Make sure not to get any blood on the posters
Summary:
Gaijin smash
She said she was having trouble sleeping
Uber-pansy Ryuugamine Mikado finally defies his parents and ventures out of his home town to attend Raira Academy in East Ikebukuro. He’s greeted by the old elementary school friend who convinced him to come, Kida Masaomi, and Masaomi fills Mikado on all the stuff to look out for in Ikebukuro. There’s the appliance- and people-hurling Heiwajima Shizuo, the manipulative information broker Orihara Izaya, and the mysterious color gang, the Dollars. Along the way, Mikado also runs into Masaomi’s friends the Russian African-American exile Simon (Samia), the older Kadota Kyohei and Togusa Saburou, and Dengenki Bunko-loving Horo-abducting Karisawa Erika and Yumasaki Walker.
Of course the other famous part of Ikebukuro is its mysterious headless motorcycle rider. When a bunch of scumbags abduct “Miss Magenta” hoping to trade her (extra 20% if she’s still a teen!), they’re witnessed by Izaya and then chased down by The Black Rider. The Black Rider pops a wheelie and smashes one guy, withstands being tazed and beats up another guy on foot, then survives a decapitating crash to form a scythe out of the black smoke pouring from her neck and pseudo-cut the final scumbag through the belly.
Reaction:
This move did surprisingly little damage
You know you're high class when you hold your pinkie out while tazing someone
As incredible as the production values were, the first episode was rather dense, confusing, and boring. I’m not too worried since Baccano! was the same way at first and pulled everything together towards the end, but it did make the first episode difficult to slog through. With two exclamation marks, maybe Durarara!! will kick into gear a little faster. I was very interested in that spaced-out patient-esque girl who bumped into Mikado. Maybe this is just the Jojo in me talking, but wouldn’t it be crazy if that neck scar was a hint that she had the Black Rider’s head stitched on her body (and was a vampire)?
I figure that those boring chat sequences (money-savers!) will continue through the series, although I wasn’t sure who was chatting. Most of the stuff with Mikado was boring and the episode only picked up whenever the Black Rider was zipping around and kicking ass. This makes me wonder, though: does insurance cover property damage caused by the Black Rider? If she really rides around without lights on, wouldn’t it be really easy to accidentally side-swipe her or get run over in the crosswalk? Even paranormal powers are no match for class-action lawsuits!
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1971 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
Yaa know, I noticed the same thing. Smashing a head against a wall with the wheel of a motorcycle should’ve been much more gruesome. >_>
Made me wonder if the Black Rider needs to put more air in those tires. Shouldn’t she be able to hook her neck up to a tire and fill it up?
She should have some air to spare, what with those neko-style helmet scoops. I was all prepared for Ga-Rei class bike-fu when she started going for the guy… and was seriously disappointed. Sure she wiped them out, but it was very sloppy.
Seriously, that bike-horse barely injured the first guy and then got owned by the van.
That and when she used the scythe on the guy, his upper body didn’t fall off. >_>
Oh crap, new season? Time to update the nano!
Maybe not boring per se, but they definitely front-loaded the exposition yet made no effort to clear any confusion I had. Since it’s the go-to show this season, I guess I’ll hang around for a couple eps.
At least they named all the characters in the OP and grayed out all NPC-types in the animation. This is the kind of stuff that makes series “rewatchable” after you’ve seen the end and forgotten how dense the first episodes were before you knew WTH was going on.
Hmm, I wondered the same thing about neck scar girl. But that would be too obvious, no?
Yeah, it will probably end up being something boring like she was involved in a mass-suicide cult and failed.
Since when did suicide cults start chopping off their damn heads…? o_O
And the Particularist Eleven don’t count; they were badass cyborg mofos or sumthin’.
You know you’ve been exposed to too much animu when that first theory sounded perfectly reasonable and convincing… :blank:
I think the main boy chatter was supposed to be Mikado, the day before he left. Didn’t he say something about spending time online since he never left the house?
And I think that neck scar girl is definitely sporting someone else’s head (or body). It’s either that or she needs to choose a darker foundation.
Makeup for covering scars is really thick and cakey, though! I’ll wait to see if she time-stops anyone.
—> I was expecting his face to be totally deformed. Maybe they didn’t do it to lessen the violence. Too bad xD Haha!
Haha, I don’t know about that, because that taser guy got his face splattered against the wall.
Hmm . . . then maybe they’re more of lessening the gore than lessening the violence? The face of the second guy hadn’t been shown. Ah well, I dunno . .
Damn, them lolis are expensive~
I actually kinda liked that they kept us mostly in the dark, tbh. It’s no fun if you introduce a mystery and then give it all away in the first or second episode. I don’t feel like they hid too much either. It’s just enough to get me anxious for the next episode. Also, this is apparently going to be 24 episodes, so there’s plenty of room to tackle every question that’s been brought up by the first episode and then some. Hell, they’ve still gotta introduce a few more characters. We didn’t even really actually meet that vending machine throwing dude face to face or the meganekko who shows up in the OP.
That’s true. I don’t think you’re really supposed to catch every detail, and then they can show little flashbacks so that you’re like “oooooooh!” and it all comes together. It’s really just annoying for blogging purposes.
This isn’t sound much different than Baccano’s first ep which basically just talking with none of it making much sense. That got together steady enough as the series went by and became awesome, It’s likely Durr! willl do so too.
This first episode wasn’t so impressive… I hope the show get better one episode after another.
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