Recap: Kamen Rider Saber, Episode 41 – Across 2,000 Years, a Wish Spelled Out
Tassel has Luna in his cabin and asks her to wait here while he takes care of something before he can bring her to Touma.
With Master Logos’ demise, Storious revels in having acquired the power of a god. And now he has four of the “original five” powers with just one left to get in his possession.
Desast senses a dark black rot emanating from Storious and asks what he’s plotting now. Storious says he’s decided it is time to pick his pen up and write his own beautiful ending.
Meanwhile, the northern gang are setting off fireworks and celebrating the summer festival as well as believing they are in peacetime now. Kento isn’t so sure, but he keeps his former future visions to himself.
Ren wonders where Desast has disappeared to, not knowing he’s with Storious.
Storious says the final piece of the puzzle is up for grabs, but Desast is not ready for the world to end just yet.
Both Storious and Desast henshin and they battle.
Up north, Tassel pops up and Yuuri introduces him to everyone as one of The First and not a regular homo-sapiens. The others have many questions for him, but Touma just wants to know where Luna is.
Tassel says they need to have an important conversation about his past and Touma’s future first.
Tassel explains that everything began 2000 years ago when he was a traveler scouring the world for the source of divine revelations and inspirations. He believed that the stories that formed the basis of civilizations all originated from a secret Fountain of Knowledge.
Originally joining him in this journey were his friends; Storious, Legeiel, Zooous and the Original Master Logos. They had hoped to help people live without fear of starvation, disease or disaster. Essentially, a more prosperous and beautiful world.
One day, a Sophia-looking person touches hands with Victor and the Fountain of Knowledge turned into a Book which resulted in the creation of the Wonderworld.
Wonderworld is the representation of the Fountain. And Victor excitedly brought his friends to see this beautiful place. They all celebrated the beginning of a new story for humanity.
But Storious, Legeiel and Zooous had been seduced by the power and they each stole a portion of the All-Knowing Book. Thus, they became the Megido.
Storious is also telling Desast this story and relates how excited he felt at that moment to be able to write poetic stories of death and destruction.
In search of more power, the Megido3 instigated war. But the Sophia-looking person scattered the All-Knowing Book in order to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. That in turn caused her to disappear.
Victor and Original Master Logos made a vow to maintain balance between the worlds and split the remaining All-Knowing Book between them. But conflict raged on.
Storious tells Desast that a story is only beautiful because it has an ending. And a life is at its most beautiful when it meets its end.
“The hell you even talking about?!” Desast asks.
Storious says Legeiel, Zooous and Isaac’s endings were very beautiful. So now it’s time for Desast to get his own as well.
Storious taunts Desast by threatening to write a beautiful ending to Ren. The Charybdis Megido forces Desast to dehenshin and he leaves.
Touma asks why Tassel didn’t do anything to stop the fighting. He answers that he is unable to interact or interfere with this world as a consequence of being destined to receive The Power.
Tassel cries that he could do nothing but watch for the last 2000 years. That is, until Touma appeared as a beacon of hope. When Luna appeared 15 years ago and chose Touma, Tassel believed this would change the future. But Master Isaac had abused the Dark Blade by having Papa Fukamiya use it to bring about The Incident of That Day and made Luna disappear.
As soon as Touma meets Luna, he will gain the power of Wonderworld but fade away from this world.
Sora and Mei don’t want Touma to disappear. But Yuuri and Tetsuo scream that Touma will never see Luna again. Rintaro starts crying about this unfair choice Touma must make. And Ogami-san also yells.
Tassel asks Touma if he still wants to meet Luna after listening to his exposition and Touma says yes.
Touma wants to be with Luna, but he also wants to be with all of them as well. He wants them all to smile together and he will change his future to make that happen.
Everyone is happy to hear this and they have a group hug.
Touma says Ren is part of their friendship and he leaves to go fetch him.
Storious says it’s time. He opens the Charybdis Book and a mountain disappears. Mei sees this in her Alert Book. Rintaro and Kento start to leave, but they are still weak and injured.
Touma finds Ren, but he doesn’t want to hear anything he has to say. Instead, Ren asks Touma how he is so strong when he’s just a mere writer. He also asks to confirm if Touma will disappear.
Touma says no and after Mei calls to tell him about the mountain, he tells Ren that he’ll be waiting.
The Charybdis Megido is chomping up scenery when Ogami-san and Tetsuo arrive. They henshin and battle Charybdis. They are about to get eaten when Touma arrives and together they finish the Megido off.
When Desast finally appears in front of Ren, he challenges him to a fight and tells Ren to give it all he’s got or he will die.
