I think that I can finally point to what exactly I’ve been disliking about this series during the second half: it’s Kida. In this episode I actually quite liked Mikado and Anri, and their actions are quite believable. Anri had a bit of a slump at the end of her own arc, but even that was great as a build-up. I loved how in this episode she came to terms with herself, and how she finally developed. It’s here where all that build-up pays off. At the same time, Mikado was also quite interesting. I can believe his angst at the end of the episode, because hey; he just found out that one of his best friend became involved with some silly struggle that he was the indirect initiator of. The guy needs a bit of time alone.
Kida though… I don’t get him. His angst to protect those dear to him, combined with the way that he suddenly started yelling to Anri when he finally was able to talk to her under two eyes… I’m not really interested in that to be honest. For me, the parts of this series that focus on his angst are by far my least favourite of the entire series.
And it’s a darn shame, because the rest of this series really is excellent. It still sucks that it’s gonna end in two episodes, but this episode was well written, and one of those episodes in which a ton of build-up comes together and pays off. That really was great to see, and I loved the subtlety that the creators put into the development of the relationship between Celty, Anri and Mikado.
Rating: ** (Excellent)
Yes,I think Kida’s whole angst thing really made the show a bit of a drag to watch sometimes.Seriously,that Kida in the rain thing in this episode made me laugh more than anything..
And Mikado’s decision to disband Dollars was really O.o How did he came up with that decision??I mean things went smoothly,and I thought he would probably utilize Dollars to the max but instead he went around wanting it to disappear..
If it’s any relief to you, the scene where Kida meets up with Anri was not in the original novel. Kida has never raised a hand against Anri… or even raised his voice for that matter.
A lot of novel fans are disappointed at the decision, but let’s hope they pull it off.
Hey, someone that completely understands Mikado. You can tell me, why does Mikado, quite seperate from the Dollars thing, decide to not anwer his cell when his best friend for years, who had gone missing for like a week, decides to call him? I though that was just a DEM for drama purposes.
I think that it’s this point at which Mikado realizes that things have gotten out of hand, when one of his best friends became involved. It’s not like he disbanded it for good, but I think it was also an attempt to distantiate himself from the dollars.
My guess is that he never even looked at the phone, and just assumed that it was the dollars who kept bugging him to ask what’s up.
Shizuo… D:
@psgels
Psgels .. in your own words .. you said that
“he just found out that one of his best friend became involved with some silly struggle that he was the indirect initiator of. The guy needs a bit of time alone.”
Ok .. so Mikado’s angst is fine cause he thinks Anri got involved because of him … but Kida’s angst isn’t .. how is that !!! .. let me explain.
Actually it should be the other way around … Kida is already burdened with the guilt of what happened to that girl in the past (the blue squares incident) … he blames himself not only for getting her involved but also for not being able to rush to her rescue when she needed him the most .. and due to all that the girl suffered a very painful ordeal and ended up hospitalized and almost paralyzed.
Now Kida sees Anri being involved .. it is extremely and totally natural for his guilt to kick in and his emotions to get stirred up considering what happened before .. he will do anything for it not to happen again … he has every right to act a little angesty .. not only that .. but using your own words .. Mikado was “indirect intiatior” of the struggle .. Kida on the other hand was directly involved in what happened with the blue sqaures and also with the current events unlike Mikado.
On the other hand .. Mikado !!! .. i don’t see any reason for him to act angsty compared to the reasons Kida has (Which are extremely valid and reasonable specially with Izaya Orihara manipulating his feelings and keeping his past guilt alive and well) .. heck he is still a kid after all .. that’s to much pressure for him.
I don’t see how can anyone get it the other way around !!?
We see him stare at the cellphone and get icture of the handle with “Kida Masaomi”, at which point Mikado rolls over.
Hmm, I guess it’s the way in which mikado’s angst is evolving; there’s progress in his character and he feels rather dynaimic, while I have much less sympathty for Kida, who feels to me like he still hasn’t gone anywhere.
