[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 34 - “AWAKEN ONCE MORE, SWORDSMAN OF IMMORTALITY”



Man, even for the swordsman show with headswords and literal sword mans, this was totally The Sword-Fighting Episode. Just a ridiculous amount of fights, almost wall to wall, bell to bell.

As such, sort of not my speed? I enjoyed seeing Falchion come back, for sure. I liked the little bit of Yuri’s backstory that mirrors and comments on the Touma/Kento relationship. But there’s just a little too much action here, for my tastes. Not enough meat on the bone, I guess.

Like: the Durandal/Blades fight. What in the world is Ryoga even doing there? Master Logos was just like Concentrate On Touma, which is exactly what Reika’s doing. Why is Ryoga skulking around an underpass, hoping he’ll get to challenge Rintaro to another fight? Why not just have Falchion wander in and find Rintaro, and skip to the chase? Why introduce Durandal into the fight in such a bizarre way, when he doesn’t really have any impact on the story being told?

Even Falchion’s rampage through this episode, despite a new backstory that has echoes of the dissolution of Touma and Kento’s partnership (Yuri’s version even did the same Three Musketeers thing!), just had this weird shrug of I Don’t Know Why Not. We’re in a shit-stirring phase of Master Logos’s stratagem, where he’s just throwing antagonists against the wall to see what detonates. Falchion’s here to be a new guy to fight, and that's the extent of Logos's decision-making here.

I did like that the episode crafted a parallel Friendship storyline for Yuri, Falchion, and I’m gonna go ahead and say Desast. (Wild guess! He’s hunched in a real Desast way in the flashback!) They were friends, everything went sideways, and Falchion gave himself over to nihilism in the name of cosmic truth. It’s all very Kento, which isn’t lost on anyone, especially Kento himself. For a dude who’s obsessed with an unavoidable future, it’s nice to have the thing that maybe jars him out of his isolation be something that happened centuries ago. Falchion’s a guy who destroyed his friendships because he thought he was doing the only thing that made sense, but from the outside it was pure insanity. There’s a part of Kento that starts to realize that maybe he’s gotten too wrapped up in his own fatalism, rather than ignoring his fears and trusting in Touma.

I mean, it helps that Luna finally shows up in the cliffhanger! That’s gonna make for a complicated next episode…

—

RAISED ALL WRONG



As he searched another deserted alleyway for Ren, Ogami thought about the last few months.

They were… not great. Things had gone from bad to worse, with his most recent hospitalization as succinct a statement as he could imagine. The Southern Base had turned against the Northern Base. Fukamiya had been led astray by Master Logos. Kamijo was both a traitor and a martyr. Kento was cursed to death, and now he’d returned as a brooding outsider. And Ren…

Where to start with Ren? Ogami shook his head as he thought about whether he should be proud of that kid for following his own path, or give him a kick in the ass and tell him to get home to the Northern Base. He’d always been a handful; excitable and easily distracted, never willing to focus on the mission when there was fighting to be done. Now that he’d lost Kento’s guidance, Ren was spinning out of control.

Ogami hoped he’d be able to get through to Ren, if and when he found him. He’d cared about the kid, for sure, but he was more scared of what his own future looked like if he found himself unable to corral a willful, sword-wielding young man.

He didn’t like to compare Sora to Ren, since it honestly didn’t flatter either one of them, but Ogami found himself doing it more often as Sora got older. Sora was going to want to be a swordsman, Ogami was certain of it. You couldn’t have a dad as cool as him without wanting to follow in his footsteps, and it was especially inescapable if your dad was a genuine superhero. (Ogami usually went with Warrior or Soldier, but Sora said Superhero, and it stuck.) And, truth to tell, Ogami would be proud to train Sora to be the next Buster. The kid had a good heart, and would be a fine swordsman.

But there were the teenage years to consider, and the guild didn’t have a tremendous track record lately for safeguarding the minds and hearts of young men. For every bullet they dodged with a Rintaro, they were hit by a Kento. Would Sora come out the other side of his training with a crushing sense of responsibility that made him convinced of his own inadequacy before overcoming it, or with a crushing sense of responsibility that turned him against all of his friends in the name of preventing a theoretical apocalypse? Fun choices.

Well, maybe Sora would turn out like Ren, and just wander off when things got too messy. It wasn’t the worst plan. For all of the craziness the last few months, Ren had mostly stayed out of it. Even when he was the most wound up over Kento’s absence, Ren had been willing to listen to Ogami’s advice. Huh. Maybe Ren would turn out okay after all. And maybe Sora would, too.

Ogami truly was the king of parenting. Why’d he ever doubt himself?