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Kamen Rider Saber Episode 2: "The Swordsman Of Water & The Blue Lion!" Discussion
Touma is taken to the Sword of Logos, where he learns about the dangers the world faces...
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While cgi has come a long way in a short amount of time, this show relies on cgi too much and it's mostly special attacks over hand to hand fighting
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This episode is so absurd in a way I cannot describe, I'll need to hear what little tidbits they say but like...
Damn, this was hilariously entertaining in a way I cannot explain. |
So last week Blades rode into Touma's bookstore on his lion, and today Espada rides in on a magic carpet. I do hope we get every rider to show up just suddenly bursting through Touma's door riding something odd.
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Goddamn, this episode was FAST. Blades gets introduced, he fights, they go to another world, and Saber gets a slight upgrade, they beat the two villains, and go back to the bookstore and meet Espada there. I kinda like it. I hope this kind of pace keeps it up till the end of the show, unlike Zero-One that fell on it's feet on the 2nd arc.
I'm gonna like Blades. He's so polite and respectful, unlike the secondaries we've had since... OOO? Gonna love to see more of his dynamic with Touma later. I'm gonna need a DX toy of his buggy and lion tho, it' would look so cool next to his SHF. Can't wait to see Espada to complete the trio too. And, of course, Buster with him being played by Jiro Okamoto. Quote:
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We got a lot in this episode new form for Saber his bike and two power up nice but felt rush.
Blades is boring he feels like that acorn rider from gaim. Don't like the suit it all over the place. They need to cut back on that cgi it to much in this episode. What need to happen is more fighting without cgi to keep it exciting. Espada and Buster are in the next episode I hype to see what Buster is going to do. And Espada rides a carpet that really cool would like to see him do that in battle. |
So this was a tutorial episode for our MC. That's fine for me even if the pace can break necks.
rintaro is absolutely not like I imagined. I never thought he would be so friendly. I expected him having a serious tone like Hiiro. At least that's nice for a change. Maybe Kenzan will be the edgy/serious rider. Mei continues to scream and make big eyes faces. I can understand why it can make people annoyed. But it works on me. I like the woman being the comic relief for once and I like how they always include her in their adventure somehow. It seems to me that Touma knowing how to fight will be a plot point after all. I need to watch the sub to be sure but when he uses Jakkun to transform it seems Rintaro say something like "you can't do 2 at once yet" (as if touma doesn't have enough power yet) and when he succeeds he is like "oh I guess you can do that" surprising him. Plus Touma seems to use his knowledge of storybooks to use power effectively. It seems like Rintaro tell him to use Jakkun to Domamenoki a certain way but Touma uses it differently because he knows the Jack and the Beanstalk story. I'm not bothered by the CGI quality. But I admit it's too much. I hope they'll keep it for book worlds and book/destruction effects and not for the fights. |
I think the CGI is fine(more forgiving due to the circumstances tbfh)
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Well, this is a show where the ending feels more exciting and energetic than the opening somehow.
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Seeing Rintaro reactions in this ep, that will be a plot point to me. Just noticed at the end, few seconds before Kento/Espada makes his appearance debut, Mei and Rintaro fight over "Eclair au chocolat" pastries (éclair being the french word for "lightning bolt") |
It's refreshing having a secondary Rider who isn't hostile to the main Rider at the start of the series.
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Rintarou is a pretty chill dude and definitely not feeling the Kaixa Day spirit at all! :lol
(Happy Kaixa Day BTW!) The CGI fights have improved here although the fact that they're fighting monster ants instead of random rocks probably helps. Is Rintarou's smartphone trike supposed to be an Ebook? Touma's book bike makes a lot more sense than Aruto using his Risephone to summon an even bigger Risephone that turns in to a bike. Both of these things make more sense than Sougo riding a bicycle though. Huh, Ridestriker? Never heard of it. :p Lots of Ridermoji in the Sword of Logos base. Unless somebody else beats me to it, I might try translating them when I watch the sub. It's a little annoying how Kento cameos at the end but probably won't henshin until Episode 4. They're saving all the coolest Rider suits for later! "Ken" and "To" are both words for sword so his name is very fitting. I'm surprised to see them use that location again so soon after Kiramager Episode 15, the one with red light green light. Quote:
It also seems to confirm what I thought that each Sword Rider has a blank form without any books on the Driver, since Blades apparently meant for Saber to remove Brave Dragon first before inserting Jackun To Domamenoki. Something else I recently found out about the gimmick is that each Seiken Sword has their own "Volumes" based on elemental compatibility. Brave Dragon is Volume 1 of Rekka, Lion Senki is Volume 2 of Nagare and Lamp Do Alngina is Volume 3 of Ikazuchi. By using all 3 Volumes of 1 Seiken Sword, you get a full story! Dragon Jackun is basically crossover fiction. |
About time for a nice rider like Blades to backup Touma!
