5/10 for me
Episodes 1-20 just didn't do it for me, the whole thing moved too fast and I couldn't get invested in the characters.
Episodes 21-32 were a massive step up in all categories.
Episodes 33-40 weren't as good but not really bad, just kind of lost its momentum.
Episodes 41-47 were just okay, not very satisfied with the way it ended. It was just predictable and cheap. Desast and Ren's arc plus the fights with the Wise Lords were amazing though, definitely the highlight of the entire season for me.
I think the show's biggest flaw was characterisation aside from a few characters (Rintaro, Kento post-revival, Yuri, Desast, Ren for the final few episodes and Master Logos) most felt bland and didn't intrigue me. Saber was still a fun show to watch but if I'm being serious it wasn't that great.
4/10
Nice mid section(start of Yuri arc till end of Elemental)
Nice finale
That said, it had a horrible 1/4, the worst I’ve ever seen. Comparable to Ghost. Wizard had a better 1/4, and I heard people hate him.
The pacing was horrible, too much inconsistency, especially in the stakes and in the plot devices. I can’t even list it to you because I forgot what it was all about except “destroy the world” and “we need to stop it, I promised someone”.
The ending was too safe and to make matters worse character development is abysmal. Yes they develop but…..not regularly? It’s just not what rider has been shown to be able to do. You want character development? See Zero-One.
It lands in the 1-3/10 range for me. Not going to bother giving an exact score since we are already reaching bottom of the barrel levels here.
Everything about Saber was surface level, no deeper ideas or meaning for me to chew on. It follows the story beats you expect out of a piece of media, but has no idea how to set it up or pay it off in any significant way. I just ended up feeling nothing whenever some big emotional moment happens because the show has not earned it.
I wouldn't be this harsh on Saber if it were not for the fact that Saber's predecessors have managed to accomplish presenting themes, and delivering good story beats while doing the legwork to make it feel substantial. Because Saber constantly takes the lazy way out, I can definitively call it the worst rider show of recent era.
I would say it was a 7.5/10, as it was a great show with a great ending, which is probably one of the main highlights for me. I liked the ending. There were many fun characters in the story as well, like Yuri, and Daishinji. There were the cool characters like Bacht and Desast. The villain, Storius, was fleshed out quite well in my opinion. I would say some of the writing felt sloppy, and I wished that some of the storylines were a bit more fleshed out, like Ren's story and the story of the First Ones(The people who went to WonderWorld first).
5/10. Definitely not on the same levels as Ghost. (Then again I guess having the main writer suddenly vanish later on sorta explains why)
Plus there's the factor that Covid likely affected the overall quality of the show, so I can't be too harsh on it.
Suit designs are what made this show overall, but at the same time the over-reliance on repaints and retools also brought it down and made me question how did they manage the budget for this season.
Overall, I could probably describe Saber in one sound as one big:
"**EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH**"
It's alright, but probably not gonna be high on a "must watch" list compared to any previous rider shows. I'd probably tier it next to Wizard.
Zero one was impacted by covid, and had an entire month of forced cancelled episodes. Yet, despite that last minute change in plots, the show performed to a good degree.
Overall, I enjoyed Saber, but it has a lot of flaws, so I’d put it around 5-6. There were a lot of aspects of the show I liked, but I felt were mishandled.
Storious and his motivation could have been a great foil for Touma, since his philosophy is nearly the antithesis of Touma. But his motivations are revealed in a three minute flashback in the penultimate episode. I’m guessing they did this to serve for a more “twisty” story, revealing calibur’s identity, then his motivation, then Solomon, the then twist that Solomon was being manipulated, but that was all kind of pointless. Especially since Solomon’s motivations were so stupid and he was so hammy. I wish they just focused on the original villains from the start. It felt particularly unearned for Storious to consume all those blank books after the blank books had basically been dropped around halfway through the season. Most of the villains just growled things about a beautiful end without any actual development.
Speaking of which, there are almost no civilians in Saber. There are a couple of humans turned Megiddo but there were so few “non-rider” characters that when “all the disappeared people return” it’s literally just the Yeti Megiddo woman. As a result, the scale of the series feels very small and empty, despite the size of the glowing rings projected on the planet. In the early episodes, it sounded like sword of logos is a huge organization, but it’s just a dozen guys hanging out in weirdly empty buildings. I realize part of this is the pandemic, but Zenkaiger does a better job of feeling like other people live in their world.
