Category: Finished Series: Action

So this episode delivers Kida’s background. I have a few problems with it, but that doesn’t take away that this was a very interesting episode. This episode has been hinted at ever since we saw that mysterious girl in the hospital, and I’ve been dying to know what happened to her. This episode tells exactly what’s up with her, and why she’s so important to Kida.

As amazing as a middle school gang leader may be, he was quite naive in thinking that he could just do what he wanted, and therefore ended up paying the price when the blue squares he was at war with went too far. While I don’t quite get why she’s still in the hospital after all these years (couldn’t she have gotten herself a wheelchair or something), it gave quite a bit of insight into Kida’s character. The reason he went back to the yellow scarves turns out to be the need to protect, ironically from the threat of the Dollars.

This has me slightly worried about an annoying climax, though. I mean, it’s another one of those “talk to each other dammit!”-finales. It’s going to have to come down to the creators properly balancing everything out and make it believable why the three friends refuse to talk to each other. I’m especially looking at Anri, now that she knows about Kida. Please talk to someone about it, rather than gathering your army of zombies in response.

We also finally learn about the strange board-game that Izaya has been playing: as it turns out the three kinds of pieces stand for the dollars, yellow scarves and saikas. In this episode he grabs a bunch of cards to symbolize the rest of the cast. It was just a way of foreshadowing and symbolism, and as everything went into flames here, another possibility of the ending could be total chaos, rather than total annoyance.

I liked this episode quite a bit now that the story is coming together very nicely. However, this episode did leave me disappointed in one area: the way that it did not show how Kida actually managed to become the respected leader of an army of people older than him as a middle schooler. It just starts him off as the leader, but we never actually get to see what makes him such a good one; we never get to see why he was so special. While Mikado and Anri had very good and believable reasons for being special, I just fail to see that with Kida: how did his network grow? How did he pull that one off? To attract these kinds of people you’d expect him to have tons of money, but we never see any hints for that.
Rating: * (Good)

And… things actually make a lot more sense now. It’s convenient to say the least, but with the conclusion of the second arc, this episode revealed the true nature of Durarara: divided into three parts, with Mikado, Anri and Kida at the centre of each respective arc, with Celty meanwhile as the red thread that returns in all of them. Both Mikado, Anri and Kida turn out to be leaders of their own group: the dollars, the zombies and the yellow scarves: in their own ways they all gathered an immense and influential group of people despite being a bunch of teenagers. They did so individually, and just happened to become friends at high school without knowing this about each other.

The next and final arc will probably focus on the yellow scarves and Kida, where Izaya will play a very prominent role as the main villain. It’ll probably also involve much more of the other groups than the previous two arcs. Now the question remains what the rest of the cast is going to play in this.

In any case, the second arc for me was less impressive than the first arc. It’s a lot shorter, that’s one thing. But to me it feels less varied than the first season, with the eventual background of Anri being a bit cliched, and nowhere as interesting as the reasons Mikado provided for becoming the leader of the Dollars. It felt a lot less spontaneous, if that makes any sense.

But then again, that may have been the purpose: central to the first arc were the dollars, which are meant to symbolize freedom and individuality: everyone is free to do what he wishes, and it allows everyone to act on his own. The first half was whimsical because of that: it stressed how Ikebukuro was full of interesting people that you could run into. The second arc was completely different: Saika was more about enslavement: forcing your love upon others. The pacing became much more straightforward, and in a way more personal compared to the characters in the first arc who felt like they came and went.

Now, if this was just build-up, I’ll be happy enough. I’m a big fan of shows that completely change direction, but this shouldn’t be so extreme as a shark jump. I know the director, his finales are always very good and well built up despite a few lesser moments. Unfortunately, I do not know whether the novels allow this as well. The yellow scarves to me seem based around the flock-instinct: blindly following each other without putting emphasis on individuality. It’s in between the freedom of the Dollars and the brainlessness of Saika. I have no clue how the creators are going to weave that into the other hanging plot threads such as Celty’s head, but it had better be good. I’ve often had it that the final episodes of a series completely changed my opinion of it, so there’s still plenty of room for Durarara to be a classic if it makes well use of these final seven episodes.
Rating: * (Good)

After the previous episode, I remember noting how this series hasn’t exactly delivered yet in its second episode. It’s like it was missing something. But yeah, after this episode I realize that it was just building up. This episode was much more like it. It’s here where the creators really start playing with what they’ve built up.

