Durarara!!×2

Episode 6

This week on Durarara!! Celty is assassinated by a blonde motorcyclist, Aoba is schmoozing in on Anri, the Dollars have supposedly been attacking Saitama bikers unprovoked, which may lead to a gang war, and Mikado doesn't know what to do about any of it!

Okay, that's what happens on paper. In actuality, it feels like nothing happens. This episode's pretty dull. Dull-rarara, if you will.

Following on the events of last week's episode, Shizuo takes his would-be assassin Akane to Shinra's apartment, where the good doctor discovers that she's suffering from a raging fever. It's ironic because his roommate Celty is out looking for the little girl right now, and a third party is trawling the streets of 'Bukuro looking for the both of them. Two Russian assassins (more new characters!) named Slon and Vorona have been hired by a crusty old information broker named Jinnai to kidnap Akane and kill Celty, and it's anybody's guess as to why. The efficient femme fatale Vorona swoops up on her motorcycle and decapitates Celty mid-ride with piano wire to zoom off down the street with a mission accomplished. There's just one problem with that: needless to say, losing her head, even in a violent fashion, has zero impact on Celty, so all it really does is confuse both her and the audience. I guess she's been alerted to the presence of these assassins, but she has no idea what connection they hold to Shiki's host syndicate, and neither do we, so it feels like more information in service of nothing. This is true of the episode overall, and it makes it hard to pay attention and keep track of what might actually matter.

The character introduction formula I mentioned in last week's review is key to Durarara!!'s success, and the instant it goes out the window, the show becomes less of itself. That was definitely the case for episode 6. Slon and Vorona have a strange rapport and are sort of interesting to watch, but we have no idea how they or their employer Jinnai relate to any of the characters that we actually care about yet, so most of their scenes are head-scratching. Is Jinnai in the employ of Izaya, are they rivals, or is he completely unrelated to that conflict? Are Slon and Vorona friends of Simon, enemies, or strangers? Is the odd influx of Russian assassins to Japan in some way tied to Shiki's host syndicate? It's all nebulous, and in its place we have scene after scene of Slon and Vorona's comedy routine: Slon has a bad habit of wondering about bizarre trivia like "how do bovine digestive systems work?" and "why is the number 13 bad luck?" and Vorona, a human Wikipedia, assuages his mania with her laundry list of answers to such mysteries. Slon seems to have the hots for Vorona, but she's either not interested or has something more pressing and existential on her mind. That's about it. It's kind of funny, but it's not really intriguing because we still can't see their place in Durarara!!'s group dynamic, and the characters we already care about do next to nothing in this episode.

The best material this episode comes from bad babysitter Shizuo, and his heart-melting feelings for the little girl trying to kill him. We don't quite know what it is yet, but he sees something in her that he wants to protect, despite his complete lack of knowledge on how to take care of a child. When Shinra tells him Akane has a fever, he wonders if it's because she's teething. No Shizuo, she's ten. Shinra suggests that maybe Shizuo's the one with the infant-brain, and it earns him a flick on the forehead. There's also some earnest concern over how Mikado will handle The Dollars expanding beyond his control and being blamed for attacks on Saitama gangs, but this is an unfortunate case of diminishing returns for the story. We've already seen Mikado deal with this exact same conflict in the past, and on a much larger scale. The tension isn't necessarily sapped from a recursion of the threat, but it would be nice to give this frequently boring "main character" a more unique conflict. Seeing him flustered at Aoba's affection toward Anri actually feels like a bigger deal, because we don't know how he will handle the problem. This is not the case for Instance #1,273 of "The Dollars are being blamed for a bad thing." We've seen him deal with this before. Yawn.

The episode ends with someone breaking into Anri's apartment. I suspect it's either the Orihara twins, the blue squares, or someone related to either force, but that's just a wild guess. Maybe we'll have some actual excitement next week. This is a transition episode, and not a particularly graceful one.

Rating: C

Durarara!!×2 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.