[Switchblade]

Well, this episode definitely solved a mystery for me. It turns out I'd confused the introduction of Tatsulot with the introduction of the [REDACTED] Sword. I knew that something had come bursting out of a wall inside Castle Doran and I was sure that it was Tatsulot, which is why I was a little confused (but not even a bit surprised) when he just showed up out of nowhere with barely any explanation. Glad to see that my poor, faded memories of a show I haven't seen in almost 13 years aren't completely fabricating plot points.

In other areas, I'm pretty firmly convinced at this point that Shima is just a terrible boss. Not only am I still fairly positive that the Wonderful Blue Sky Organization is literally just him, Megumi, and Nago (plus Kengo 2.0 now, I guess), but at this point I'm also certain that his selection process for IXA is to find the most unstable man around and give it to him. First it was some rando that followed Yuri home, then the creep that had been stalking Yuri, then a barely held together lawful stupid bounty hunter, and now it's the 20-year-old with anger management problems who keeps assaulting the current IXA. I think I have a very good grasp now on why pretty much every Fangire that the WBSO went after in 1986 is still alive and well in 2008.