Come back, I was just noticing that one of your buttons was coming off!
The last 8 episodes of this show were as stupid as Izaya’s board game.
Story
I actually like the overarching storyline of Durarara!! with how Izaya is trying to stir up trouble and mess around with Selty’s head. The season focused on this main story and the unique characters in Ikebukuro at first, and the subtle mystery made for a peppy and suspenseful story. Unfortunately, the final third tried to come to a logical pause by wrapping up the gang battle between Mikado, Anri, and Masaomi’s forces, and the story fell flat on its face. The three youngsters are simply not very interesting, and their “conflict” just boils down to a handful of old gang members beating up random people. Besides, Masaomi and Mikado don’t even have any control over their groups, so the whole misunderstanding between the three is ridiculous. When combined with the inevitable info dumps, the final third of the series left a terrible taste in my mouth.
Characters
Whenever you have such a large cast, there are bound to be fun characters and crappy characters. Unfortunately, a lot of the really crappy characters got way too much time at the end of this season. Masaomi is an annoying, fake-chirpy guy who is completely useless in times of need. Whenever the going gets heavy, he either freezes up or faints. He is nothing more than a smoke screen for Kyohei to move behind. But as bad as Masaomi is, he is nothing compared to Mikado. I hate Mikado even more than I hated Jacuzzi Splot in Baccano! I just know that sad-sack n00b is going to return late next season as a sinister terminator that is completely out of line with his pathetic character and it enrages me. As for Anri, she’s pretty boring, but I didn’t mind her as much because she tends to get in unintentionally funny situations.
Most of the more powerful characters are more interesting, if only because they can actually get things done. Unlike the kids who just run around flailing, the adults move the plot along with more than just emo. With that said, I have to give Simon a big thumbs down for stealing so much screentime for about 10 seconds of meaningless action at the end of the series. We get it, the random black Russian guy in town is really powerful. Gaijin smash. Please just move on.
Tilt
I liked the music and the voice acting. Productions were generally good, and I liked the character designs too. Still, nothing really wowed me.
Verdict
Kabitzin's Rating: 3/5
The show started out well, but towards the end it was a chore to make it through each episode. Each conflict just felt so stupid, and we went from subtle hinting to beating the viewers over the head with information. The gang conflict was not at all compelling, so while I would watch another season of Durarara!! I would want to see Mikado’s screentime cut drastically first.
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 }
I agree with you on the Mikado hate, I dislike him as well! he is quite boring…Kida was alright too, but kind the annoying character. And Simon yes he was a big waste of screen time I always waiting to see him do something, sadly not until the last episode does finally does something.
Would love to see whats next for this series, maybe some ova or movie? or another series would be great minus Mikado! >.>
Yeah, Mikado got to just run around aimlessly and pout in his big quilt. At least Kida was trying to find Anri for some passive aggressive harassment.
I really could have done without stupid Simon passing out flyers scenes in every single episode. What was the point of that? He’s the biggest dude in the show, of course he’s powerful!
mikado is much better in the latter novels(specifically vol.6)
he
Hmm…nice review!
I was planning on seeing this anime…
I’ve heard that its very similar to Baccano (Which I havent seen)
I liked Baccano a lot better. If you can put up with the three Anrigos, Durarara is ok. Just be prepared for it to start awesome and go downhill from there.
I have to ask. Who gets things done? Shizuo? He broke of the roof’s car. Celty? She chased down Horoda to lead Shizuo into doing said, wildly important window breaking. Kinnosuke admittedly does get things done, wasitnot for the fact that you can’t actually call him a character, that would be too much credit. Shinra? Hasn’t done anything since… Since… I suppose when you really come down to it he did some surgery on Mika and Shizuo and that’s it. For the whole series.
Kadota, now let me get this straight. He’s there before Kida arrives at the YC HC, he watches him confront his past, doesn’t do anything, fair enough. He watches him get jumped by 4 guys, doesn’t do anything, might’ve been a good time to get started since he didn’t actually know anyone else is coming. But okay, Kida seems to be doing good. Then Horoda pulls out a gun. He doesn’t do anything. Kida gets slammed on the head with yet another steel object and goes down, doesn’t do anything, Horoda puts the gun to Kida’s head AND nothing. If Anri hadn’t shown up he’d be dead.
So far you can conclude that whatever delusions Kida has that Kadota considers him a friend are just that, but otherwise okay he uses him as a smokescreen. But then, after the gun is out of the way, the two supernaturally powerful ladies show up and it’s clear that it’s now 100% safe to reveal himself, he does. But does he take centerstage finally? No, rather he feeds Kida info about Horoda, which makes him give him the swing of his life for him, Kida then goes down for reals, Kadota smiling at his situation, demands Mikado’s attention away from his friends so he can show how the most cowardly plan ever had paid off and meanwhile RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM, Horoda walks a circle around him and leaves the building. At which point Kadota decides he’s been a bigger douche then Izaya and decides to make a few belated efforts to save Kida’s life. Better late then never.
So who gets things done? Izaya, Horoda, maybe Anri, Kida DISTANT fourth. At least Mikado and Kida are emo about it, rather then just comically useless like everyone else.
Well Shizuo and Selty harassed Horada until Horada snapped and started driving so recklessly that even the lame police force noticed it. You also have to weigh each character’s accomplishments against his/her job and/or screentime.
