[Fish Sandwich]

Fish Sandwich also watched Kamen Rider Saber Episode 37

The thing I'm probably always going to remember most from this episode is Touma telling Kento not to just selfishly decide how the story ends, and before I can even finish thinking "That's rich coming from you, Touma!", he's already spouting off the catchphrase as he interrupts Kento's big chance to finally make good on the whole matrydom complex. For good and for ill, it's a very definitively Touma moment.

I can sort of broadly see how Die might be tired of Kento's brooding and Touma's utter inability to stop attempting to convince him with big heroic plaititudes he knows aren't going to work, but for me, this episode was still thoroughly engaging, in a lot of different ways. I don't think I was as exhausted by the Touma/Kento stuff, in part because I just like how relentlessly honest it is for their respective personalities, like I just said above, and also in part because I wasn't worried about how much longer the show would try to pump this well.

The way I see it, this episode basically *is* Kento hitting rock bottom? It's the one where he finally makes his grand attempt to heroically get himself killed, and gets *this* close to going through with it, only to have that opportunity denied in the end. It's like, what's next for the guy now, you know? I was asking that question with more eager optimism than Die maybe is, but you know, when it comes to these things, I can be a bit of a Touma myself sometimes!

Beyond that, there's also a million smaller things that made this episode super enjoyable for me. Mei and Bacht are great together, because of course. Finally seeing Rintarou and Kento together again for some one-on-one time was great. And Touma's fight with Ren is probably the standout of the entire thing for me. There's a bunch of things about the approach the show takes there that are just so totally Saber. This is only one part of it, but I adore how, in this episode about Touma utterly refusing to let Kento have his way, he still speaks of Kento's motivations to Ren with this sort of reverence. Because again, these characters are never enemies. Touma knows Kento is doing what he's doing because he'd give anything to save a friend, and Touma has to stop Kento because Touma would do the same thing in that position, exactly like he says here. These two are very much the proverbial immovable object and unstoppable force. Like, I don't know, I guess it was starting to get repetitive watching quiet brooding versus HEROIC SHOUTING by this point, but I feel like this episode still gave me plenty new to think about on that front anyway. Enough that I accidentally looped right back around to talking about that, at least!

I guess the one last thing I really want to make sure I mention from this one is that quick flashback of Kento talking to Ren about how he cares about being strong enough to protect what matters to him, but not about being the strongest. It's just kind of a great sentiment, for one thing, and it's something fun for our favorite hotheaded ninja to ponder in his arc, but it's also a super poignant reminder of how much of a good kid Kento is at heart. He's been sulking around in that potato sack for long enough by now that the stark contrast with a point in his life where he was holding together okay is extra strong. It's like, I just wanna see the poor dude looking that happy again that much more, after seeing that.