That, and I feel like the way in which Kida reliefs his angst is far more annoying than Mikado’s.
I’m annoyed by both Kida and Mikado. They are so focused on their own problems, that they are ignoring everyone else who are getting into trouble.
Kida walked past the yellow gang while they were beating someone and did nothing! Mikado used the dollars successfully to save Anri, and still disbanded the dollars before he could save someone else
When will they realize that its not just about them anymore
Sh…Shizzy-chan.
Alkajsdlfkjaslj.
There. Don’t think I can say much more coherent than that, and any other good points about this episode have already been stated by all the rest of you.
I think I’ll go bury my head in the sand about Shizuo, now. ;___;
The Dollars are not out of Mikado’s hand, in fact they were never out of control to begin with. The problem is that Izaya wants Mikado to think that the Dollars are out of control, and Mikado is believing him despite the fact that there is no evidence to prove him right.
Also again with the conversations, pay attention to what Kida was saying when he was yelling at Anri. Kida actually has more of a reason to be angsty than Mikado.Consider this 1)Kida knows that Mikado is the leader of the Dollars
2)Kida has no control over the Yellow Scarves, who are blatantly ignoring his orders
3)Said Yellow Scarves want to start a gang war with the Dollars(even though the Dollars could actually destroy them if they tried).
4)Kida already has a bad experience with the Yellow Scarves and with gang wars
5)Kida only became the leader of the Yellow Scarves in order to protect Mikado and Anri, who don’t need his protection, and are actually involved in this.
6)If the Yellow Scarves find out about Kida’s relationship with the leader of the Dollars and the slashers they will turn on him and Kida knows this.
Compare this with Mikado
1)Mikado thinks the Dollars are out of control they aren’t and this episode only proved that.
2)Mikado knows that the Dollars members are being attacked and that the other Dollars members have formed a kind of task force to take care of it(they actually did say this episode that it has been working).
3)Mikado has been monitoring the Dollars so he should have been able to tell that Izaya was spewing bullshit.
4)Mikado shut down the Dollars chat room but for what purpose did it serve? It only took away the one thing that the Dollars members had used to fight against the Yellow Scarves attacks.
5)Unlike the Yellow Scarves the Dollars actually do listen to Mikado, and they generally don’t do bad things – except for the Yellow Scarves members that are also Dollars members.
6)He doesn’t know that Kida is the leader of the Yellow Scarves, or Anri’s own involvement in the situation.
In this case you could pretty much say that Mikado is the one running away from a non-existent problem, instead of doing his own investigation he’s just relying on the words of someone who has been warned against by his own best friend. He shuts down the Dollars website after its members basically proved themselves to be loyal and well intentioned. He then shuts himself away from the world and from his problems which if he paid attention more he would realize that there are actually less of that he thought was there before. Mikado is less justified in angsty behavior than Kida. Though this was just an inclusion in the anime the Mikado in the novel didn’t run away from his problems.
@chan
Well said .. i feel Mikado is turning into another Shinji Ikari (with the whole shutting himself out without trying to solve things) .. yeah .. i just watched “EVA – you can (not) advance” .. pretty awesome movie (production wise).. and Shinji still gets on my nerves .. but even he had more real reasons to panic and go angst than Mikado.
In Mikado’s defense, why the hell aren’t the Dollars out of control? what happened to the bad members of Dollars? The Dollars became famous because Izaya leaked the password, all kinds of thugs got in on it, the original members save Mikado all left and eventually the minority of new good members on Mikado’s suggestion tried to restore it’s name through community service. I mean, by episode 11 the good outweighted the bad because half of Tokyo had signed up by now but now it looks like there aren’t ANY bad guys in Dollars just to make it a black and white situation with the Yellow Scarves.
@Roger
Did we watch the same episode? or even the same series. The Dollars as a whole are not out of control it is just certain members, who in this case also belong to the Yellow Scarves that are out of control. The majority of the Dollars members are not out of control.
