[FreshToku]

For me, I was probably more okay with Tachibana going along with Chairman-person because 1) like you said, this is kinda old hat for him, and 2) at the point of this story, I just saw the chairman as a device to deliver exposition and not even as an actual person so I basically saw Tachibana's actions as entirely him deciding on his own that Hajime is the enemy. This isn't really a defense and more like 'one problem canceled out another potentially worse one'.

This next stretch of episodes is what I remember most about Blade, how it really needles at the stuff about Hajime's nature as Joker and how Kenzaki does everything he can to help people no matter what others around him think. I like to believe it must be a fun feeling to have seen Missing Ace right in the middle of it all, because that movie might have set in the feeling of 'all the undead must be sealed eventually, including Joker', but once you're back to the show, you're like 'but do they!? i dont want that!'.