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Amnesiac protagonist rider? Blue secondary rider who is not a jerk? Oh, so Agito got rebooted. :lolol
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This is how were going to get more bike action back isn't it? Since up until the final shot of Saber and Blades restoring the world the bikes were either in green screen or a CGI model. And honestly I'm fine with the CGI if that means the bikes become relevent again. Also the Ending visuals have changed slightly and it only episode 2. Are they going to change it up every week?
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Pretty enjoyable second episode. I liked Rintaro a lot, he seems like he'll be a fun character. I like the dynamic he has with Touma as a sort of mentor figure. I particularly appreciated how, although he initially showed up to take the book back from Touma, he quickly accepts him as Saber. He doesn't try to take it back by force, there's no manufactured conflict around it. He just takes him to their base, presents him to Sophia, and they recognize that his resolve is sincere and that he's worthy of being Saber. I always prefer when Riders are on good terms with each other and feel like genuine friends, so I'm glad it's setting up that type of dynamic.
Other than that, I'm still enjoying the action. Sword action in Kamen Rider usually consists of basically just beating at the enemy with it like it's a club, or generic slashes. But here it feels like they actually have a style to their sword combat, it feels much flashier and more choreographed than usual. Only downside is we got another big CGI fight in this one, but I'm sure that'll stop soon enough. It's definitely a big improvement over past CGI scenes, but I still vastly prefer watching the actual live-action suits over CGI models. But this is all pretty standard for the first few episodes of a new season, so I'm not too bothered by it. One thing I'm trying to figure out, though, is Rintaro's Rider name. I've seen both Blades and Blaze, but I'm starting to see Blades used a lot more. But when I look at the actual Japanese writing of it, ブレイズ , wouldn't Blaze be correct? That reads a lot more like Blaze than Blades to me, since there's no character in there with a "d" sound. I'm still pretty new to learning Japanese, so it's extremely possible that I'm misunderstanding somehow, but from looking at that word I just don't see how it's getting translated as Blades over Blaze. |
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Regarding which name is more correct, ズ (zu) and ヅ (dzu) sound the same in Japanese so they're both valid. Saber is usually written as サーベル while Saber, the Rider, is written as セイバー to match the kanji 聖刃. |
Yes, yes absolutely yes I loved this episode now that I have like the little bits of context via subs to confirm why I loved it!
THIS is basically what I was asking for when we were about 5 episodes into Build! How things seemed to be going way too fast for Build and I felt there needed to be one extra episode added at the very start instead of the first one we got! I always felt there needed to be like a "Day in the Life of Build" where we see Sento going about a normal day as the Protector of Touto just to see how it's like before we get into the helping a fugitive and being attacked by the Government stuff. So getting a "Day in the Life of The Sword of Logos" is really great and I appreciate that we got a very basic sorta by the numbers adventure. It was very much going through the motions to just show Touma some context as to what was going on and I honestly liked that aspect. But I'll also echo everyone and say how surprised I was to see how much of a change of pace Rintaro is compared to past Secondary Riders. Also was anyone else reminded of Earth Defense Force with all the giant CG ants crawling about? |
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Okay-ish episode? 24 minutes passed but sadly it felt a bit like I wasted my time. Literally nothing exciting or impressive happened. I’m trying my hardest not to rip this episode apart and thus dwell on negative thoughts towards Saber as a whole so… pass, it’s over, next week there’s another chance for this show to do better.
And honestly, #1 Dad Rider has the best suit in this show so far so I’m pretty excited to see him in action. |
If the vibe for this episode was 'RPG tutorial', then it absolutely nailed it. After all, it just straight-up turns into a, fairly decent-looking, video game cutscene whenever the CGI kicks in. Kamen Rider Dragon Quest continues to be fun popcorn material (if popcorn was something you ate on weekend mornings), and I look forward to seeing the party slowly assembled.
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The story of the grasshopper and the ant is about the grasshopper playing music all day while the ant prepares for winter.
Why would the grasshopper protect the ant? |
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A little surprised to say this, but the show is starting to grow on me. It's not capturing me nearly as strongly as Zero-One did, but I'm less pessimistic than I was after the first episode.
The show definitely still has issues. The clown is still pointless, especially the bit where he recapped the episode's ending literally seconds after it happened. Mei is definitely demonstrating the kind of comic relief traits that I hate in Kamen Rider: over-the-top facial expressions, exaggerated posing, excited squealing (and Touma's getting in on the act, too, which doesn't help). The awful dance credits are still here and joined by opening credits that look good, but have possibly the worst opening theme in the franchise's history. The pacing still feels badly rushed. It feels like we skipped over some necessary scenes that would have better explained what was going on. I am interested by the show's premise, though, and we got some stuff teased here that could turn out to be very interesting. I hope the show slows down once we get through the introductory elements because I think it has some potential. I'm also hoping we get more room for character development, because I don't have a very strong grasp on any of them yet (except Mei - less of her, please). Anyway, on to the main thing that really struck me about this episode: the action scenes. Now, off the bat, I think the show is significantly inferior to Zero-One here. Zero-One had some fantastic fight scenes with good choreography and stunt work; Saber is almost entirely green screens, stock footage, and CGI. I don't like it, but it does still impress me. For all the talk about Zero-One being the start of a new era, it still felt a lot like another Neo-Heisei show. Saber looks really, really different. I can't say that I love having action scenes that are mostly CGI with little, if any, practical stunt work, but I can't deny that it looks really unique. I feel that this has to be at least partially a Covid-19 thing: cut down on the amount of time and people needed to film by doing a lot of it on a computer. I don't want this to be what Kamen Rider looks like from now on - and I have serious doubts that Toei will have the budget to keep this up for ~48 episodes - but I do appreciate the new and unique feel that it gives the show. |
This was an extremely crowded episode with a bit too much going on in the story for its own good, and an emphasis on a style of action I fundamentally don't really want to see in a tokusatsu series. And yet I still really loved it?
It's a bit difficult for me to even try unpacking. I guess starting with the action, since that's a little simpler to explain, I'm a little too impressed by all the CG to be upset about it. I would never, ever want this to be the standard going forward, but, right here, for Saber in particular, finding new ways to make a show is apparently an explicit goal for the production staff, and that is absolutely coming through in the finished product. I haven't seen an episode of Kamen Rider that looks like this one does before, and on a technical level, the visuals they're pulling off here are a real technical achievement for the franchise, even if they don't always look as good as something more simple can. But even when it gets a little ugly, there was a creativity to all the wild bike chases and giant beanstalks I can't deny I had fun with. The plot... maybe has a weird structure? Except maybe not? I'm thinking through this as I write it, and there's a pretty straightforward beginning (man on lion comes invites hero to exposition), a middle with a conflict playing out (man on lion and hero need to save chunk of city), and of course the resolution in the end of that chunk of city being saved. So maybe it's just the sensory overload of the action making it seem more chaotic in my head than it really was. At any rate, this was a fantastic introduction for Rintarou, who quickly proved himself to be an endearing character with a refreshing dynamic with Touma. It was maybe a tiny bit less good at giving attention to Touma himself. Not every show does this, granted, but a second episode of a Rider series, ever since Kuuga, is often the point where we see the protagonist get to lay out their beliefs and goals in a way that sets the stage going forward, and it feels like Saber kinda half did that here. Like it was actively attempting to, but couldn't quite stick the landing. There's not a lot of conflict for Touma here, not that heavy of a decision for him to make about being Saber. He just wants to save people and keep promises. And, admittedly, I appreciate the consistent theming when his Rider name is in fact deliberately meant to also sound like "Saver", but those are two things we already knew about him. Not a huge detriment to the episode, but certainly something that had room for improvement, I think. I do like that the exposition dump included giving a clear and explicit definition for what a Kamen Rider is to this show, however. I feel like there's more I could dig into again, but overall, I definitely enjoyed this one a whole lot. It's maybe not as good as the premiere, but if it isn't, it's no huge gap in quality. It's definitely still got me looking forward to next week and also hopefully strangers bursting into Touma's house becoming a series-long running gag. Quote:
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This is also as good a time as any to bring up the title card from episode 1, which had the names of seven whole Riders written out in Rider-Moji. https://i.imgur.com/fe8ScdS.png For anyone who hasn't learned this yet, the runes are just heavily stylized alphabet letters rotated 90 degrees. Tilt your head to the left and read them top-to-bottom, and you get SABER, ESPADA, and KENZAN on the left, plus BLADES, BUSTER, SLASH, and CALIBUR on the right. So if we need to argue about the official spellings for any of these guys, the matter's been settled already. |
Well, lot of comments about cgi, but even if it's technically limited I think they made the best they can about it. Imagine the FX guy getting the script '... and then they go to alternate fantasy dimension where things are burning like books'. It's not exactly the same thing as 'rider guy got a tornado final move'
Now I wonder where this show is going, because for now it looks 60% Kamen Rider, 20% Sentai and 20% Garo. |
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Hey can we talk about how Santa in Saber's world likely doesn't exist, but a secrety society of magic knights that fight against book monsters do?
Or do you all think they share the land of the North Pole with Santa? I feel like these are the hard hitting questions we need to be asking. |
Santa gets the geographic North Pole, the Sword of Logos gets the magnetic one?
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As a fan of big swords, looking forward to Buster next week.
But seeing as to how the books match up, the first slot from the left covers the right arm, the middle slot covers the main body and the right slot covers the left arm, it does make sense that the first 3 rider books can be combined into 1 form. As for Peter and Jack left arm books, given how much changes it does to the costumes when combining, I'm wondering if the costume department would have the budget to add it to every other rider. |
This series is shaping up to be a lighthearted one, and I'm okay with that! Lighthearted doesn't necessarily mean boring, and the characters are looking to be pretty fun and friendly; in other words a true kid's show.
Rintaro not knowing about the Ant and the Grasshopper and him not realising that Touma is planting seeds on the ground makes me wonder if he ever read any fairy tales. I suspect that the heavy use of CGI is only going to be for the first few episodes and then will wane away later on. Quote:
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So unless even that part is hotswappable.. |
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And then the trenchcoat pieces can just be attached to the bodysuit without much difficulty. |
My only problem so far is that the villains have just been sitting around talking about their vague plans. I know it's only the second episode, but I really hope they make these guys threatening soon.
Also, I'm sure the narrator is gonna be an actual character later. Maybe he's Calibur? |
Hmmm...just noticed this, but when Rintaro introduced himself, he says he's "not used to this world yet". Also, he keeps using 'homo sapiens' to refer to humans.
Any ideas? Perhaps he's like a prince of that storybook world or something? An alien? |
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But surprising enough, even by sitting only, you can already tell they have different personality just with simple acting. Storius is stoic. he barely shows any emotion or barely talks (I think he talked like once only ? I'm not sure. EDIT : He talked a lot in Ep2 I didn't remember that much. But still in a "not so emotional" tone. Like just stating fact) Legiel seems like the kind that is loyal to his mission. Zooous seems like the emotional type. Feeling excited or disappointed quite easily (sad face when monsters are defeated) and Calibur is the "all according to my plan muhahaha" type. Quote:
But it's quite early to judge and I guess there are a lot of reasons that could explain that. |
A grasshopper suit! Nice.
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just noticed the CGI error during jackun form transformation. when the jackun book opens, it's Lion Senki "arm page" that shows.
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