[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 27



...Man, I genuinely don't even know where to start. Like, I've kind of dodged really digging into how much I love all the episodes in this arc, in part because it's like, thankfully I wrote most of it down around 2 years ago, but looking back at my post for this one, I feel like it's underselling how much this one means to me, even with all the praise I gave it?

It's like:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It's an ending that I literally can't think of another Kamen Rider show attempting

Yeah, I think that sorta starts to get at it. It's like I said earlier -- what makes so many of these berserk form stories so memorable, and what keeps it from feeling as repetitive as it ought to when Zero-One did it literally the prior year, is how they're all saying something very deeply unique and specific to their particular series. Build's always gonna be the one to top, right? It's not just that Hazard Form was legit scary in that debut, it's that the process of us getting from that to RabbitRabbit, seeing Takumi Katsuragi's weapon become the hero only Sento Kiryuu could create, it's a perfect microcosm of so much of what Build was exploring, and that one-two punch of form debuts easily stands as one of the all-time greats in the entire franchise.

And Elemental Primitive Dragon is easily at least on that same level for me. I mentioned how I misunderstood the design of Primitive Dragon at first, and considering Die made similar comments, I suspect that might just have been yet more deliberate intent on the part of the designers. The easy assumption when you first see it is that the hand is this primal force, clutching its unwilling prisoners within its cold grasp, but the reality is completely different. That claw on the book, it's actually a torn up page, because Primitive Dragon's whole gimmick is that its story is missing. The illustrations on the book even bring to mind a black hole, because the truth is that it's a wounded creature, desperately reaching out for something to fill the void where its heart once was.

So of course, inevitably, the thing it finds to fill that void once and for all is another hand, reaching back to help.

It's like the simplest, corniest thing ever, and so perfectly, beautifully Saber in every aspect. We were presented with this uncontrollable raging beast, and through Touma, we grow to understand its motives, empathize with its pain, until eventually, that unknowable creature becomes a friend, and that bond becomes the strength and hope needed to save the day.

Ghost was always extremely good about these things too, you know. To this day, I am immensely fond of Mugen Damashii for how it made Takeru's own empathy for the people around him into rainbow-colored superpowers, and much the same way I have an infinite fondness for that form, it should probably say something that Elemental is now handily my preferred version of Primitive Dragon, even though the original one should clearly be cooler. This episode's emotional climax is just too perfect for me to not end up feeling that way. It perfectly incorporates Touma being a writer, it fits excellently into the overall themes of the series, and is frankly just the kind of heroism I like to see in a story. Heroes and villains alike can destroy obstacles in their path, but only a hero will choose to heal something.

I don't know if this is exactly one of my all-time favorite Rider episodes, viewed as a standalone thing, but it is an unimpeachably crucial episode when it comes to why Saber is a series that means as much to me as it does.