Yeah sure Izaya leaked the password but where are the thugs? Where are the actual members causing trouble? Remember there are also police officers in the Dollars as well, not just thugs. The problem with what you’re saying is that your taking into account the fact that the Dollars are not really a gang. What one member individually does not speak for the entire group. In fact Mikado is not really the leader of the Dollars or to be more specific their structure is such that there is no leader. Mikado of all people should know this (though this could be and example of adaptation decay as the novel Mikado was rather anvilicious in repeating this fact). If there is a problem with a member then he would have to deal with that member individually, not the group as a whole, such is the structure of the Dollars.
While there are many powerful members in the Dollars besides Izaya and the Yellow Scarves members who are also Dollars members, the Dollars don’t cause any trouble. Or rather they avoid causing trouble. Mikado has been lurking on their BBS so he should have been able to figure it out. Oh and by the way it was stated that the other founders had left, not the original members themselves. So they’re still there, but it still does speak in droves how cowardly Mikado is behaving.
I know, that’s my problem. I’m genuinely asking where these thugs are. They disappeared as soon as they were inconvenient to the story, the reason why Mikado is the sole leader of the Dollars without anyone helping him manage them has been retconned but he’s still in that position. His actions in this situation don’t make sense, imagine that.
And they may not be an actual gang, but they are targetted as an actual gang, that’s the whole problem. They are being targetted as a group for reasons they dunno, but you can bet there are plenty of members angry and plenty of members in Yellow Scarves reading the message boards. Closing the BBS isn’t an immeadiate solution to their problem, but longterm less people maybe hurt.
And it’s not adaptation decay, it’s adaptation expansion. By which I mean, none of this **** happened in the light novels. After Celty picks up Anri at the Yellow Scarves hide-out they go straight to Shinra, Shizuo gets gunned down the same day Kida visits Izaya and Kadota and the next episode is looking to be 50% filler as well. Kida doesn’t attend school to feel out Mikado, he never finds out anything about Anri until Mikado does, and so on.
@Roger
The thugs were never really there. Most of those cases were just people claiming to be Dollars members (like in the second episode) but were actually not Dollars members. There are many people who pretend to be Dollars members, but are actually not members at all. Also Mikado is not the leader of the Dollars just its founder- they’ve said that many a time before. If you actually are a member of a message board think of it like the relationship between the posters and the BBS administrator. People listen to what the administrator says but they are not obligated to follow. There wasn’t any retcon going on there.
The “gang war” was something mostly started by Izaya and Horada. Izaya wants people to think of the Dollars as a gang and has manipulated things to make it appear as such. But in reality they are not a gang. The Dollars also know that they are being targeted, and they have created an effective way to fight back without actually fighting, which Mikado stupidly took away from them. Not only that but it didn’t solve a single problem as the attacks continue even after Mikado shut down the site. Also if someone wanted to they could just create another Dollars website invite all the people who used to be members before and then continue on without Mikado, so in the long run its still pretty ineffectual.
Well whether or not it will become an adaptation decay will depend on how the story ends. Though in the case of Mikado there is borderline flanderization, as the Mikado in the novel is not someone who even thought of closing the website, or hung on Izaya’s every word, or shut himself off from the world when the going got tough. When Izaya told Mikado that the Dollars were out of control in the novel Mikado decided to do his own research to find out whether or not what Izaya said was true and it wasn’t. It was just individual members who were a problem not everyone on the BBS.
I dunno, I know that some of it was done by peole pretending to be Dollars, but I’m pretty sure Izaya outright said that he was the one that leaked the password, so some of these people actually were Dollars (in that they gained access to the website).
I don’t think those dozen guys that helped Mikado found the Dollars would punk out if their forum was as serene as always. If Mikado is being flanderized here for not noticing that what’s being said in the Dollars chats have nothing to do with violent acts now then why not back then.
