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EP. REVIEW: Durarara!! ×2 The Second Arc


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HaruhiToy



Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 4118
PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2015 4:09 pm Reply with quote
Desa wrote:
Izaya himself doesn't seem too interested in the head itself outside of it being a fascinating souvenir or perhaps a form of leverage.

He has gone through considerable effort to wake it up as documented in this last review. Clearly he sees it more than just a souvenir. What I don't think we have seen is what he expects to happen when that happens.
klljoy_the wrote:
What super powers?

He is able to vault buildings with Shizuo and for that matter he is the only one we have seen that is able to go toe-to-toe with him. Isn't that enough?

Incidentally his little sisters show some of the same traits but at a younger age. Lethal lolis.
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killjoy_the



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 2468
PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2015 4:29 pm Reply with quote
Izaya can only fight an escaping battle with Shizuo. Simon's the only one who's been shown to be able to actually fight him on regular terms. Izaya's powerful, for sure, but he's almost an average Narita bad-guy, powerlevel-wise.
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Zhou-BR



Joined: 28 Feb 2008
Posts: 1457
PostPosted: Mon Aug 31, 2015 11:54 pm Reply with quote
killjoy_the wrote:
I thought it was the 12.5 episode from the first season?


Sorry, my mistake.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11532
PostPosted: Sat Sep 05, 2015 12:05 pm Reply with quote
Just now getting around to watching this. This has become one of those series that I really enjoy while watching, but between episodes, I dread having to watch the next one and I keep setting it aside for almost anything else. It's the only series I read the review first, as that seems to be the only way to motivate me to watch it. I guess it's because I know I'm only going to become more and more lost, and the reviews help me sort it out a little before I go in? Confused

Anyway, Celty and Shinra are always a treat and Baby Izaya was fun too. But the best part was the train whistle sound of shock and disgust Celty made when Shinra said Izaya was one of his few friends. I had to play it back a couple times to make sure it was actually on the soundtrack and not just noise from outside.
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justsomeaccount



Joined: 24 Oct 2014
Posts: 471
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 2:39 pm Reply with quote
^ Well, at least this season is much easier to follow than the previous one in compari--

*watch episode 10*

... ugh.

Let's go in order about all the new things we have to take from this episode:

  • spoiler[That glasses kid (Hiroto Shijima) belongs to an important family (the boss being the grandfather called Giichiro) linked to the Yodogiri, knowing what he did all this time, and with the boss telling him to collaborate against Izaya threatening him by doing something with the Dollars.]
  • spoiler[The boss here is called Yodogiri Jinnai but he's different to the fake kind bearded old man from before. Is the same guy or a different one? Is his same voice or not?]
  • spoiler[The reporter who talked with Izaya's servant last episode (and was hinted to be Izaya's spy I think? Or not? Maybe?) is Yodogiri Jinnai's servant.]
  • spoiler[Shiki being aware of the tensions with Yodogiri and that Shijima kid but trying to maintain stability, and talking with that blowfish face guy.]
  • spoiler[Shiki revealing an incident with Kuzuhara (the motorbike police) and a familiar called Yumeji, and Kuzuhara kicking out of Shiki's band some Mr. Kine.]
  • spoiler[ANOTHER Kuzuhara's family member, specifically daughter, called Maju, talking with Haruna's father. btw, I first thought she was Aoba's spy when later he's being told about Haruna's father, but nop, it's not the same voice and information.]
  • spoiler[Also, Haruna's father is back on the action investigating to his missing daughter and knowing she has a connection with the Dollars.]
  • spoiler[Aoba and Izumi where they reveal that Aoba is crazy from before and he actually created and dominated the blue squares three years ago, but later he let to his brother pretending to be tired but being more like a trap to him, resulting in Izumi wanting to kill him after Masaomi, Kadota & co.]
  • spoiler[A scene where for some reason Aoba's team put Mikado by force into a truck and then they loudly talk about their (honestly, very boringly cliche) motivations of controlling the Dollars via Mikado. I don't get this scenes, why did they hit him, why are people on the ground, why do they speak so loudly despite him not being unconscious, just why.]
  • spoiler[Izaya and Akabayashi's anticipated talk is the latter asking him to investigate and persuade Mikado to protect Anri, and Izaya probably not doing it.]
  • spoiler[Masaomi apologizing to Simon and proposing Kadota to join him to destroy the Dollars, but still not telling anything about why.]
  • spoiler[Kadota, while thinking about Mikado's changes, is hit by a truck run by this unknown narrator who hates everybody and call them scumbags (even himself when he's talking about Dollars, so he is too) and we don't which side he is in; now he's in the hospital.]
  • spoiler[Izaya acting with this incident like "What are you going to do now, Mikado?" which may seem like he was the narrator's boss.]
  • spoiler[Mikado saying he's glad about all these things we don't know why, and this narrator saying he likes him.]


