Recap: Kamen Rider Saber, Episode 44 – Open, the Last Page.
After a new page has been added to the picture book and Luna’s warning of the end of the world. Storious opens four tombs and WonderWorld suddenly begins encroaching on the human world once again. The Riders rush out.
Only some of the citizens can see the huge Books opening up across the city with the sections beginning to get fully engulfed. The guys are unable to cross into the Booked parts of the city as Touma can see and hear the cries for help.
Luna watches over the city from a rooftop, knowing that the world can be saved if she meets Touma. But she refuses to let Touma leave his friends. She instead begins to fade away.
Yuuri also starts to fade thanks to the decaying of WonderWorld. He assures them that he’ll be fine and that their main concern right now is Storious who has gained incomparable power.
Storious appears and says the world’s final chapter is upon them. He henshins to Kamen Rider Storious for the first time.
The others also henshin.
But Storious resurrects the Four Sages and makes them fight for him. The guys are no match for the powerful SoL leaders. Storious finishes up with a huge atomic bomb-like attack that levels a radius around the scene and forces the guys to dehenshin.
Storious marvels at the beauty of this destruction. He summons a new headquarters and says he looks forward to how his hero Touma will entertain him next.
Back up north, Yuuri says the WonderWorld decay will affect all their powers. They might feel hopeless now, but Kento says he still believes in Touma and the rest of them. The world’s hopes and dreams are still strong and can forge a bright future.
Touma says their stories are forged by the experiences and relationships they have with their loved ones. And they will not stand by and let those stories end like this here.
Rintaro visits the Shindai Sibs in the darkness as they are training. Without Rintaro saying anything, the siblings know their presence is needed for the final battle.
Tetsuo promises to sharpen all the blades before tomorrow’s dawn raid.
Suddenly, Sophia also begins to fade away. But Yuuri uses the Dark Sword to form a barrier that will protect her. He tries to hide that the pace of his fading away has quickened.
Meanwhile, Kento visits Ren and asks him to come back. Ren says he is following his own path, but he has also found a reason to stop the world from ending.
Back in Tokyo, Ogami-san and Sora are excited to have Mama Haruka Ogami back in Japan as they share a meal.
Up on the rooftop, Rintaro approaches Mei who says she will come with them all tomorrow even if she doesn’t know how to help. However, Rintaro wants her to stay behind this time.
“Because…?”
“There’s something I want to tell you once this battle is over.”
Rintaro takes Mei’s hands in his. Mei understands.
Kento finds Touma under their special tree and they sit together for a while before Luna suddenly appears.
Touma gets Kento to play along by coming up with a random story. A sullen Luna suddenly smiles and walks towards them as she transforms into an appropriate age to interact with her two grown man friends.
The three friends skip around before sitting and catching up. She says she wants to help save the world, but she doesn’t want Touma to leave his friends. Luna cries that she isn’t even a human being and Touma and Kento laugh in her face.
Touma says Luna will always be Luna. And he points out that they’re here together, yet Touma is not disappearing.
They reminisce about how it all began here with them reading stories together. But That Day happened and ruined everything.
Touma gets up and bows in apology to Luna, saying that if he kept his promise and gone to their spot that day, none of this would have happened. Luna says it’s not his fault. This happened because of what she is. She thanks him for finding her again.
Touma cries. Luna says the three of them should make a promise to always stay together. The three of them put their pinkies in to make it official.
Meanwhile, Storious makes his move across the world, saying that he needs Touma’s presence for the next step.
Luna feels the abnormalities and Touma promises they will stop Storious and bring everything back to normal.
The others are all soaking in their last night of peace (and possibly life) before assembling at dawn and marching toward the sun.
Episode Thoughts
That final walk toward the sun though. What an epic, badass moment! … If this were a different show.
To be honest, I actually didn’t even remember what happened last episode. It’s been three weeks! Feels longer than that.
As with many cool and exciting moments (on their own) this season, these dramatic and supposed-to-be-emotional final moments in this episode have no foundation or depth to make them truly impactful or warranted.
Whether it’s the North Gang’s underdeveloped selves or Storious and his too little, too late awesomeness, the season just hasn’t done a good job of truly building up to this moment.
This is supposed to be the climax, but there has been no build up worth getting excited about. The season’s disjointed story and hollow characters prevent any of this from being legitimately engaging.
If you only watched this episode without having seen the rest of the season, you might just think Wow, that was amazing. So emotional! Out of context, it might be pretty good.
It’s Episode 44. You’d think the previous 43 adequately led up to this moment. But they didn’t.
Perfect example is grown up Luna appearing this late in the series. It’s a relief to finally get Luna at an appropriate age to be hanging out with two grown men. But having a new actress so late again highlights the disconnect with what is supposed to be the most consequential relationship in the entire season.
But I just don’t care about it. The show has not done anything to really make this unbreakable, tight bond between three friends feel sincere or impactful. I will go out on a limb and say the show did a better job establishing Ren and Desast’s instant ramen bromance than they did this under the tree storybook trio.
These three are the catalyst to Armageddon? What?! No.
On the flip side, one of the few actually well-developed relationships is Rintaro-Mei. The teasing they’ve done with them all season has actually been one of the few, consistently written stories. All starting with their first side-adventure together. (Which was supposed to have launched the Rintaro-Zooous rivalry which, relatively speaking, was also reasonably well-developed. Kind of.)
So that moment with them on the rooftop is the kind of moment where you can go “Yes! That’s warranted! That’s valid!”
“There’s something I need to tell you once this battle is over.”
ORLY?! So I’m not going to expect anything because I just know they could absolutely pull a fast one and have Rintaro merely telling Mei something dumb like “I want to try donuts” or something. I’ll say it right now, if the show does what I hope they do with Rintaro/Mei, they just might redeem this entire season for me. LLOLL.
Nah, not really. But at least it can end on a high note, yes? Don’t be baiting us toward a potential love confession and then just end up having them in some random gag. Please do right by Rintaro and Mei. And do right by us fans who’ve stuck with the show all season! Lol
Anyway, this calm before the storm episode was pretty great out of context. But in context, just another hollow episode highlighting the massive waste of the potential this season once had.
Share:
Related posts ..
6 thoughts on “Recap: Kamen Rider Saber, Chapter 44: Open, the Last Page”
Share your thoughts!Cancel reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
I mean look on the bright side. There will at least be a good finale.
Well that’s the hope! lol
Gods, they introduce ‘adult’ Luna but don’t even have her played by the same actress as Sophia. Seems like if you want the copy/clone mess to fly it would have been an easy call. Oh well, the meandering messes are almost done.
I wondered about that too. But I was like, I don’t really care. The whole “Sophia is a pirated version” plot point doesn’t even make sense anyway, so it’s better to have a new actress anyway. But yeah, I can’t believe there’s still 4 episodes left.
I’m happy to see adult Luna. She’s beautiful!
I was so touched when all three friends were together again. Sora’s mom and Ryo’s wife is very good too. I still don’t like attitude towards life of Ren and Shindai Sibs, but still, it’s good they know what’s important. Now we can wait for THE END 🙂
Nice to see the Ogami Family.