Tassel gets back to his cottage. Luna is gone, but Storious is there waiting for him.
Episode Thoughts
Umm… okay. What was that?
After last week, I was looking forward to seeing Storious taking charge, being cool and badass and evil. But instead we get half an episode of Tassel’s exposition soup and in the other half, everyone going crazy over the possibility that Touma and Luna will never meet again.
I don’t care about either of those things. And if anything, I had a WTF look on my face this entire episode.
I had the same exact reaction as Desast:
Same Desast. Same.
I was saying the same thing myself while watching Kamen Rider Saber 41. #仮面ライダーセイバー pic.twitter.com/81WvkdRkYD— DryedMangoez (@dryedmangoez) June 27, 2021
I mean, they started with a completely unnecessary festival scene which already got me wondering what alternate universe this episode was taking place in.
Then we get this long, boring and totally underwhelming exposition that is supposed to make us care about whatever the hell is happening next.
They are focusing this entire season on Touma meeting Luna again. And like I’ve harped on about all season, that is completely misguided. Luna is so irrelevant and such a nonentity to the overall story (or whatever passes as Saber‘s story) and especially to Touma as a character.
Actually, it says a lot if Touma’s entire character is him yearning to see the little girl from his childhood that he barely remembers.
The title hero’s endgame is meeting some little girl he doesn’t know and who doesn’t even exist in the real world? How absurd is this?!
This episode really hammered home the fact that this season is an absolute directionless mess.
While I like the general idea of the five friends, I don’t buy Tassel’s exposition at all. It feels like something they slapped together last night instead of it being something it takes 40 episodes to build up to.
Wonderworld being the Fountain of Knowledge or whatever? Huh? That feels so unsatisfying and a big letdown.
For one thing, they can’t all of a sudden bring back the Megido3 and put the focus on them when they were ignored most of the season. And they can’t even be bothered to give “Original Master Logos” a name. So why should we care about this beautiful journey the five friends had?
And why do we need to care about Wonderworld? It’s supposedly created from the All-Knowing Book which itself is created from the Fountain of Knowledge. So if Wonderworld were to disappear and the “bridge” or connection between our world and Wonderworld disappears too, does that mean all the living homo sapiens become idiots? Like, no more knowledge in this world?
I think they could’ve done something interesting with this “Knowledge is Power” theme. But them just searching for some powerful sword to rule the universe would’ve been much better than what we’ve gotten instead.
A choice between Touma meeting a little girl he barely remembers (and who isn’t even a homo sapiens) or him continuing to exist in this world.
Yeah, not much of a choice.
They make it seem like Touma and Luna were the closest of friends for years. Like they were friends from birth or even siblings. But am I wrong to think they were only friends for just a day before The Incident happened. Like, that’s how it feels anyway. Because they definitely have not done anything to put any meaningful foundation to Touma and Luna’s friendship. They talked about bonds recently. There’s no bond there. And what about Kento? Was he just a third wheel?
All of this nonsense feels so irrelevant. When Yuuri, Tetsuo, Rintaro and Ogami-san started screaming and crying about Touma never being able to see Luna again. I was like, “Why the hell are you all screaming?!” How is this even an equal choice?
First of all, Luna isn’t even a real person. She’s not a homo sapiens. Second, she’s not even a real character, to be honest. She literally popped out of a book. She’s a bridge between the two worlds? Umm… okay. But that’s not even the reason they’re all freaking out.
Then we have Ren and Desast. I can already feel the underwhelming ending to this story. Desast got his Book wrecked by the Megido. So now that he’s going to die anyway, he wants Ren to kill him in some profound way? I don’t think so. Desast is going to get as unceremonious ending as Legeiel and Zooous did. And Ren goes back to his northern friends. Yeah, very exciting.
Meanwhile, Storious is making moves to write the ending. And I am rooting for him. Please! Make this end!
I have honestly never felt this way for a Kamen Rider season yet. For it to be this bad. Yet at the same time being able to see places where they could’ve salvaged this season and instead decided to go the opposite way. It’s really hard to believe.
Thanks to the Olympics, we’ll get at least two less episodes of this mess. But Revice can’t come soon enough.
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I think I disagree with you on Saber not having direction. Saber’s direction is the massive all consuming myth arc that has had to get pruned down to fit fights and what not into the show. And has consumed so much of time that it hasn’t given anyone time to be anything more than there role in it. It could even work, albeit in a show with double the runtime of Saber so it doesn’t need to consume such a high percentage of the runtime.
Also I’m waiting for the explanation of why everyone can seem to punk Tassel in Wonderworld, where he should be able to use his massive and awesome powers.