[Kamen Rider Die]

KAMEN RIDER SABER EPISODE 45 - “THE TEN SWORDSMEN, WITH THE WORLD ON THE BRINK”



Oh, sure, we can spend a few episodes on the collateral damage of personal growth and the redemptive renewal of friendships, but let’s not forget what pays the bills around these parts: a squadron of swordsmen attacking a villain’s towering fortress!

If last episode was The Calm Before The Storm, this episode is STORMS ARE AWESOME. Every single Kamen Rider gets a thrilling action sequence, and the entire cast fights from bell to bell. There’s a little bit of non-action in a riveting Storious subplot and a melancholy Mei subplot, but those only amount to the show catching its breath between bravura combat sequences.

It’s… it’s almost hard to talk about it, since its merits are all in the fighting? Every fight scene gets a button of character development to it – Kamijo (who has grown out his hair in the afterlife) and Hayato appear to give Sophia a hand, reuniting that group of friends; Ren uses Desast’s book to finish off a foe, giving Desast one last posthumous victory; the Shindai Siblings simultaneously call out their identical motivation; Daishinji probably dies – but the meat of this episode is the guild acting like a goddamn guild. This is the reason for their existence: to war against villains like Storious. This is them literally going to work for an entire episode.

Obviously, it wouldn’t have the same impact without being the culmination of so many character arcs (Ren speedrunning to the last boss and telling Kento not to hold him back!), but the success or failure of this episode was really down to how well the stunt team did. And, y’know, they did great! There’s a wonderful logic to every fight, where the teamwork of each set of heroes leverages the strategy of different styles, different elements. It’s got that movie climax thing of feeling like there’s thought given into how X and Y can stop Z, rather than just spamming attacks or wiping the floor because of some random power-up. The Slash/Kenzan fight is one of my all-time favorites, franchise-wide, and not even because I like those two guys. (They’re good characters, but they ain’t my faves.) It’s because it weds fantastic camerawork to inventive attacks, and it all feels in continuity with how those characters think and behave.

Killer action, grounded in character. I don’t think a Kamen Rider viewer could be disappointed by this one.

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WATCH ME JUMPSTART



Zooous had been resurrected, and his heart flipped tentatively.

He knew he was only a ghost, and his thoughts flipped towards Storious’s fall from grace. Zooous was here to reach out to his friend, to remind him of the ways they’d flipped together at the start of this journey. Legeiel had flipped from the grave as well, which warmed Zooous’s heart. He almost flipped tears from eyes, but stopped himself.

They had a mission. They needed to flip Storious’s dark outlook.

It would be difficult, flippingly so. Storious had dedicated centuries to the pursuit of a flipped version of storytelling, and it would be hard work to flip him back to the man Zooous once called a friend.

Luckily, Zooous was ready to flip. Zooous was always ready to flip. This would be the flip that saved the world.