| 29 June 2010
Overview
I was actually looking forward to the Winter 2009 season before it started. Omamori Himari, Ookamikakushi, and Dance in the Vampire Bund all looked like likely targets for watching, and there was Halo Legends and the anime adaptation of the game adaptation of Dante's Inferno to look forward to as well. All in all, things were shaping up pretty well; I just needed one more title to round out my list of series. I settled on an oddly named series that looked to have pretty good animation from its promo video called Durarara!!.
| USA Info | Japanese Info | Image | |
| Title | Durarara!! |  | |
| Alternative | DRRR, デュラララ!! | ||
| Dates | 2010.01.07 - 2010.06.24 | ||
| Companies | Brains Base, ZEXCS, Aniplex, Studio T&T, Dax Production, RayArt, Q Tech | ||
| Creator | Ryohgo Narita | ||
| Director | Takahiro Omori | ||
| Genre | Action, Drama, Comedy, Supernatural | ||
| Related | Baccano | ||
Review
I normally try to summarize the first fifteen minutes or so of a series as part of the opening to a review, but I think that in the case of Durarara!! I'm going to set that practice aside. Durarara!! is one of those series that's really hard to summarize into a few choice words. There are so many rich, well developed characters to touch on, that fifteen minutes isn't really enough to do them justice. More than that, there's a very, very deep plotline that encompasses many unrelated seeming subplots that are gradually, gradually revealed to be interconnected via a complex network of relationships and pre-series history. That can't be covered with a few choice words. Instead, let me ask you a question instead: what is it about life that you worry about? Keep that one in mind, I'll come back to it later.
Durarara!! takes place on the streets of Ikebukuro, Tokyo, a place where – according to more than one character – wonder is around every corner. The "main" character – main only in the sense that much of the major narration takes place from his point of view – Mikado Ryugamine has just moved there, and is being taken on a tour of the city by his friend, Kida Masaomi. Kida warns him about several people he doesn't want to cross while he's in the city – a violent man in a bartender's outfit, an information merchant that sometimes visits the city, and – most importantly – a mysterious gang that's been growing in the city known only as the Dollars. To top things off on his first day, Mikado even gets to see one of Ikebukuro's urban legends in person, a motorcycle rider dressed all in black with a yellow helmet – a helmet that, according to myth, is empty because the rider is headless.
Really, until the Black Rider showed up in the first episode, I wasn't thinking that the series had much going for it. The first episode is really pretty slow – it wasn't until a few episodes later when I really became aware of just how much groundwork the writers had to lay in that first thirty minutes. There's equal parts drama, and action to be found in Durarara!!, with a healthy helping of humor and romance on the side, and the vast majority of it is driven purely by a very large and diverse cast of characters, but it's more than that. The characters are very well developed, but more importantly, they're believable, as though you could meet any one of them on the street by chance. Durarara!! started life as a series of light novels, and made the leap to both manga and anime adaptations at the same time, and translated to both surprisingly well, considering the intricate web of relationships and pre-series history that found them.
So what about the characters? Much of the story focuses on a central trio of characters, the afore mentioned Mikado and Kida, and Anri Sonohara. All three of them are students in the same school, and Mikado and Anri are actually in the same class. Mikado often seems a little awkward and uncertain of himself in the face of moving to the city, but quickly develops an interest in the Dollars and the Black Rider both. Kida is a sharp contrast to Mikado, bright, outgoing and knowledgeable, especially about the city, warning Mikado to some of the dangers to be found in Ikebukuro. Much of his time is spent trying - unsuccessfully – to pick up girls and subtly pushing Mikado toward the third member of their little group, Anri. A quiet, shy girl that wears glasses and is… very well endowed, she sort of gets swept up into Kida's personality whirlwind when they discover that she's searching for a friend that's gone missing.
Widening the focal point a bit introduces us to Celty Sturlson, the Black Rider… who really is headless, because she's a dullahan from Ireland. (Get it? Dullahan, Durarara!!… Ok, moving on.) Before anybody complains about the spoiler, it takes all of about two minutes of the second episode for that one to be confirmed, and is pretty obvious before hand. Celty, for not having a head, has got to be one of the single most emotionally visible characters I've ever seen. The effort the animators put into using body language to convey emotion for her is just staggering. Searching for her head, she works as an underground courier and lives with Shinra Kishitani, an underground doctor who treats injuries for the various gangs around Ikebukuro no questions asked. Because of this, he's typically well informed on the various goings-on in the underground, and works as Celty's manager for courier jobs.
However, while Shinra is knowledgeable about the underground, the character to go to if you want to know anything about Ikebukuro is Izaya Orihara, the information broker Kida warns Mikado about on his first day. Then there's Shizuo Heiwajima, known as the strongest fighter in Ikebukuro, the violent man in a bartender suit. When he gets angry, he likes to throw things… like vending machines and street lamps, and he's got a fuse shorter than his cigarette, and his favorite lighter is Izaya. To round out the main supporting cast, we have Kyohei Kadota, Saburo Togusa, Erika Karisawa and Walker Yumasaki. All four of them are members of the Dollars, and spend much of their day driving about in Saburo's van. Erika and Walker are massive, massive otakus – I'll touch on this briefly later – but there's more to these four than first meets the eye.