Anyway, Mikado is not the leader, but he is the guy that makes these decisions. He’s the only one that can pull the plug and the longer the info on the Dollars chats is available to everyone including the ones that are Yellow scarves the better. And I dunno what you mean by this countermeasure. Simon pwned some people that wear yellow, doesn’t need a cellphone for that, the bunny suit guy still got the trash beaten out of him, his cellphone wouldn’t have helped him either.
And you say that someone else can start another site, so it’s ineffectual: The Dollars consist of hundreds of people, including students, old people and whatnot. At least this way you ain’t gettin beaten up just because you jokingly accepted an invite two years ago. If you accept in invite to the new Dollars with news of Dollars getting beaten up everyday on the tv you at least know what you are getting into. Not that I know how the YC actually knew that Takeguchi is a Dollars. But apparantly they did, so yeah.
masaomi is irresponsible for just playing around with the openly violent group in the series. and pardon my french, but i don’t see anything besides garden variety emofaggotry in what he’s been doing.
the writers are gonna have to pull a rabbit the size of anri-chan out of a hat to do something about kida.
that being said, i’m still hooked. can’t wait to see the ending.
All the trouble makers that have been shown so far that weren’t a part of the Yellow Scarves were not Dollars members. Remember the whole reason why Mikado thinks that the Dollars were out of control was because he was talking to Izaya who lied between his teeth in order to manipulate him. Remember Mikado was previously living living in a remote place so he had no idea at that time whether or not what Izaya said through the chat room was true or not. We don’t know who Izaya gave the password to but we do know that besides the members who are also Yellow Scarves are the ones causing trouble the Dollars are a pretty quiet.
In this case the members are upset with Mikado for basically running around in circles. It was shown as much in the previous episode. And yeah Mikado is being flanderized here for not noticing that what Izaya is saying does not match up with what he is witnessing. The Mikado in the novel didn’t listen to Izaya when he gave the warning, in fact when Izaya claimed the Dollars were out of control Mikado in the novel then sought to get rid of the members who were causing trouble. In the novel Mikado says over and over again that he feels responsible for the Dollars because he helped found it. Mikado also did promise to himself to that he would deal with the problems caused by Dollars a promise which he has actually kept in the original novel and broken in the anime.
Mikado is not the leader he doesn’t even make the decisions for the members. He can merely suggest that they do something, and the members are free to ignore him. In other words the Dollars members make their own decisions.
Lets get one thing straight here the Bunny suit guy never got beat up, and Simon didn’t beat up the Yellow Scarves members, they just deterred them. Also there are much more people in the Dollars that are not Yellow Scarves than there are are Yellow Scarves. It was even shown in this episode that even though they can read the message board things happen in such quick succession that they won’t be able to follow them. So it was still a pretty effective procedure that Mikado ruined when he decided to run away. Also someone still got beat up for being a Dollars member at the end so we can pretty much see that the BBS is not the problem. Remember there are Dollars members who are also police officers, so it was safer for him to keep the website up, as it could have lead to the arrest of the Yellow Scarves members who were behaving violently. This would have in turn served as a deterrent for the other members to follow Horada. As they would be targeted by the police.
Is it really ineffectual? You do realize how easy it for another another person to start up a website, or BBS don’t you? They can use the same mailing list from the previous Dollars website to invite the same members on to the new site. Also the people who were targeted were the ones who attended the meeting in episode 11 so you could say that it is essentially Mikado’s fault why these people’s identity as Dollars members were known by the Yellow Scarves, they said in the previous episode how they knew who the members were. It is Mikado’s fault why those people were able to be attacked in the first place, and now he takes away the one thing that could put a stop to it. So in the end Mikado is still in the wrong.
I like I said, I dunno. I suppose Izaya could have been and just made a whole bunch of accounts himself that claim they did the things people pretending to be Dollars that Mikado and co saw on the news but it just seems like pretty roundabout plot point that only serves to undermind the things Mikado did in his flashbacks in episode 11.
And what is this countermeasure, you say it was effective and it is the one thing that can stop the, what is this method then? Maybe I was mistaken about whether it was the bunnysuit guy but all the same, episode 22 ended to same as episode 20. Dollars guy being beat up alone and helpless.