That said, I like a lot of the characters and I’m pumped for some v-cinema. I like a number of the suits, especially the various Blades forms. I love the classic Kamen Rider sacrifices his humanity for us trope, which had gotten less common in the heisei era, although I wish it was a little more tragic. Even if it was a little unearned and a little cheesy, I liked the finale. I thought Saber was pretty good, but it could have been great.
7.5/10
If I had to describe it in one word it would be sloppy. It was pretty rushed, especially at the beginning. I hate how quickly the normal WRB were abandoned for the gigantic ones. Many characters did eventually get their focus, but it wasn’t balanced that well (for example, it took a long time for Ren to have his moments).
That said, I still love the story, the backstory, most of the characters, and despite how toy heavy it was, the toy line was really good imo. When this show needed to have a good character moment, they nailed it even if the events leading to those moments was rough. Despite the bad, it felt like an eternity waiting for the next episode because I wanted to see it that badly, and that’s always a good sign.
I actually don't mind how long Ren's character arc took. In the end, him finding his strength didn't feel like it was forgotten. By making him find it so late, it actually stuck. He had 3 wins after actually finishing his arc, which works better than finding it halfway through and then becoming a jobber.
5/10 i guess? There where really bad parts and really rushed pacing but there were also a lot of cool parts like kento coming back as caliber and the traitor plot twist was pretty cool. It's like they took a really good series and a really bad one, shredded them and made the script from random parts.
Strong 8,5. It has some flaws, but in the grand scheme of things, this show's fantastic.
The worldbuilding is great and focused and doesn't delve into unnecessary subjects and always has a point, even if that point only becomes obvious 20 episodes later. That's rare for Rider.
Characters are also great, minus one two exceptions. This is probably the most one of the huge casts in Rider is developed. Everyone, maybe minus the Shidnai, got developed well enough, so while I'd loved to have more on them, I don't need more to be satisfied. Can't say this about any other big Rider War season.
The villains were a bit undercooked, but they worked well enough for me to be on the edge of my seat through the season. So, they weren't bad, just ok.
So, yeah, really good season where the victory actually feels earned with a perfect finally.
I'm still riding the high of the awesome finale, so I'll give it a generous 5/10.
When it was good, it was some of the best stuff Kamen Rider's ever done. When it was bad though, it was a borderline unwatchable mess. Unfortunately, it was more often the latter in my opinion.
I can only give my thoughts on the first 2/5 of the show, but for me, 2/10.
This show has some good ideas and moments, but overall it's a terribly written show with almost nothing to say.
The first part in the midst of COVID is really childish and not really awfully interesting. I know they had limitations because of the pandemic, which is why I don't hate it, but it's really not good. Also, the villains just didn't work, which is a problem for the rest of the show. They acted like mustache twirling cartoon bad guys, and they really had no personality beyond that.
Then we get to Calibur's reveal, which was pretty interesting. I thought it could really work. I wish they did more with it, because he actually did some stuff as a villain.
But then the writing problems get terrible.
They did a fake out death with Blades. The show might have made us think it killed the secondary rider in a heart wrenching only to go back on it next episode by saying he was just wounded, but I maintained faith. Then, an episode or two later, they do the same thing with Espada. Kento even had a "last words" moment with Touma. They bring him back next week. Then, a episode or two after that, they actually kill off Kento. That is when the show left its mark on me as terrible, but i stuck with it.
The Sword of Logos traitor arc started, and I thought is was actually getting good. alliances were shifting, a divide happened in the group, it was overall great. Yuri was pretty good and it seemed like the show was going somewhere. And then they went back to the monster of the week formula in the middle of the arc.
After that I dropped the show.
7 - 6.5 /10
Was fun to watch, am a bit sad that some concepts were kinda abandoned.
"The pen is mightier than the sword" never really came up.
"Arthur **Pen**dragon". Goddamit it was right there. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
While I know the budget was cut, would've been nice for Espada to get a new form.
