Durarara episode 2

I knew long before the first epis­ode of Dur­arara aired that this would be over­b­logged and oh boy did yes­ter­day ever prove that. Within 1 day of the epis­odes release there were 10 dif­fer­ent blogs on epis­ode 2. And yet, even though I knew this would hap­pen, I made the con­scious decision that I was going to blog it regard­less. Why? Actu­ally this was prob­ably part of the reason why I’m blog­ging it. It’s not much of a test of your abil­it­ies when you are the only one vying for read­ers atten­tion. With Dur­arara I’m going to have to up my game con­sid­er­ably to drag the audi­ence away from the competition.

This epis­ode felt an awful lot like a first epis­ode. Not because it was a re-telling of events from the first epis­ode but because it still felt like they were intro­du­cing char­ac­ters and set­tling us into the world. Heck, even after this epis­ode we’re not done intro­du­cing the lot of them. We were intro­duced to a fair few new char­ac­ters in this epis­ode, such as our new ‘villain’…err, what was his name again? *goes back and checks pic­tures from the first post* ah, Izaya Ori­hara. It’s hard to judge any­one as a vil­lain in a show where the plot has yet to be estab­lished but any­one who goads someone into com­mit­ting sui­cide is gen­er­ally con­sidered a vil­lain. In fact, he has taken over the mantle of vil­lain of the show from our tame motor­bike rider.

Some say her cat­suit was ori­gin­ally pink but turned black after years of not wash­ing it, and that she sat through all 41 epis­odes of End­less Eight. All we know is that she’s called The Stig’s hot sister.

The open­ing calls our favour­ite Irish Head­less Fairy ‘Selty’, which isn’t exactly a very Irish name but I’ll give it to her because at least it’s more Irish than ‘Lockon Stratus’. What came as a shock to me was that she worked for someone. I was under the impres­sion that she was a sort of lone ranger, plough­ing across Ikebukero doing whatever the hell she liked without caring for any­one. I won­der what’s in it for her. Have they prom­ised to help her with find­ing her head? Or has she been black­mailed? Or maybe it’s some­thing sim­pler like they provide her with a phone and a park­ing space. There was a lot revealed about her in the epis­ode. She may not have a head but this epis­ode proved that she has a heart,with those mes­sages on her phone.

Then there was her shadow net she cre­ated, which brings up the ques­tion of how much power does she have. The power she appears to have at her dis­posal makes it even more remark­able that she’s been hired by someone.  I doubt she’s being forced into this, mainly because I find it hard to believe that there’s any other force in this anime for power­ful than she is (although the new vil­lain did say some­thing about being fas­cin­ated by ‘humans’). Even her motor­bike is super­nat­ural. Asides from mak­ing no noise, the sui­cidal girl..err *checks open­ing again* oh, she doesn’t appear in the open­ing. I guess that means she won’t be import­ant. Any­who, the point I was mak­ing was she said the motor­bike was mak­ing sounds like a horse, which strengthens the the­ory that here we have a mod­ern day head­less horseman.

This guy interests me. I would have said the next epis­ode would revolve around him if it wasn’t for the fact the next epis­ode pre­view didn’t show the Horo-carrying crowd and that vending-machine hurl­ing guy. But I think I know what he’s got­ten him­self involved in. The hint is in the open­ing. He’s the second name to appear in the open­ing but the import­ant part is the per­son he’s got his arm round. Yup, it’s that girl with the scar on her neck. ‘Some­thing that’s more import­ant to him than life itself’, or some­thing along those lines, is what he said. How about pro­tect­ing a girl from a head­less Irish fairy rid­ing a neigh­ing motor­bike? Sorry, but any­one with a scar around their neck in an anime with a head­less char­ac­ter screams suspicious.

What made the epis­ode, more so than any head­less chicks sav­ing sui­cidal girls from someone seem­ingly chan­nel­ing part of the spirit of Johan Liebert, was the soundtrack. I keep going back over the open­ing for clues and names and it’s really grown on me, although I can’t say the same about the end­ing. The BGM though is just fant­astic. It’s this laid-back, almost-sleazy jazz that per­meates everything and boy do I love it. You can ima­gine your­self saun­ter­ing while listen­ing to it, and trust me, I don’t do much saun­ter­ing in my life. Dur­arara is in no rush. It’s saun­ter­ing through it’s story with all the flair of a show that knows per­fectly well what it’s doing. Dur­arara is still qual­ity, already improv­ing on the first epis­ode. Then again, we all knew that this would be good before­hand any­way. Still, it’s nice to see some­thing live up to expectations.