From the author of Bacanno! and the folks who turned that book series into a cartoon, comes this tale of strange goings on in the Ikebukuro district of Japan.
Like Bacanno! the first episode flings a whole load of characters, factions and plots at you at once. However it’s a little easier to get to grips with as it’s all taking place in the same time period and locale. Well, ignoring the fact that the lead character has no head. It’s an approach that worked well in Bacanno! and it works here too, though perhaps not quite as well. It’s a little more linear in its approach and the characters doing the introduction are more part of the story than in Bacanno!.
It reminded me of Jonathan Tweet’s RPG, Over The Edge, as you have a locale populated by outsiders, some of whom are somewhat odd, and all sorts of conspiracies, secrets and gangs operating beneath the surface. Like Baccano! there’s a very thin line between normality and the supernatural, and having your lead be an Irish unseelie faerie (Durarara!! is a corruption of Dullahan) calls into question the humanity of some of the other characters who show unnatural abilities and behaviours.
Episodes 2 & 3 begin to put some distance between Durarara!! and Bacanno! in the approach to adaptation. Each Durarara!! episode has a narrator, and focusses on an individual story, even if there are sub-plots ongoing throughout. Gone is the clockwork script and editing of Bacanno! and its time slips, instead we get a slower paced, more deliberate approach. It’s more interested in the characters and, so far, works very well, as different characters see different sides of each other depending on the episode and circumstance. Most notably, the information broker, Izaya Orihara, sinister and manipulative in episode 2, comes across more positively in episode 3.
As to the narrator, it’s not clear who the narrator is in Episode 2, but in Episode 3 it’s the character of Simon (the guy who works at the Russian sushi restaurant with the overly complicated nationality) suggesting that the each episode has a different character narrating, so Episode 2’s could be supposed to be Celty the Dullahan’s voice rather than just Narrator as actress Miyuki Sawashiro is listed as.
In terms of animation, the character design isn’t quite as solid as Bacanno!, but there’s lots and lots of great movement. A lot of it is in the body language and poses, but there’s also a lot of physical comedy, particularly from the supernaturally strong and perpetually angry Shizuo Heiwajima (shades of Bacanno‘s Graham Specter). There’s one beautiful gag in episode 3 that had me cackling, and it’s something you could only do in cartoons.
Other bits I liked included, the spot in episode 3 where Mikado and Anri are running away and she ends up dragging him along, Masaomi’s general theatricality in the way he moves and how that disappears when Izaya shows up, and the puckish way Izaya moves throughout. It feels like Masaomi is putting on a show in his movements, whereas Izaya’s feel like the movements of a natural born trouble-causer and shit-stirrer.
It’s the only new show that’s really gripped me in both story and animation, an all round great package. So check it out.