome and heroic, and it's cool how his emotionally vulnerable and empathetic approach to fighting evil starts to win over a more stoic hero so old-school he's literally a millennium old. The odd couple dynamic with Touma and Yuri really works wonders for this show.