Phew, ok, I think that covers the major introductions. There's a few more characters that appear throughout the series, but those are the big ones. So, how do they all fit together in the ongoing story? Well, as I said before, Durarara!! is one of those series that's really hard to sum up in a few words, so instead I'll just say "gradually." Durarara!! takes its time to develop, with some of the best story pacing I've seen since ef – a tale of memories. It's not by accident that I mention ef, either, because there's a similar depth of storytelling and plot layering to be found here as in ef. The animation isn't the same sort of artsy, ethereal character-in-itself, but there's a lot going on in Durarara!! that doesn't always seem important, but eventually is revealed to be a major piece of the puzzle. Every single episode accomplishes something, either advancing the plot or filling in backstory and characterization to help us understand the motivation and engine driving Ikebukuro's little microcosm of a world.
The soundtrack for Durarara!! is pretty good, though it's not going to be winning any special awards. It's a good, solid example of background music for the most part, with a couple good whimsical tunes that really suit some of the more humorous action sequences scattered through the series. More interesting to me were the opening and ending themes. There are four in total, each done by a different group. THEATRE BROOK did Uragiri no Yuuyake, the op theme for the first half of the series, an upbeat number that reflects the lighter-hearted sense of the earlier framework-setting episodes that built up to the later conflicts and events. Complication by ROOKiEZ is PUNK'D, on the other hand, takes a more serious tone that matches well with the tension building toward the end of the series. Likewise, Trust Me by Matsushita Yuya and Butterfly by ON/OFF both capture the same general series feel as their opening theme counterparts.
The voice acting is well above average overall, with special mentions going to Celty, Anri and Izaya's VA's for really nailing down their characters. As much great work as the animators did with conveying Celty's emotions with body language, her VA added even more depth to a great character. Strangely enough, her role might even have been made stronger because of the LACK of facial distraction for her part. Really, I was very happy with all the voice acting for the series, and this is something that comes of having well-developed characters. The better developed the character, the more that a VA has to work with when giving voice to that character.
On the animation, Durarara!! did a good job overall, though nothing too special, really. The series did something a little unusual in that most of the people living and working in the city of Ikebukuro are depicted as humanoid gray blobs, without any real definition, leaving only the plot-important characters with actual appearances. A literal 'faceless masses', if you will, that served to provide setting fill without detracting from the storyline. There are also a few times when the effect is lifted – to devastating effect. You'll see what I mean when you watch the episode. Character designs are very good and solid. There's enough variety of characters, roles, ages and personalities here that the animators couldn't get away with the school uniform shuffle, and they did a great job of not even trying. Every character's casual clothing is unique and personality fitting. Anri stays in her school uniform, fading into the background a bit. People run in terror at Shizuo's bartender outfit. It's little details that help reinforce that deep, deep characterization.
Lessie, a couple things before I close out the review. First and foremost, product placement. I'm all for light advertising in television shows. If it cuts down on the number of full fledged commercials clogging the airwaves, I'm all for it, I can ignore advertising just as easily in the program as I can out of it. However, sometimes it does get a bit blatant, such as in the case of Erika and Walker, who we meet carrying a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Horo from Spice & Wolf. Now, Erika and Walker's otaku-dom serves an important part in the storyline and in their personality. A really terrifying part, actually. With that said, there is such a thing as too blatant a product placement, and the instances of them specifically mentioning several well-known, very popular manga, anime and novel series over the course of Durarara!! came off as cheap and forced, often distracting from the scene at hand. Nothing so bad as to ruin the series, but certainly enough to make me do a double-take every time it happened.
Second, earlier I asked a question. With some time to think about it, what's your answer? The greatest strength of Durarara!! is its characterization, and the question – what do you fear about life – is one that's not often asked by story writers. It was asked here, though, and each character has their own answer if you watch carefully and pay attention, answers that play directly into the culmination of the series. Just something to keep in mind if you watch the series.
Overall
Well, do I even really need to say it here? Durarara!! did a great job over its 24 episodes of keeping me hooked. The only series on at the same time that did better was Angel Beats, and as I mentioned in that review, that series had some serious problems that kept it from being as great as it could have been. With that said, Durarara!! is definitely the best series of the Winter 2010 season. In reality, they could have screwed up pretty badly on the animation – they didn't – and the voice acting – it was great – and still have won me over with the excellent, EXCELLENT storyline and exceedingly well developed characters. My highest marks for Durarara!!, and recommendation that it be seen by pretty much anybody that likes a good deep story and great characters. It might not be for those that don't like digging beneath the surface or stories that take their time to develop, though.
