[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 31

This is another one of those episodes that always sticks out really quick in my mind whenever I start thinking about what makes me adore Saber so much. There are a ton of things to love about it, so, in no particular order, and without even touching on every last thing, I love:

- The title, which is one of my favorites in the series. I adore Saber's shtick of always having a comma, and while I also love all the dramatic pauses, I'm quite fond of ones like this that make each side one part of a pair, working together for greater effect. Kinda fits the teamwork theme, even!

- How sweet Zooous' sick flips are, even if I do think Legeiel's piano playing skills were even cooler.

- How the story picks a way, way more interesting direction than just "Blades gets stronger and beats up the monster, maybe with a new power-up form". The story they did instead not only excellently reestablishes this show's main two Riders as a duo, but it forces Rintarou to grow past his current limits in a way that is altogether far more true to what Saber cares about than anything else could be.

- How much it also just reinforces how cool Touma is by now? I mention this in my old post about 30 as well, but the whole dilemma Rintarou has here is massively exacerbated by how inferior being around a post Q2 Touma makes him feel, which really gives you cause to think about the way he grew through that stretch of the show. Beyond obvious merch priorities, I think it's easy to spin that as a good thematic reason why Elemental Primitive is the only form Saber uses in the entire two-parter. It's the ultimate symbol of how Touma managed to climb back from the low point he hit at the end of the first arc, and come back all the stronger for it. But it's like, Rintarou wasn't there for that, so of course he doesn't realize Touma had to suffer through the pain to get to that point, exactly the way Rintarou needs to, right up until they have their duel, and he gets to feel everything Touma's carrying through the weight of his blade.

- How the episode makes it a point to emphasize what a crucial part of the dynamic Mei is. "She's our sun" is the kind of line that would be unbearably cheesy if A) it didn't sound *exactly* like something Rintarou would say about her, and B) if it wasn't so dang *correct*. Like, she's obviously great, and I especially don't need to tell Die that, because one of the great joys of this thread is how much Mei immediately became his favorite.

- How (spinning off that last bit) that quick flashback to Mei meeting Touma gives you quite a bit to read into with how much she means to him in particular. You can see he's basically totally disinterested in his new editor, an uncharacteristic lack of enthusiasm from the guy that suggests he's maybe not had the best experiences with editors for whatever reason (especially if he's not great with deadlines!), but Mei quickly wins him over, not because she matches his love of books or anything, but simply because her positive attitude is that infectious, and just like that, a fruitful partnership was born. Like, really fruitful! A lot of editors probably wouldn't dive headfirst into all this Rider stuff the way she does, you know!

- How awesome it was when Zooous did all those flips.

- The way Mei like, uppercuts her way out of the Cat Megid, and does this goofy comedy landing right after, immediately turning all that dour misery she's just been through right on its head as soon as she possibly can. That's the kind of thing I could imagine being written in the script simply as "Mei is seperated from the Megid", so I'm going to go ahead and chalk that up to Ishida's influence, because again, I think Mei was probably his favorite part of this show too.

- Rintarou at the end finally dropping the kun in Touma-kun after all this time, a perfect little way to underscore that he's no longer here as a coworker, but as part of the family.

- Also Zooous' flips were pretty rad.