Durarara!!
Alternate Titles: DRRR!! デュラララ!! (Japanese)
Original Japanese Release Date: 2010-01-07
Episode Length/Run-time: 25 Episodes (and 1 OVA)
Summary:
From the makers who brought you Baccano! comes another twisting tale of life, love, heartache and insanity. Ryuugamine Mikado finally get the opportunity to move to the big city, his best friend Masaomi Kida there waiting for him. It’s his chance to finally get some excitement and meaning into his life. And mostly insanity. Another anime based around six degrees of separation, Durarara!! follows the lives of various people in the town of Ikebukuro and how their stories overlap, intertwine, and change one another’s.
Review:
This anime was incredibly well done, which is no surprise coming from the same great minds who put together Baccano!, and is probably one of the most character driven anime I’ve come across. While the plot is occasionally thin, the major devices and twists and subplots not really coming forth until closer to the end, the characters keep the entertainment up and the progress going. It becomes a melee of storylines and ideas and themes that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with each other, but then come together in a brilliant and fulfilling way. And each member of the cast, at that, is both well thought out and likeable, making it no wonder so many have come to love this anime and cosplay it’s ridiculous and wonderful characters. Like Baccano!, it has a way with relationships that is unbeatable.
True once again to its sister anime, the animation style in DRRR!! is fitting and well drawn, the style suiting the semi-realism of the show itself, while the music, though built more around electronic and synthed musicality, does the exact same thing. It has done the exact same thing as Baccano! while maintaining an originality and creative difference that is all that Durarara!! has to offer.
While there were still many questions that went unanswered, the ending was most certainly fulfilling, taking the most pressing questions and offering answer enough to satisfy without being cliché. The winding down of the chaos, leaving only the ties that bind each character together. Rather than continue the story, the OVA and episode 25 were a refreshing bit of filler, in which this anime had very, very little, leaving the mostly complete but still applaud worthy ending intact. It’s the few important questions left unanswered that gives this a 4/5, but if a second season should take place, it’s easy to say that Durarara!! could sneak back up to a 5/5 with no problem at all.
[starrater]