The Winter 2015 Anime Preview Guide

DURARARA X 2

Hope Chapman

Rating: 3

Do you like Celty? I love Celty! Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like if you happen to love Durarara!! in the first place, you probably love Celty, one of its very best characters. (At the very least, the headless horseman is its most iconic "face," where Baccano! had no such flagship role.) Well, this long awaited continuation of the series, (it's been five whole years!) comes with supposed promises that it will complete the 13-book story, (the first series covered 3 books,) and it's definitely got Celty fans covered with a returning episode that's packed to the gills with the world's coolest Dullahan! She's still outwitting the world's most terrifying motorcycle cop. She's still madly in love with Shinra but uneasy about the wedding. She's still suspicious of Shinra's old man and curious about what it would take to get her head back. (If only she knew who had his slimy mitts on it now, she'd probably be in a bigger hurry!)

It's great to see Celty (and the other characters in smaller amounts) once more, but not much has changed in Ikebukuro since the end of the first season, and your enjoyment of this returning episode will probably depend heavily on how long ago you saw that original show. If you literally haven't touched it since it came out five years ago, there's probably a lot more glee to be found in seeing Shizuo, the Dollar dorks, Izaya (and his sisters?!), the incomparable Seiji&Mika, or even Masaomi again and reliving all those happy memories in a flash. If you're like me and revisited Durarara!! for a little mental refresher a few days ago, the cameo-filled inaction of this first returning episode is a little shrug-worthy. The new story hasn't truly begun yet, and we're only given glimpses into what it might be through some of the least entertaining scenes of the episode. (Shizuo's brother's not-American manager is far more annoying and painful than funny, complete with lame character design. He should have taken more cues from the far more humorous not-Japanese Kazutawno character. Or Simon, whose lack of consistent ethnicity is one of the show's best jokes anyway.) There's a serial killer named Hollywood on the loose, and it looks like Shizuo's little bro and Izaya's twin sisters will have some connection to the whole mess! But not just yet. So eh.

Personally, I have a love-hate relationship with Durarara!! brought on by the show's sharp drop in quality in the last third (adapted from a not-very-good third book,) and this episode's "nothing has changed" conceit unfortunately felt like salt in that specific wound. One of the central conceits of Durarara!! that I'm least fond of is the underlying gag that even though Ikebukuro is filled with monsters, gangsters, and unfathomable evils, there's enough love in the world to keep it all in the shadows and ultimately, nothing all that bad will ever happen if you reach out to the right people at the right moments and keep the city alive. It sounds pretty on paper, but it unfortunately resulted in an "ironically humorous" first season conclusion where all the climactic plot threads and evil schemes of series mastermind Izaya were toppled with a little anticlimactic friendship and mutual understanding between the show's three weakest characters: its "normal" leads. It really let the hot air out of the show's balloon for me, because it was forcing the plot to restart, even if the characters (thankfully) had already moved forward. So following the poorly-paced eight-episode erosion of Izaya's sandcastle with a meandering "things are still normal here in wacky Ikebukuro!" episode was pretty frustrating for me personally. Durarara!! is better when things like the pursuit of Celty's head or the Saika slashings are happening, so the show's dismissal of those elements in favor of even more pacifying cameos does frequently get under my skin. Make of that what you will.

Ultimately, the shruggy quality of this re-introduction episode doesn't matter all that much, because Durarara!! is a terrific character drama in the broad scheme of things, and I'm very happy to return to its world for more "optimistically gruesome" adventures, whenever the show is ready to really start them off.

Durarara!! x2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Theron Martin

Rating: 3 (of 5)

Review: Of all of the sequels to come out in the Winter 2015 season, probably the least-expected was a follow-up to the original 2010 oddity about the normal and not-so-normal goings-on in Ikebukuro involving a trio of high school friends and assorted adults, including a headless female motorcyclist. As if to assure viewers that this new series isn't going to go off in some radically new direction, the prevailing theme of the first episode is “nothing's really changed.” For the most part that seems to be true, although both the opener and the closer suggest that we are going to see several new faces who could stir things up quite a bit.

Six months have passed since the conclusion of the first series, and things have essentially settled down into a slightly revamped status quo. Mikado and Anri are still going around together, occasionally wondering about Masomi, who had eloped with Saki and whom they apparently haven't heard from since. (He does appear briefly in the final scene.) Celty is still getting chased around by the supercop, only this time she has a news team following as well and an effective bounty for her whereabouts has been put out by said news team (who not-so-subtly works for a channel with a “666” logo). Celty is still tight with Shinra but has agreed to once again be experimented on by his father to earn cash on the side. The Dollars seem to be hassling petty criminals and Izaya is cooking up some new scheme, presumably involving Celty's head based on his request to Celty to stay away for the time being. Shizuya is still involved in shady business and his brother Yuhei's film career has advance substantially. We also can't forget Kadota's gang, whose members are all still casually tossing around numerous unfettered anime references. In other words, very typical stuff for this setting – except for the fact that Izaya's twin sisters, who appeared briefly in episode 25 of the first series, have their own scene and are implied to be getting in heavily on the action this time. In what way remains to be seen.

Overall, the episode seems entirely designed to remind viewers of the “who” and “what” of the setting, as little firm indication of any kind of plot direction is given here. The visual style used in the original is fully retained, with perhaps some slight upgrades (except in the animation, which is no better than the original's), and the musical score is even mostly composed of numbers carrying over from the first series.

Nothing presented here should change anyone's base opinion of the franchise for better or worse. The downside to playing it so safe is that, comparative to this franchise's standards, the episode also comes across as rather bland. The cast is also broad enough as it is that I have to wonder how it will manage inserting in even more characters.

So yeah, nothing particularly exciting yet. Based on the course of the first series, though, it should get better from here.

Durarara!! x2 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.