spoiler[ALL this information, and I had to pause the episode tens and tens of times to get only 60% of it, and then while writing this I watched it again to put all this information (I hope it can help you understand some of it too). HUGE SHITLOADS of infodump without stop that are crazy. This series now is 10 times more complicated than Baccano's anime, hundreds of characters with different relations with the rest, to the point where I don't even know what's happening, I don't have any global vision at all about all of this complicated plot and that is making me feel I should just give up or my brain would explode. The only thing that makes my head a little clearer is that a similar situation to the third novel with gangs war will happen here, only far more complicated. And honestly, that feeling is making me feel very concerned, I don't want to feel disappointed after so much insane buildup and noise.]

spoiler[The worst thing is, it has a lot of important things happening, but if it's already hard to know what they're talking about, imagine about impact or emotional resonance. Everything that happens is so fast and quick that none of the big twist have any weight, you go WTF but the show doesn't act like it's a big deal. This season showed it can still work emotionally and I hope the next episodes and season do, but in this episode it didn't work. So this was a duh for me, because it's too complicated for its own good.]

And now, I need to rest.
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killjoy_the



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 2468
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 2:47 pm Reply with quote
justsomeaccount wrote:
spoiler[A scene where for some reason Aoba's team put Mikado by force into a truck and then they loudly talk about their (honestly, very boringly cliche) motivations of controlling the Dollars via Mikado. I don't get this scenes, why did they hit him, why are people on the ground, why do they speak so loudly despite him not being unconscious, just why.]


Mikado got beaten up by the people now on the ground. They're complaining that he's a wimp because he always goes down.

Quote:
spoiler[Kadota, while thinking about Mikado's changes, is hit by a truck run by this unknown narrator who hates everybody and call them scumbags (even himself when he's talking about Dollars, so he is too) and we don't which side he is in; now he's in the hospital]


Unknown? It's Izumii, Aoba's brother. I thought it was pretty easy to tell by the voice.

But yes, the episode was really big on the infodumps. It had a bunch of situations that happened in previous novels (but hadn't been animated) and a bit of Volume 10, to get things going.
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justsomeaccount



Joined: 24 Oct 2014
Posts: 471
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 2:56 pm Reply with quote
^ The first one, oh okay, I get it now, thanks (the scene is so shortly edited it's not clear). But the second one, no, Izumi's voice is much more rough and even when he's crazy he's not as... happily nuts and with such acute voice as the narrator. Also, you see the narrator on the truck and he looks totally different (no scar, no long face, etc.). If it is him (maybe in the novel it's more clear, who knows), it's not obvious at all in this episode.
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JacobC
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Joined: 15 Jan 2008
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Location: SoCal
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 6:44 pm Reply with quote
killjoy_the wrote:

But yes, the episode was really big on the infodumps. It had a bunch of situations that happened in previous novels (but hadn't been animated) and a bit of Volume 10, to get things going.


Yeah, I was all prepared to watch a giant dump of convoluted plot-twists this week, but this is mostly transitional ephemera that's not complicated at all. (It just looks complicated because of all the scene-jumping and new faces, but the conversations being had are "cleaning up tiny deets from past episodes" rather than "setting up important future stuff.") It's just tying up loose ends and showing little superfluous scenes with other characters, so don't sweat it too much justsomeaccount. It looks like everything outside of Izumii and Aoba's actions is largely unimportant fluff. If it has any greater resonance to future events, we'll see it in detail later, but I think you're more exact to the details of what happened than you even need to be to follow the story at this point.
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justsomeaccount



Joined: 24 Oct 2014
Posts: 471
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 7:07 pm Reply with quote
Probably, I won't lie, but with this series and knowing how the previous cour went, one never knows where to put the line between "important fact" and "foreshadowing that will be clear and played out later". And the big warning for me was dedicating so much info and new complexity to that Shijima family and kid who just looked like a simple situational character for the previous eps and that's about it, so I had a sharp eye for everything said from the start.