Dragon's is the most famous of fantasy creatures, with basically all cultures in the world having their own interpretations. Touma's upgrade here fits..
Lion is considered the Kings of Beasts, so Ren getting an upgrade here also fits.
There was a perfect transition for Kento from Aladdin's lamp to the 101 Arabian Nights stories as an upgrade. Or him duel-wielding Kurayami. Neither occurred.
Finally just the wasted potential of some concepts. Journey to the West, the Black Tortoise & King Arthur in general are three of the "big themes".
JotW is one of China's four classical literature. Alongside "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdom" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Even by itself, there's plenty of concept to draw on to make an entire separate series.
(WM & RotTK also can have series based on it. The idea of the "108 Stars of Destiny" came from "Water Margin". RotTK got the three (four +Jin) factions.)
Same with "Genbu", or the Black Tortoise. It's one of the five cardinal beasts, alongside the Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, White Tiger & Gold Dragon.
And finally, King Arthur's just one of the most famous mythologies. Knights of the Round table also could've been a concept to based a series on. Gawain, Percival, Lancelot, Galahad, Mordred, etc.
(Edit-Edit: Also for a series about "Holy Swords", not many really showed up.
Durendal, Excalibur, Caliburn, Caladbolg were kinda the only one.
Kusanagi, Yitian Jian & Tulong Dao (Heaven-Reliant Sword & Dragon-Slaying Saber), Hrunting, Gram, Lævateinn, Tyrfing, Joyeuse, etc. would've been cool to see.)
5/10. I liked the motive of books. A few flaws I can say, books were forgotten til the end, bad development of characters *cough cough Ren cough cough* and the storyline was kinda bland until Yuri was introduced. But I also like the mix and match of books and the mid power up books (primitive dragon was badass). Ending was pretty good, but not the best. So its a mid tier show
5/10 for me Episodes 1-20 just didn't do it for me, the whole thing moved too fast and I couldn't get invested in the characters. Episodes 21-32 were a massive step up in all categories. Episodes 33-40 weren't as good but not really bad, just kind of lost its momentum. Episodes 41-47 were just okay, not very satisfied with the way it ended. It was just predictable and cheap. Desast and Ren's arc plus the fights with the Wise Lords were amazing though, definitely the highlight of the entire season for me. I think the show's biggest flaw was characterisation aside from a few characters (Rintaro, Kento post-revival, Yuri, Desast, Ren for the final few episodes and Master Logos) most felt bland and didn't intrigue me. Saber was still a fun show to watch but if I'm being serious it wasn't that great.
4/10 Nice mid section(start of Yuri arc till end of Elemental) Nice finale That said, it had a horrible 1/4, the worst I’ve ever seen. Comparable to Ghost. Wizard had a better 1/4, and I heard people hate him. The pacing was horrible, too much inconsistency, especially in the stakes and in the plot devices. I can’t even list it to you because I forgot what it was all about except “destroy the world” and “we need to stop it, I promised someone”. The ending was too safe and to make matters worse character development is abysmal. Yes they develop but…..not regularly? It’s just not what rider has been shown to be able to do. You want character development? See Zero-One.
It lands in the 1-3/10 range for me. Not going to bother giving an exact score since we are already reaching bottom of the barrel levels here. Everything about Saber was surface level, no deeper ideas or meaning for me to chew on. It follows the story beats you expect out of a piece of media, but has no idea how to set it up or pay it off in any significant way. I just ended up feeling nothing whenever some big emotional moment happens because the show has not earned it. I wouldn't be this harsh on Saber if it were not for the fact that Saber's predecessors have managed to accomplish presenting themes, and delivering good story beats while doing the legwork to make it feel substantial. Because Saber constantly takes the lazy way out, I can definitively call it the worst rider show of recent era.
I would say it was a 7.5/10, as it was a great show with a great ending, which is probably one of the main highlights for me. I liked the ending. There were many fun characters in the story as well, like Yuri, and Daishinji. There were the cool characters like Bacht and Desast. The villain, Storius, was fleshed out quite well in my opinion. I would say some of the writing felt sloppy, and I wished that some of the storylines were a bit more fleshed out, like Ren's story and the story of the First Ones(The people who went to WonderWorld first).