My guess was that the previous episodes were mostly trying to shed the remaining Baccano-roots that had somewhat grown after the first half. While you can very much tell that the first half of Durarara comes from the same creators as Baccano, with the second half you really can’t.

The mystery in this series is definitely interesting: it’s the kind that keeps huge secrets about its lead characters: it only drops a few hints here and there, but Mikado’s involvement with the Dollars was a complete surprise. Just as how even though we’ve known Anri for sixteen episodes now, we never knew that she could pull a freaking sword out of her arm!

The twist that everyone in the city is getting turned into a bunch of zombies is perhaps a bit lame, but I guess that it is an interesting twist for the series’ setting: it’s previously been established that Ikebukuro is full of life, and here this old spirit comes and turns everyone into a bunch of obedient and lifeless zombies.

It’s all going to depend on how the rest of the series will use this, because this episode was pretty damn tense with the way that the red eyed people made their appearance, answering a ton of questions about the plot in the progress, and fully explaining the point of the previous episode, and why the guy in the trench-coat was featured in the first place.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

This episode definitely had some interesting twists, and quite a surprising lead character: that middle-aged guy in trench-coat that we’ve been seeing once in a while in the first half. At first I thought that the creators were creating some side-story here, but the twist in the middle of the episode was… unexpected to say the least.

Looking for some interesting article to write in order to win back his daughter, it seemed like a pretty straight-forward episode that delved into film-noir territory, but having him stabbed and brainwashed was an interesting twist that asks a few more questions about the identity of that strange slasher. Is it really like some kind of parasite or virus that hops from one person to the other? Could the body that attacked him be one of those teenaged girls or something? And how does that slasher have access to the Dollars chatbox?

I’d guess that in a few episodes the show will get to the point in which it can show off the pay-off of all the build-up of the previous episodes. Having excellent build-up is of course one thing, but actually using it is something different, and I’m interested to see what this series can do. It’s obviously been building up a lot during the past few episodes, so they’re not as good or interesting as some of the parts of the first half, but it can still go anywhere at this point.

Here’s one concern, though: it seems to me that the graphics and animation isn’t as good as it used to be. Especially in this episode, the animation wasn’t as solid as we’ve been used to from this series, the backgrounds were a bit bland, and the movement of the characters also felt a bit jerky. Let’s hope that Brains Base saved enough of its budget to also deliver a solid finale.
Rating: * (Good)

Hmm, it seems like the second half of this series is going to be a lot more focused: the pacing has become much more linear, and dropped most of the side-characters in order to focus on the main story-lines: Celty’s quest for her head, Mikado and the dollars, Kida and his past, and Anri and those strange slashers. In a way it’s a bit of a shame, but then again: the past two episodes have promised that all those separate storylines are going to intertwine like hell as the series goes on.

This episode was a bit of a calm before the storm; it was probably one of the quietest episodes of this series yet, but still it had one big development for Celty: openly showing her affections for Shinra, and later finding out that Shinra knew that his father was the one who stole her head and shipped it over to Japan. Shinra’s father is a bit of a weirdo, but he’s definitely an interesting addition to the cast. Also, something tells me that he’s not just wearing that mask for the sake of clean air. Perhaps he has some scars he wants to hide or something? In any case, I loved the way in which he revealed what he had done. Slipping such a 20-year old secret out on a whim. I love it when those series insert a bit of comedy with these big plot twists.

Interestingly enough, this episode provided a ton of background information: we now know what the slasher is, we know exactly what happened to Celty’s head, we know Izaya’s intentions and how he’s trying to bring Celty’s head back to life. Most of the questions that the series has asked have actually been answered now, with the biggest question marks that still remain are the background of Kida and Izaya, and what happened between the two of them. And considering that there are still ten episodes left, the creators have built up quite an interesting foundation to start playing with. Rather than revealing everything at the end, it’s definitely an interesting approach.
Rating: * (Good)