[Switchblade]

If there's one thing Inoue loves almost as much as sociopathic antiheroes, it's an artist whose gift is tragically taken from them. This is a rarer case of the soul being lost, as opposed to a crippling injury, but you can really feel Inoue pouring everything into this episode's pathos. And it works, it totally works. Reina feels so much more fleshed out here then she has in all the episodes leading up to this, but at the same time I think that having her as a long-term threat made the story a lot more powerful then it would have been with just a MotW. It's a really strong story and it lands as a powerful farewell to Reina (and maybe Daisuke - I honestly don't remember if he shows up again after this).

I'm not sure I would have noticed it if I hadn't been rewatching these shows alongside you, but the fight between Daisuke and Reina pulls a lot of the same tricks that Faiz did in the fight between Takumi and Kaido's teacher. I should probably feel like it's derivative (lord knows that the third time he used this trick, in Movie War Core with the ballerina, did), but damn if it still doesn't work.

Great episode. Fish will almost certainly be pleased to see that it has both Hiyori AND Clock Up in it.