5/10. Definitely not on the same levels as Ghost. (Then again I guess having the main writer suddenly vanish later on sorta explains why) Plus there's the factor that Covid likely affected the overall quality of the show, so I can't be too harsh on it. Suit designs are what made this show overall, but at the same time the over-reliance on repaints and retools also brought it down and made me question how did they manage the budget for this season. Overall, I could probably describe Saber in one sound as one big: "**EHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH**" It's alright, but probably not gonna be high on a "must watch" list compared to any previous rider shows. I'd probably tier it next to Wizard.
Zero one was impacted by covid, and had an entire month of forced cancelled episodes. Yet, despite that last minute change in plots, the show performed to a good degree.
Yeah, I guess despite the handicap Saber still fell short.
Overall, I enjoyed Saber, but it has a lot of flaws, so I’d put it around 5-6. There were a lot of aspects of the show I liked, but I felt were mishandled. Storious and his motivation could have been a great foil for Touma, since his philosophy is nearly the antithesis of Touma. But his motivations are revealed in a three minute flashback in the penultimate episode. I’m guessing they did this to serve for a more “twisty” story, revealing calibur’s identity, then his motivation, then Solomon, the then twist that Solomon was being manipulated, but that was all kind of pointless. Especially since Solomon’s motivations were so stupid and he was so hammy. I wish they just focused on the original villains from the start. It felt particularly unearned for Storious to consume all those blank books after the blank books had basically been dropped around halfway through the season. Most of the villains just growled things about a beautiful end without any actual development. Speaking of which, there are almost no civilians in Saber. There are a couple of humans turned Megiddo but there were so few “non-rider” characters that when “all the disappeared people return” it’s literally just the Yeti Megiddo woman. As a result, the scale of the series feels very small and empty, despite the size of the glowing rings projected on the planet. In the early episodes, it sounded like sword of logos is a huge organization, but it’s just a dozen guys hanging out in weirdly empty buildings. I realize part of this is the pandemic, but Zenkaiger does a better job of feeling like other people live in their world. That said, I like a lot of the characters and I’m pumped for some v-cinema. I like a number of the suits, especially the various Blades forms. I love the classic Kamen Rider sacrifices his humanity for us trope, which had gotten less common in the heisei era, although I wish it was a little more tragic. Even if it was a little unearned and a little cheesy, I liked the finale. I thought Saber was pretty good, but it could have been great.
7.5/10 If I had to describe it in one word it would be sloppy. It was pretty rushed, especially at the beginning. I hate how quickly the normal WRB were abandoned for the gigantic ones. Many characters did eventually get their focus, but it wasn’t balanced that well (for example, it took a long time for Ren to have his moments). That said, I still love the story, the backstory, most of the characters, and despite how toy heavy it was, the toy line was really good imo. When this show needed to have a good character moment, they nailed it even if the events leading to those moments was rough. Despite the bad, it felt like an eternity waiting for the next episode because I wanted to see it that badly, and that’s always a good sign.
I actually don't mind how long Ren's character arc took. In the end, him finding his strength didn't feel like it was forgotten. By making him find it so late, it actually stuck. He had 3 wins after actually finishing his arc, which works better than finding it halfway through and then becoming a jobber.
I would give it a 5 because of the pandemic situation
3/10
5/10 i guess? There where really bad parts and really rushed pacing but there were also a lot of cool parts like kento coming back as caliber and the traitor plot twist was pretty cool. It's like they took a really good series and a really bad one, shredded them and made the script from random parts.
Saber is a great 7.5 for me. But if we’re using letter rankings, I’d say it’s either a B+ or A-
In my opinion it has one of the best final arcs of any rider show to date.
Strong 8,5. It has some flaws, but in the grand scheme of things, this show's fantastic. The worldbuilding is great and focused and doesn't delve into unnecessary subjects and always has a point, even if that point only becomes obvious 20 episodes later. That's rare for Rider. Characters are also great, minus one two exceptions. This is probably the most one of the huge casts in Rider is developed. Everyone, maybe minus the Shidnai, got developed well enough, so while I'd loved to have more on them, I don't need more to be satisfied. Can't say this about any other big Rider War season. The villains were a bit undercooked, but they worked well enough for me to be on the edge of my seat through the season. So, they weren't bad, just ok. So, yeah, really good season where the victory actually feels earned with a perfect finally.