And you are seriously gonna say that is Mikado fault for what happened six months ago, before the Yellow Scarves had any squarrel with the Dollars? Seriously?
So how can you say “the Dollars are out of control” when they have never shown that to be true? Izaya is a liar, and he was lying to Mikado who should have known better considering all the evidence was pointing to the fact that Izaya was just spewing BS.
You saw the method in this episode, their are more Dollars members than there are Yellow Scarves. Not only that but they can get around places easier than the Yellow Scarves because of they aren’t a gang. This episode ended the same because Mikado shut down the BBS which they were using to fight back. It ended the same it was because it was Mikado’s fault, he shut down the BBS but what difference did it make? The bunny suit guy never got beat up they stole his cell phone but he never got beat up because they were losing sight of Anri.
Yes it is his fault, considering that he was the one who called for the meeting six months ago, the very same meeting which made many of the Dollars members lose their anonymity. The Yellow Scarves members did say that they were attacking whoever attended the event, because they were Dollars members. How do you think they know that Shizou, and Simon are Dollars members?
I DIDN’T SAY THEY WERE OUT OF CONTROL! Look at the post! I was ASKING WHY they weren’t out of control, at least to some degree, as opposed to the unambigious Lawful Good orginisation they are now. Anyway, I’m not denying that Izaya is lying NOW (seriously read the post you reply too), I’m talking about episode 11.
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/9915/bunnysuitguy.jpg
I can’t say for sure whether his guy is the bunny suit guy, but he looks an awful lot like him. Did whatever countermeasure the Dollars thought up help him (mind you this is before Mikado shuts the site down)? Nope.
Anyway it’s Mikado fault for calling the meeting, Celty’s fault for not realizing she didn’t need a head a little sooner, all the Dollars fault for showing up despite people like Ryo joining because they thought it cool that they were colorless AND AS YOU SAY, Mikado is no leader, everybody makes damn decision and can take responsiblity for said decisions, it’s Anri’s fault for hiding her true identity to the last from her friends, it’s Mikado and Kida’s fault for using their orginisations to go after the Slasher or it’s Izayas fault for manipulating all the above into happening. Take your pick.
The Dollars aren’t out of control because they haven’t done anything. If someone doesn’t do anything then how can you say that they are out of control? I’ve stated such in my first post, if you missed it then you weren’t paying attention. You want to ask me why they aren’t out of control but I gonna throw that question back at you, what have the Dollars done that would be considered out of control?
That was in a remote location, where there wasn’t much people who could readily help him. Though you brought up a point that I don’t even think that you noticed. You can also make the argument that Horada wouldn’t have known that the guy was a part of the Dollars if the guy just played dumb.
It was Mikado who sprung the Dollars into action in this episode in order to save Anri, but he has never done anything when the members of the Dollars were attacked. He used them without a second thought and once their use was over he abandoned them again, and locked himself up in his room while refusing to contact others. That is pretty damn selfish.
Actually even if Kida didn’t join the Yellow Scarves they probably have been even more out of control than they are right now. Celty’s life might very well be connected to her head, so it was pretty damn understandable that she would be scared of what would happen if her head was destroyed which (FYI is probably what would have ended up happening to it), so Celty’s situation is not something that can be easily brushed aside. The Dollars at that point didn’t know what the heck was going on and they just thought of it as a meeting for the members of a BBS, I’ve seen it happen in real life before, they had no idea why they were really called there. Also what are the criteria you use to join a BBS? 1) Popularity 2)Number of members. Also as you had said before “The Dollars consist of hundreds of people, including students, old people and whatnot,” they didn’t expect to get beaten up because they are a part of a popular BBS. The Slasher incident was not Anri’s fault either as she had not taken control of Saika’s children then, or rather the attacks stopped because Anri decided to take action. Did Anri even slash the girl that started the whole incident? Also if you were stuck in Anri’s situation how would you explain to them what happened? How would you be so sure that they would understand? Think about that for a minute. The situation is not so simple as to just say that they had any responsibility in the matter.
