[Switchblade]

This is one of those arcs where I feel like the viewers ability to enjoy it is in direct correlation with their Akiko tolerance level. I probably did not like this episode very much when it first aired as I was extremely Akiko intolerant at the time. I'm a lot more fond of the character now and it's still pushing my upper limits of Akiko shenanigans. The stuff going on around her, though, is pretty good; I'd forgotten about Kirihiko's confrontation with Shotaro and how incredibly goofy it played out. I don't know why I was ever under the impression that Kirihiko was in any way menacing as a character.

Switchblade-a Memories? (oh, I literally just got the "Die-a" pun; that took longer than it should have)

We got our first promo for the Decade/W movie. Still just reused footage from the first episode (do we see flashbacks of Sokichi getting shot more than we see flashbacks of Airi and Sakurai stargazing? I don't know and I'm not going to count, but maybe!), but we got the first "Begins Night" name drop. I started watching the show with the TV-Nihon subs back in the day before switching about halfway through the series to W-Time (later Over-Time) because they came out much faster. I mention this, because W-Time translated the movie name to fit the dialogue while TVN always kept it as "Begins Night," which in true '00s-era TV-Nihon fashion is technically English but not how a native speaker would ever use it.

I'm using my old W-Time subs for this rewatch and possibly the biggest thrill of the whole episode was that this is the first one that featured the classic "Kono bangumi wa goran no suponsaa no teikyou de okurishimasu!" tag after the credits. Between the new shows not doing that anymore and all the older shows having updated subs with DVD or Blu-Ray encodes, it's been a long time since I've heard that and it was a fun little jolt of nostalgia to experience it again.