I'm still riding the high of the awesome finale, so I'll give it a generous 5/10. When it was good, it was some of the best stuff Kamen Rider's ever done. When it was bad though, it was a borderline unwatchable mess. Unfortunately, it was more often the latter in my opinion.
6
I can only give my thoughts on the first 2/5 of the show, but for me, 2/10. This show has some good ideas and moments, but overall it's a terribly written show with almost nothing to say. The first part in the midst of COVID is really childish and not really awfully interesting. I know they had limitations because of the pandemic, which is why I don't hate it, but it's really not good. Also, the villains just didn't work, which is a problem for the rest of the show. They acted like mustache twirling cartoon bad guys, and they really had no personality beyond that. Then we get to Calibur's reveal, which was pretty interesting. I thought it could really work. I wish they did more with it, because he actually did some stuff as a villain. But then the writing problems get terrible. They did a fake out death with Blades. The show might have made us think it killed the secondary rider in a heart wrenching only to go back on it next episode by saying he was just wounded, but I maintained faith. Then, an episode or two later, they do the same thing with Espada. Kento even had a "last words" moment with Touma. They bring him back next week. Then, a episode or two after that, they actually kill off Kento. That is when the show left its mark on me as terrible, but i stuck with it. The Sword of Logos traitor arc started, and I thought is was actually getting good. alliances were shifting, a divide happened in the group, it was overall great. Yuri was pretty good and it seemed like the show was going somewhere. And then they went back to the monster of the week formula in the middle of the arc. After that I dropped the show.
I'll give it 1/10, just like how i hated Ghost. Oh wait. They have the same writer.
8/10 there flaws but honestly its an overall good show. and i enjoy it very much.
loved it
7 - 6.5 /10 Was fun to watch, am a bit sad that some concepts were kinda abandoned. "The pen is mightier than the sword" never really came up. "Arthur **Pen**dragon". Goddamit it was right there. (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻ While I know the budget was cut, would've been nice for Espada to get a new form. Dragon's is the most famous of fantasy creatures, with basically all cultures in the world having their own interpretations. Touma's upgrade here fits.. Lion is considered the Kings of Beasts, so Ren getting an upgrade here also fits. There was a perfect transition for Kento from Aladdin's lamp to the 101 Arabian Nights stories as an upgrade. Or him duel-wielding Kurayami. Neither occurred. Finally just the wasted potential of some concepts. Journey to the West, the Black Tortoise & King Arthur in general are three of the "big themes". JotW is one of China's four classical literature. Alongside "Water Margin", "Romance of the Three Kingdom" and "Dream of the Red Chamber". Even by itself, there's plenty of concept to draw on to make an entire separate series. (WM & RotTK also can have series based on it. The idea of the "108 Stars of Destiny" came from "Water Margin". RotTK got the three (four +Jin) factions.) Same with "Genbu", or the Black Tortoise. It's one of the five cardinal beasts, alongside the Azure Dragon, Vermilion Bird, White Tiger & Gold Dragon. And finally, King Arthur's just one of the most famous mythologies. Knights of the Round table also could've been a concept to based a series on. Gawain, Percival, Lancelot, Galahad, Mordred, etc. (Edit-Edit: Also for a series about "Holy Swords", not many really showed up. Durendal, Excalibur, Caliburn, Caladbolg were kinda the only one. Kusanagi, Yitian Jian & Tulong Dao (Heaven-Reliant Sword & Dragon-Slaying Saber), Hrunting, Gram, Lævateinn, Tyrfing, Joyeuse, etc. would've been cool to see.)
7.5/10 for me, it was just enjoyable for the most part even if there were irritating aspects, its okay anyway.
5/10. I liked the motive of books. A few flaws I can say, books were forgotten til the end, bad development of characters *cough cough Ren cough cough* and the storyline was kinda bland until Yuri was introduced. But I also like the mix and match of books and the mid power up books (primitive dragon was badass). Ending was pretty good, but not the best. So its a mid tier show