Sorry to interrupt a very interesting debate, but I have a question about what was discussed. What did the novel,in this arc, not have that was in the anime.
“The Dollars aren’t out of control because they haven’t done anything. If someone doesn’t do anything then how can you say that they are out of control? I’ve stated such in my first post, if you missed it then you weren’t paying attention. You want to ask me why they aren’t out of control but I gonna throw that question back at you, what have the Dollars done that would be considered out of control?”
I’m gonna try this ONE, LAST TIME. I’m NOT (read the “NOT”) saying that they have done anything to be considered out of control, I have stated over and over against that they AREN’T out of control. Why are they keeping quiet. Was Kadota just completely bluffing his ass off in episode 20.
“That was in a remote location, where there wasn’t much people who could readily help him. Though you brought up a point that I don’t even think that you noticed. You can also make the argument that Horada wouldn’t have known that the guy was a part of the Dollars if the guy just played dumb.”
Like I said, I’m pretty sure that’s the bunny suit guy, so denying wouldn’t help (I
think Tajeguchi denied pretty fiercely that he hadn’t done anything, look where it brougt him. And you’re right, it was in a remote location. It was late, everyone had gone home already. You have no cause to feel guilt about him getting hurt, Mikado.
He didn’t lock himself in because Anri was safe, he did it because desite the co-operation they’ve shown, they still can’t safe everyone. For every Anri, you can expect at least one of her rescuers to be identified, and get trashed in her place. I can’t say he wasn’t being a coward, but don’t act like a foolproof method to save everyone was so readily available. Continuing on would be accepting that a lot of people would get hositalised on the way, and they don’t when it’ll end because the don’t know what quarrel the YC has with them.
Anyway, help me out here. Celty cannot be blamed because she wanted her head back, completely understandable, but Mikado doing this top help Celty get her head back OH NO, how dare he not think of the myriad possible consequences. You say that the Dollars didn’t know what the heck was going on, that it was just a meet. Yeah, the meet part is what got everyone in danger, not the whole Mika/Celty thing. We know how Mikado contacts the Dollars, you can easily see that he’s addressing everyone from the adressee address.
Mikado’s group gotten much larger and famous then anyone could have predicted, should he therefore take responsiblity for every single person that decides to come to a meet up? He’s not the only one that read the news/forums, I presume. You read about gang violence and maffia disputes attributed to your BBS and all that and you still come to meet up, then I think you made a choice.
I said that the Dollars members range from old to young. Which is true. Which is why I said hundreds, not the hundred something people at the meet up. There are likely a lot more that don’t want to show their faces but if you are right and every member can contact all members then even these people are at risk until the BBS is shut down. Now you go so far as to sign for yet another Dollars at this point, it’s safe to say that you knew the risk. Plenty of people on the original BBS don’t want this.
There’s the argument that nobody but Mikado knew how many members there are, which is fair, even Izaya was surprised. Though you’d have to admit that the alternate Dollars site idea is bunk then, they can’t address the other members, they don’t access to their numbers.
I know the Slasher incident isn’t Anri’s fault, but not mentioning it to the leader of Yellow Scarves knowing he is doing exactly because he thinks she had nothing to do with the Slasher doesn’t leave her blameless. I agree that it is a difficult situation to explain. Running in the other direction while leaving said leader of YC only more confused is quite another.
“Sorry to interrupt a very interesting debate, but I have a question about what was discussed. What did the novel,in this arc, not have that was in the anime.”
Takeguchi’s attack in 20, everything in 21 and everything in 22 up until Celty taking Anri to Shinra and Shizuo getting shot. Additionally, Walker and Erika’s narration in episode 20 gave a very different explanation as to how the Yellow Scarves came to be instead of the extended Kida flashback in the light novel.
That’s sad. Most of the scenes that disappointed me came from the non-novel part :-/
I dunno, I thought the canon bits in 20 were particularly weak too.