Durarara!! ×2 The Second Arc

Episodes 6-7

I don't think Ryohgo Narita likes Japanese idol culture very much. One of the best lines in this already stellar episode twofer comes from Durarara!!'s implied master antagonist, Yodogiri Jinnai. Upon scouting a younger and more naive Ruri for a potential idol career, he brings up her extensive monster makeup work and adds "How would you like to make another kind of monster, one who can conquer the world?"

The rest of the episode details Ruri's exploitation by Jinnai using familiar "fallen idol" imagery straight out of Perfect Blue. Of course, Ruri is not being exploited as a girl, but exploited as a literal inhuman monster, drawing easy parallels to both Celty and Anri, who she meets with in episode 6 to discuss her fears. Her late-night "trysts" with old perverts are not sexual in nature, but surgical, as her immortal constitution becomes a sadist's playground for leering corporate goons to relieve their violent stress in a "safe" environment. The drooling stalker who catches her in these acts is not obsessed with destroying her nubile innocence (which doesn't exist), but her horrific undying flesh.

It isn't the juxtaposition between "product made for him" and "woman he can't have" that drives her stalker insane, it's the juxtaposition between "monstrous murderer of his father" (who he didn't love and doesn't miss, conveniently) and "Japan's singing sweetheart." While the serial killer Hollywood stalks the streets with a human body and a monster mask, her stalker decorates his walls with pictures of kaiju bodies spliced with Ruri's head, obsessed with destroying the lies he perceives in both idol-Ruri and killer-Hollywood. They are one and the same, but neither is the full truth, and for some reason (probably sexual obsession, guy must be into Monster Girls), he thinks it's his business to expose that. Jinnai has created a literal monster in Ruri (calling her his "obedient product"), and her stalker wants to destroy and "mount" a literal monster, but all of it is still couched in the metaphorical "culture monster" imagery of Japan's idol industry. So yeah, call me crazy, but I don't think Narita's a fan of the shiny happy pop star machine. His spite makes for one hell of a great story though, as Ruri finally gets the spotlight she was denied last season, fleshing out her own backstory and finally revealing the chilling evil at the core of Yodogiri Jinnai.

If Izaya is something of a "monster detective," trying to draw out the darkness in people by the force of their own will, Jinnai is the kind of information broker who forces his own way into people's lives, creating monsters from the darkest untapped potential in the human soul regardless of how they feel about it. Sure, Izaya and Jinnai are both bad people, but at least Izaya seems to respect the free will of his victims. (After all, he "loves" humans!) There's no such love in Jinnai, who seeks out a girl with immortal blood flowing in her veins and proceeds to exploit her for personal gain, leading to the transformation of Ruri into Hollywood. Unable to take revenge on Jinnai for tricking her and killing her family, and tragically blaming herself for being born with this mysterious monster blood, Ruri's repressed rage underneath the pop star smile morphs into Hollywood, dons a monster mask, and takes "revenge" on strangers against her will. Ruri doesn't need to be saved from a stalker. She needs to be saved from Jinnai, and she needs to be saved from herself.

Okay, this has gotten too dark. Look at Dokusonmaru! Lookit the kitty~!

I'm so glad this little ball of fluff has become a regular member of the cast. Unfortunately, he's recently passed hands from Shizuo to Anri. Boo. He's a little cuter resting on Shizuo's head than on Anri's boobs. (Just a little.) Continuing on that lighter note, Kasuka learns all of this but still promises to accept Ruri for the monster she's become, but doesn't promise to solve her problems, since only she can make the decisions necessary to escape from her own past. Given how well he's treated his monstrous brother Shizuo over the years, respecting his life choices without being neglectful, I think we can trust him to be a great boyfriend. D'aww.

While Ruri's tragic tale is engrossing and well-told, it's not the true focus of these episodes. As I mentioned in the episode 5 writeup, the real point of a "Ruri's stalker" subplot is to explore how well (or how poorly) Mikado's new secret police function within The Dollars, especially once their actions start directly affecting Mikado's friends and acquaintances. Much like Anri-as-Saika, Ruri-as-Hollywood can protect herself just fine. In both cases, the girls just don't want to provoke the violent monsters lurking inside them for fear of hurting the innocent or endangering their secret identities. So we're not meant to be seriously worried about either of these girls being victimized; we're meant to be worried about Mikado's soul.