Shinra is just a doctor, so I’d say he accomplished his job pretty well. Kinnosuke is a traffic cop and arrested a reckless driver. Namie is a jealous little brother-lover, and she got Mikado in a heap of trouble. Selty is a courier, and all her deliveries were very timely (e.g. Mikado). Shizuo is the loose-cannon deus ex machina guy, and he generally comes in and mops up any zombies/gangsters that need whipping. And who knows if Kyohei dislikes Masaomi and so was hoping to step in and bust up Horada after Masaomi got roughed up some more. I personally can’t blame him if that’s the case.
However, Masaomi and Mikado are supposedly leaders of their gang and yet they do no leading whatsoever. No one listens to them, and they are more or less powerless throughout the entire season. However, they still get almost all the screentime.
Looking at the series as a whole I have to agree with you. Celty does her job as courier well, always gets character from plot point A to plot point B in time. As THE main character of the series, she’s just tad underwhelming in my mind. Shizuo did his job in the second story arc not in the third. He didn’t contribute to the beat down of any gangsters. Just the roof of a car, again for a main character I’d expect more.
And again, no, Kadota wasn’t going to wait until Masaomi was roughened up, he was going to wait until he was shot dead. And after waiting until deus ex machina arrivals made it save for him he didn’t step in to bust up Horoda, he stepped into to provoke the boy that was bleeding to death to bust up Horoda. God forbid your hands get dirty. You can’t blame him for THAT?
But the fact is that he doesn’t dislike Masaomi, after all this he made it perfectly clear he intends to save Kida. He’s just one giant gaping plot hole for drama, that stares you in the face with a big goofy smile.
So no, he doesn’t do his job in the series, as he set up to a generally cool nice guy with considerably screentime.
Mikado and Masaomi hardly got all the screentime this season. Kida did barely more then tag along with Mikado’s screentime until these last 6 episodes of a 24 episode series. Mikado doesn’t get any for most of the second half either until the last 4 episode stretch, and he did plenty with his screentime in the first half climax.
Coming from the viewpoint of looking at them as the gangleaders of the Yellow Scarves and Dollars, yes, they disappointed in the end (this shouldn’t make or break a 24 episode series by any stretch of imagination but whatever) but that was never their role. In the novels, Izaya’s plan for the threeway war fell flat on his face in the design stages and Kida’s Yellow Scarves were already taken over by Blue Square within two days of his return before he could so much as shout an order. Dollars barely ever got anything to retaliate against, so mikado was never suppose to do anything. Final arc made poor use of almost everybody, though Celty is still good at bringing people from A to B.
But what a freaking awesome loose canonon deuz ex machina zombie-/gangster-whipping guy!
A really enjoyable series and really looking fwd/ hoping to see a second. Meanwhile sounds like I must check out Baccanno…
You know boring and frustrating as watching Mikado and his kicked puppy face was, his actions made a lot of sense considering he’s just a random teenager with no special skills. Of course for that very reason the fact he got so much screentime was very bad decision!
Still I really enjoyed Drrr!! and found most of the characters fun to watch.
I don’t blame Mikado just for sucking; I blame him for stealing screentime! Plus his scenes of posting a new thread topic are blown so out of proportion like he’s making some super move that it just makes me facepalm.
Should have had some awesome Death Note-esq effects during those scenes like they did during Mikado’s inital reveal as the Dollars Leader (woo mouse sparks!)……would have made Mikado’s screentime hogging slightly more fun.
I’ll take this phone number… and I’ll DIAL IT!!!!
Only reason I really wanted to watch was because Celty is just so danged unique. I’m still po’ed at the Celty x Shinra coupling though. Anri could have come out better. The Psycho-ラーブラーブ couple was fun to watch along with Seiji’s wincestuous thoughts onee-san.
While I also wasn’t impressed with the ending focusing on the 3 beans getting back into their pod of feel good friendlies, I really wanted to see Izaya’s crazy quest of control pull through to see Celty’s head wake up and blast him away with some piercing eyebeams for disturbing her jar nap. But we had to settle with Simon getting an easy sucker punch to showcase his mad super ex Russian commando military training. All in all I do want to see another season that will hopefully get Celty back on track with her head search while avoiding motor cop and his cronies, and I do wanna see some kind of good improvement of Anri’s emotional state.
Yeah, I definitely think the franchise has a chance to be really great, and I would like to see what happens with Selty’s head. Just for god’s sake no more Mikado!
Speaking of Anri, I love how the animators save money by just drawing a big boob in the foreground whenever they want to show that Anri is in the scene.
No kidding. Big blue boob shown from the side. Viewers: “Oh look! Its Anri!!!” It could have been worse though. They could have all scenes with Anri in it look like that and all we’d hear from her is dialogue and maybe a couple of jiggles while talking. HAH!
the novels were much better…
on a side note, anni_fiesta fully translated vol.4 now and its great (kasukaXruri)
Agreed. The novels are much better and more in-depth. I hope there’s a 2nd season. This series really needs it. With Volume 8 out, it looks to be a full-blown war in Ikebukoro as Izaya wanted, plus Izaya seems vengeful on the Raira kids.
I did a look at Durarara!! and its emphasis on chat room psychology. You can take a look here.
This review is a total flop. You state that there are things that you enjoy about the show, but then fail to expand on that. Instead you only speak and expand on about the negative aspects.
Now that would be fine if you only mentioned bad things about the show, but why mention the good if you have no intention delving in deeper?
Hi Durarara’s fans, well I have heard that the season 2 is being considered to be made if 10000 signs of this petition is reached …. So I’m hoping that you will support by signing in this petition if you are aiming for Durarara seasons 2 … Please sign *bow* : http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/durarara-season-2/