Durarara manages to explain what the vast majority of what’s written on the internet is. Especially internet forums and chatrooms, which explains why Dollars seems to be made up of almost entirely young people. Oh, and one headless Irish Fairy in a skin tight leather suit.
So this time around we spend half the episode having Kida chatting to Dotachin and co. Hurrah, yet another episode made up of people chatting, except instead of chatrooms on the internet we get parades of talking heads. The talking heads conversation was more interesting I suppose, but still far from the form I’m used to seeing Durarara at. Erika and Walker did their rounds at narrating today but beyond showing that they rarely took real life seriously (something we kinda already knew), they didn’t add a whole lot to the episode. Dotachin getting defensive about the Dollars was interesting to see though. I wasn’t expecting that response. Being loyal to the Dollars seems strange when the group is just an internet-based gang with no aims. However once you factor in that he feels that way about Dollars, the rest of the scene fits quite well. