While Tassel cries over the current state of the season, Storious, Zooous and Legeiel talk about the impending door opening. Meanwhile, Desast approaches the dark sword and out pops Calibur.
Over in the North Pole, everyone is mourning Kento’s “death,” but they all vow to continue on. Not only to avenge Kento, but to save the world.
Touma hands Ogami-san the Hedgehog Book, gives the Tri Cerberus Book to Ren and keeps the Lamp do Alangina Book for himself to remind themselves of Kento’s memory.
Later, Rintaro asks Tetsuo if he can have the new Book that is being prepared. Tetsuo asks for Rintaro’s other Books so they can all be properly synced with the new one. Touma, Ogami-san and Ren head out first.
Legeiel stands by the door as the flame Touma shot to it is close to be burning out. Touma, Ogami-san and Ren arrive. But they are shocked when Calibur appears. Ren quickly henshins and charges toward him.
Ogami-san also wants to battle Calibur, but Legeiel wants to take him on instead.
Touma, invoking the memory of Kento, two-book henshins as well using the Alangina Book. Daichi continues to say he will attain the ultimate truth, even if that means killing anyone that gets in his way. Touma and Ren use Kento’s memory to power them up.
Touma and Ren regroup with Ogami-san as Daichi takes over when Legeiel gets knocked aside. Touma again invokes the memory of Kento to drive his attacks. But the book door is just about ready to open wide.
Daichi leaves to oversee the opening. Storious, Zooous and Legeiel pop in to keep the Riders busy in the meantime. But Touma leaps over them to try and stop Daichi.
Touma tries to appeal to Daichi’s past as a noble swordsman. But it doesn’t work. Tetsuo arrives to help out and takes on Daichi directly, calling him an old friend and saying he doesn’t recognize him anymore.
Daichi swats Tetsuo away and he instead joins Ren and Ogami-san against the three Megid. The SoL Riders are being completely overpowered. They decide to switch Books with each other and they continue fighting.
In the city, the citizens cower in fear as the book begins to open. Children, however, seem oddly excited at the magical happenings in the sky.
At the North Pole, the new Book is completed and Rintaro and Mei hurry over. They arrive just as the free for all continues and Daichi flies up to the book.
Rintaro picks up the Alangina Book. And after a short moment of reflection on what it stands for, he opens the brand-new Book.
Rintaro locks it in and henshins for the first time into King Lion Daisenki. The others toss him Kento’s Books and Rintaro locks them into his new weapon. With the power of Kento’s memory, Rintaro unleashes a barrage of new attacks and takes on the three Megid by himself. Mei excitedly cheers him on.
Touma leaves to try and stop Daichi while the others support Rintaro who uphenshins to a Royal Charge that allows him to turn into a lion. He swats the Megid away and then shoots at the pillar of light to get rid of it.
Mei sends hearts Rintaro’s way.
They all cheer Touma on as he flies into the book door.
Episode Thoughts
I cannot even describe how increasingly indifferent I am to what is happening on Saber every week. For me, it really is the lack of character and plot development (everything development) that prevents me from connecting to and holding on to anything in the series.
Again, the only thing that comes close is Mei just being herself. And in this episode, the only moments that stand out for me were her cheering on her boyfriend Rintaro. Even sending him hearts when he cuts off the pillar of light.
I’m grasping here at anything that I can care about.
A perfect example in this episode of what I think is really a problem with the writing is when Tetsuo joins in the battle. He pops in and starts calling Daichi an old friend. I had to do a double take at that moment. Were we supposed to know that? Because not a single moment before this episode did they even insinuate that there was some kind of relationship there.
So for Tetsuo to feel so aggrieved that an old friend, an old comrade like Daichi has turned to the dark side? I don’t buy it at all. It comes out of nowhere. There’s no basis for it in what we’ve seen. And if there was, it was probably in passing with a throw away line from Sophia from which we would need to infer something that may or may not have been the case.
And really, it speaks to the unstable foundation that all of these supposedly impactful events are standing on. We know essentially nothing about the SoL, let alone any pre-show relationships of its swordsmen and the (again) now-irrelevant Sophia. Do those extra TTFC specials shed any light on this? I haven’t watched a single one. But to be honest, you shouldn’t need to watch any of the extra stuff to at least get a basic feel for the story.
This episode was all about Kento’s memory. And fighting for everything that Kento stood for. Okay, fine. Kento’s a nice guy and all. But I haven’t forged a connection with him enough to really feel the emotions the show is trying to draw upon in this episode. And that’s partly because he’s been such a one-dimensional character up to this point.
Like, he’s been moping about the entire time he was on-screen. His main story was about his father being a traitor and that was waved away when it was revealed that Daichi was in the suit. The story with Touma and Luna could just as well not exist as it has done nothing to add to either Touma or Kento’s development.
And the whole book door in the sky plot of the season makes no sense. So Luna getting sucked in on That Day means nothing.
There was a scene where I think it was Touma, Ogami-san, Ren, Tetsuo and the three Megids battling it out in a free-for-all. And I couldn’t believe how uninterested I was in that whole chaotic scene. That was also the perfect depiction of the literal parade of new characters we got during the first 10 episodes of the season. You’re getting new people coming out of the walls left and right. It’s absolutely insanity.
I dunno. I’m already exhausted just thinking about what’s going on.
Which is strange because didn’t I say I felt completely indifferent to this season so far? I guess I have to change that. I feel completely frustrated. This season has a good basic premise. And the characters, for what they are on paper, seem to be solid. But something is going wrong with execution somehow, somewhere. And it has resulted in this crazy mess. I don’t hate this season. I certainly don’t love it. But things are definitely not hitting the mark for me with Saber.
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6 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Saber, Chapter 14: These Feelings, Dwell in this Blade.”
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I believe the issue lies in that fact that we are only in episode 14 or a possibly, 50+ episode series, and we are slammed into midseason stakes without all the the important components (establishing relationships, character development, and building up the threat) being given less development in favor of just bombarding us with a bloated cast that feels like the worst excesses of the final Bleach manga arc (introducing more characters than needed, powers that feel less and less sensical, and a villain that’s just a Macguffin), stakes and bonds that feel incredibly unearned (Touma’s memories, hell Touma as a person, Kento’s “death”, the SOL dynamic, The Book’s goals). And I have watched on of the Specials, and it did not tell much, it was just establishing how Slash’s sword got damaged and that he was there at the inciting incident that Touma, Luna, and Kento were at.
“Unearned” – That’s the perfect word. You make a good point about this being midseason climax stakes. We should be getting this arc around the late 20s. Not now at Episode 14. By midseason, that is usually the right time when everything has been established and built up to a point where we do care about what happens to the characters and in the story. They’re doing too much too fast and for what?
I think you hit the nail on the head here with how Saber’s been so far. So far, it’s inferior to previous seasons for multiple reasons. First, like you said, the plot’s been moving too fast; this sort of end of the world arc should have been much later. It worked with Zero-One because they had other villains in the background and a clear path going forward. Second, the characters haven’t been given any space to develop. Rintaro’s been the best developed so far, mostly boosted by his high involvement with the plot. But Kento and Touma, the supposed main character, seem solely defined by their relationships with others rather than getting their own chances to develop individually. As for Ren, Ogami, and Tetsuo, well, we really don’t much about any of them and they seem to just be there for the sake of having more Riders. Finally, there’s the problem you’ve been discussing for weeks: the villains. Calibur is obviously the most interesting, but the writers seem to be taking their sweet time in explaining what he wants and his motivation for betraying the SoL, not to mention the sudden identity twist than made thing a more complicated. Regarding the Megids, there have been no hints given about their motivations beside power, how they came into existence, and what exactly they are. Desast is just around to fight with riders, nothing else. We don’t know anything about Legeiel. Zooous has been established as the resident hothead, but the writers seem to have forgotten that he should have a rivalry with/constantly be fighting Rintaro because of Rintaro’s personal grudge that initially drove him to make himself stronger. Storious has shown traits of being an intelligent schemer with a mysterious agenda, and I like the way his actor makes him sound creepy at times (i.e, when he lured Touma into the rap to depower him), but he just has not done much plot-wise, mostly just staying in the background and being as uninteresting as the other two generals.
And you’ve summarized the problems very well. There some really good possibilities lurking about, but I have no idea what the show thinks it’s trying to do with that potential.
Interesting about Zero-One. I felt like I might just have been biased in thinking how much better it was. But you bring up a good point as well. They were able to do these sort of climactic events early on. And I did question,
What are they going to do after this then? But at the same time, I believed in those events. I mean, when Horobi slapped the Driver on Jin, that was like around this same time on Saber. If not earlier. Yet I was absolutely shocked and even sad when it first happened. That really speaks to how we got to really know the characters very well by then.
Earlier this season on Saber, I also kind of brushed aside the fact that they were introducing so many characters so fast. Since when I thought about other seasons, even Zero-One, if you just compare by numbers, it’s pretty much the same amount of people. Yet, unlike other seasons, Saber has not done well in establishing each character as their own person let alone the relationships and dynamic between the characters. Like you point out, most of these character on Saber as there just to be there.
“Yet, unlike other seasons, Saber has not done well in establishing each character as their own person let alone the relationships and dynamic between the characters. Like you point out, most of these character on Saber as there just to be there.”
Another thing here is that Saber can’t seem to bring all its chosen themes together well. For instance, the theme element is books and stories and Touma’s main character detail is that he’s a novelist. Yet, we have to still see what these details’ relevance to each other are. Why did Touma choose to be a writer? For that matter, what kind of stories does he write anyway?
I wouldn’t be bothered by this if the themes and character details were totally random. But as you can see, they’re intentionally chosen, the show can’t seem to explain why. Other season ad a better handling of this. Sento being a scientist had a significant relevance to Build’s plot, while Aruto’s desire to be a comedian played a large role in his character development. Saber is really missing that link.
Yes thats a good point. It almost seems like they did books and stories just to have ideas for designs. There’s really no connection yet. Especially when the other major theme is knights. Even Ghost, for all its troubles, did better with its theme and motif in terms of what they drew upon with the 15 heroes and how Takeru had to study all that, etc.