And we should be! By now, even Dotachin (one of the few people to figure out that Mikado is leading The Dollars, and maybe the only person who knows without Mikado knowing that he knows – if that makes sense) has noticed a slightly tyrannical change in Mikado's personality. When he brings up the more dangerous shift in Dollars' behavior over the past few weeks, suggesting that the group's anarchic horizontal structure has finally caught up with them and maybe he should quit, Mikado gives an eerie response. "I don't want to recognize those people as Dollars," he says, "You're a model Dollar, so you understand. If everyone was like you and Celty, we would truly be a force for good." Dotachin responds that this is just an ideal, and not everyone is going to see the group that way, considering that it wasn't formed under those conditions. Mikado responds "But isn't wanting to get closer to an ideal one of my freedoms as a Dollar?"

Alert alert ALERT, Dotachin! Mikado is displaying despotic tendencies, on the fast lane to creating a Big Brother-style dictatorship of positivity enforced only by his own subjective perception of heroism! Haven't any of your otaku friends told you about Gatchaman Crowds insight, Dotachin? I guess it slipped past them because it wasn't a Dengeki Bunko light novel first.

Needless to say, Mikado catches wind of that stalker's identity fast, thanks to the new members of the Dollars' chatroom and a little not-so-legal subterfuge. In a horrifying twist, we find out that Ruri's stalker was using his Dollars membership to recruit like-minded creeps and start doxxing her friends in order to further terrorize her out of hiding. That includes everyone who was at Shinra's house the night she started coming clean about the stalking problem: Shizuo, Shinra, Celty, Anri, Seiji, and Mika. Seiji and Mika seem to have been temporarily ignored in favor of the other targets, making Shinra the first victim. Celty returns home to see him beaten to a pulp and struggling to breathe on the floor. Not gonna lie, her struggle to wake him up without the ability to speak almost brought me to tears. So Mikado and his Blue Blood Cells (yes I am sticking to that name) spring into action...and they really do save the day. Well, now I'm conflicted!

That's the thing about vigilante-style revolution. It seems like true justice at first. It really seems like it's worth the pain, sacrifice, and discord, because if it didn't feel worth it, no one would end up taking things too far. That rush of fist-pump celebration the audience feels when Ruri's stalker runs off screaming, enveloped in flames, is completely justified. Mikado and his Blue Blood Cells protected Anri, Shizuo, and Masaomi that night, and they probably protected Ruri and others close to her in the long term. But that still doesn't mean what they're doing is right. I mentioned Masaomi in that list a moment ago, which shouldn't be the case. He was dragged into the fight because he just so happened to be with Shizuo at the time of the attacks, apologizing for the hit the Yellow Scarves put out on him when their shadow leader started using the gang for their own dark purposes. (Well that's ironic, considering what Mikado is going through right now!) He wasn't supposed to see any of this, but now he has: he knows that Mikado has allied himself with the Blue Squares, Masaomi's old sworn enemies, to change The Dollars from the inside out for the benefit of friends who never asked him to do any of this in their names. Once again, the repeated shots of Masaomi reaching out to his injured friend, only to be cut off with a Grima Wormtongue-esque deflection from Aoba, sometimes from Mikado's own mouth as he parrots dogma, are totally heartbreaking. It's an intentionally uncomfortable episode to sit through, in all the best ways.

So what's Masaomi's response to this betrayal dressed up as a rescue? Let's call up a few of the Yellow Scarves and talk business. Yeah. Those Yellow Scarves. Just like Mikado, Masaomi is probably trying to protect his friend through whatever stunt he's about to pull, but his anger and pride are probably going to bury those best intentions somewhere halfway down the road to hell.

It always seems like a good idea at first, Mikado. But as a few key shots from this episode make clear (like this review's screencap), he is not the one in control, and Aoba is one very bad lieutenant. Mikado cannot control The Dollars this way, Anri has started reaching out to Akabayashi in response to her fears, Izaya has started introducing sock puppet accounts into the Dollars chatroom, and things are going to get a whole lot worse before they get better.

Long story short, these were some of the best episodes of Durarara!! period. More please.

Rating: A+

Durarara!! ×2 The Second Arc is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.