[DreadBringer]

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

??? I don't get what you're saying here. Are you suggesting that it's not laudable for a character to rescue someone from depths of depression? How would that not be a moral that's worth following?

To explain myself better, I refer to the moral here as in keep holding on your optimism like Touma and you'd get rewarded for that (e.g. Touma getting Elemental Dragon at the end), in comparison to Kento who still wallows in his pessimism thus is blind to golden opportunities like Touma's triumph and it'd be set as his downfall. Of which if it's like that then it can be just assumed as the story favoring Touma.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 28 - “A PAST SET IN STONE, AND THE FUTURE NOT YET WRITTEN”

A clip show by any other name, huh? There’s new footage, for sure: the fight scene at the finale, Master Logos introducing Reika’s brother as the next/last swordsman, Yuki making a minor return appearance. But the intent of this episode is to reestablish the storyline of this series, the end. We’re here to be reminded about events, and have certain causalities clarified. The point isn’t to do much more than reaffirm who the heroes and villains are, and what they plan to do next.

I've said before that Mei is never at odds with Touma again since Kamijo's demise, and it extends to his work too, where now Mei isn't pushy to Touma to force him to complete manuscripts ASAP anymore, instead she knows that he can be busy doing his protecting the world job, but it's Touma himself who wants to write it despite his new Kamen Rider occupation. As a first watcher, so Ryoga is introduced earlier than I thought, of which it'd do a big disservice to Reika's character, after some praise for her as (ugh..) tough and cunning girl, and it's already seen here with her just fawning over her onii-chan.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

It’s not terrible, even if the amount of time people spend explaining things that they both/all experienced is pretty comical. There must’ve been a more elegant way to recap this information, right? It’s… I don’t want to say “lazy” to do it this way, because there’s enough fresh material to dodge that charge. But there’s an artlessness to having everyone talk like they got possessed by Tassel, and can’t stop rehashing their motivations, their triumphs, and their fears. It’s basic, which is a descriptor that I’d hoped Saber had left behind for good.

I do think that the recap here is done better than some others as it's something already established in-universe where Touma writes his and his comrade's story as a book, thus he'd want to continue it with what happens recently, so there'd be an in-universe reason to recap, but I guess as you said, there still can be a room of improvement.

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Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

But, hey, at least everyone’s here? Desast shows up to watch a fight, which is at least bringing him closer to being in a fight again. Ren splits from the guild because of their No Kentos Allowed policy (Kento from Southern Base security is allowed; they get to have one Kento) and promptly finds out why that policy was enacted in the first place. Everyone else gets at least a couple three lines of dialogue. It’s a full episode, say what you will about its narrative value.

I guess you're right about Kento's actions now being an influence of his father, though it wasn't him being maddened or something to resort to that, and his future visions are still from Kurayami, but it was revealed that Hayato also saw the futures in Kurayami. So it's a parallel for both Touma and Kento, where they both carry a will from previous Calibur anti-villains who seek to achieve good via extreme means, Kamijo and Hayato respectively, but correc ttheir way. Touma obviously won't do something bad, but Kento doesn't quite correct their way, even if Kento's method is tamer in comparison. Ren's reaction to Kento is obviously opposite compared to Touma, where while Ren is eager to dispose Touma of when the SoL accuses him as being power hungry, here he vehemently denies that Kento can be problematic.