I also hope it was only out of necessity and the rest of the episode can balance all this plot and tens of major and minor characters in a clear and satisfying way; but anyway, still this episode felt too dense and packaged for me to get into the most important parts (Aoba and Izumi, Masaomi and Kadota, etc.).
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JacobC
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Joined: 15 Jan 2008
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Location: SoCal
PostPosted: Sat Sep 12, 2015 7:11 pm Reply with quote
justsomeaccount wrote:
Probably, I won't lie, but with this series and knowing how the previous cour went, one never knows where to put the line between "important fact" and "foreshadowing that will be clear and played out later". And the big warning for me was dedicating so much info and new complexity to that Shijima family and kid who just looked like a simple situational character for the previous eps and that's about it, so I had a sharp eye for everything said from the start.

I also hope it was only out of necessity and the rest of the episode can balance all this plot and tens of major and minor characters in a clear and satisfying way; but anyway, still this episode felt too dense and packaged for me to get into the most important parts (Aoba and Izumi, Masaomi and Kadota, etc.).


Yeah. I didn't mean to imply that I thought it was a good episode. It wasn't, really. I was just saying I don't think you have to sweat the details on this one too much. Anime hyper
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Theozilla



Joined: 27 Sep 2014
Posts: 144
Location: Oakland, California
PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 1:19 am Reply with quote
So it seems this arc will adapt a total of four novels then with Book 7 (Daily Life Arc) getting 4 episodes (plus the second OVA), Book 8 (Adabashi Arc) getting 3 episodes, Book 9 (Dragon Zombie Arc) getting 2~2.5 episodes, and Book 10 (spoiler[Kadota's Coma] Arc) getting 2.5~3 episodes.
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HaruhiToy



Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 4118
PostPosted: Sun Sep 13, 2015 10:44 pm Reply with quote
killjoy_the wrote:
justsomeaccount wrote:
spoiler[A scene where for some reason Aoba's team put Mikado by force into a truck and then they loudly talk about their (honestly, very boringly cliche) motivations of controlling the Dollars via Mikado. I don't get this scenes, why did they hit him, why are people on the ground, why do they speak so loudly despite him not being unconscious, just why.]


Mikado got beaten up by the people now on the ground. They're complaining that he's a wimp because he always goes down.

And my complaint about him is I can't figure out how in hell he is considered an important figure by so many characters. He is a mostly clueless newcomer who has the sysadmin password to a chat room that is the basis of a loosely connected group of people he has no control over. He can't fight. He doesn't know anything important. Kida and Sonohara like him. He knows Celty. That's about it. So how is he always a focus?
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killjoy_the



Joined: 30 May 2015
Posts: 2468
PostPosted: Mon Sep 14, 2015 6:12 am Reply with quote
I wouldn't say 'always'. This season in particular had two books where he was sidelined as hard as he could (Daily Life and Dragon Zombie). He still has control over Dollars and since it's a group without any color and that anyone can join, it has a lot of potential for people who want to use him, and the people who care for him are somewhat powerful, so if they get involved it starts snowballing.
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_Cyphon_



Joined: 16 Nov 2014
Posts: 996
PostPosted: Wed Sep 16, 2015 6:59 pm Reply with quote
Interesting... Well in any case I hope Kadota is ok. And it feels strangely satisfying to see Shizuo rage over the hit and run. Mikado is sinking lower and lower into the quicksand, so we'll see how this plays out.
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One-Eye



Joined: 08 Mar 2011
Posts: 2264
PostPosted: Mon Sep 21, 2015 8:17 pm Reply with quote
Yea, I have to say I'm not enjoying D!!x2 a whole lot. Really didn't like the first season of this sequel and the current season while better still feels cramped with stuff. Then there's Mikado completely losing it. Since its so total and contrasts with the original season (at least to my memory) I can't say I'm thrilled how this came about. If there had been at least more of Izaya playing with Mikado's mind as was hinted at and how Izaya normally operates then it would have gone down easier for me. But there really hasn't been much room (imho anyways) for developing that.

Episode Review wrote:
In the novel...

-spits out juice- Ah, yea. Mad


I like the characters a lot and enjoyed the original DRR!!, but I'm not sure I'm going to even watch the next season. Also D!!x2 wont be sitting on my shelf next to DRR!!.
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