[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 19 - “FIRE AND LIGHT, SWORDS INTERTWINED”

It’s a solid, if unexceptional episode. Entertaining, if unmemorable. We’re still circling our major plot points – Book Club’s like More Monsters Never Hurt, Sword of Logos is confused over how best to deal with Touma, and Yuri is still feeling his way around a world that he’s about 60% clear on while doing some light theft of personal property. Nothing is bad, but everything’s just… more of the same?

So Yuri's the type who is secretive and thus will erase the Megid incident memories from other people like Yuki. Saber is a kind of show where people like Touma rather easily wins over the people around him (though there's some bumps right now but only Ren outright dislikes him, consistently, and it's viewed as wrong by his SoL colleagues; Ogami takes an open-minded approach to think that Touma may know more than them at this point, despite that he's something new in SoL), of which perhaps can feel similar to Takeru in Ghost and have Touma being viewed as fawned too much (exaggeration), but this'd mean that Yuri's decision to erase memories isn't questioned (and yeah, the reason to do that is usually 'for their own happiness')? It's a decision that is heavily debated, in other series such as Ultraman Nexus.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

Like, the stuff with Shingo. He gets almost exactly as much characterization as Yuki got last time, which is barely enough to qualify as a sentient human being. He’s got a name, and an interest, and then he’s some victim for Touma to save. Shingo isn’t an active participant in this story, beyond being someone that Touma can feel guilty about not saving yet. There’s no story there, you know? Touma might as well be saving his own miniature castle from a Book Club scheme, for all that the specificity of Shingo’s character matters to the proceedings. There’s some fun fights, and it’s all miles better than the random Megid attacks of the first dozen episodes, but it’s still just Touma trying to save a random victim before the Book Club or the Sword of Logos interfere.

I'd say it's kinda expected as Shingo is just the victim of the week and this is the attempt to flesh him out a bit, though I'd say it fleshes out Touma too outside of wanting to do good, though this feels like an 'info-dump' regarding Touma as this interest in diorama perhaps will be only referenced once. But I wonder if you'd think there's a better way to execute this kind of stuff. Still though, I'd say to highlight Touma's heroism better, including in his claims of protecting the people living in the world, he gotta take care of random victims, instead of only his circles (consisting of characters the audience knows and cares), as he gotta be all-encompassing.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

The best part of the episode, though, comes off of that interference. Daishinji (what, did you think I meant Storious?!) is still trying to understand what Touma’s up to, and if he’s already lost to the same lust for power that the SoL assumes corrupted Kamijo. But Daishinji isn’t the type to get the truth by having a discussion, because words are just another way for someone to obfuscate their intentions. The best way for Daishinji to see if Touma’s still to be trusted is, of course, having a duel with him.

And for Daishinji being more comfortable in fighting as a swordsman, it really shows too in how Slash counters everything Saber throws at him, even when Saber uses stronger forms. I've seen stories of people getting to know other's inner self by fighting before, but, also including this, I wonder if that'd actually have some merits or lessons that can be taken (perhaps in other performances outside of fighting, which can be used in duel-based shows that can be deemed silly instead), or just the show's excuse to create more fight scenes. It's also something that has a conclusion that can seem to be only forced or dictated (ironic, compared to Touma's insistence of ending the story in his own way), as usually it ends with the tester claiming "you've shown me your resolve" or something, which isn't really clear what it means, perhaps typically , but even then some audiences (including in powerscaling) can always assume that anyone's fight are always going all out, where those who lose because of them holding back/hesitating can be just deemed as weak instead.

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Originally Posted by Sh Ranger

Well, honestly, I don't exactly believe in Gai's claims of human improvement either, hence why I quote-unquoted "heroic", as his idea of that is just as pretentious and self-validating as everything else he does.

I guess I brought it up cuz I often see quote-unquoted "heroic" when describing characters who actually genuinely well-intentioned, but the quoted-unquoted "heroic" is given due to using extreme and evil means to achieve it (but the goal is still genuine and they do live up to it, but shows that good intentions doesn't necessarily make one good person). So I thought it'd be different for Gai's case where his claim of human supremacy is just a front for his dirty work in the company, that he'd not have "heroic" goal following how audience usually use that 2 term for (though it's used as they don't know the term anti-villain).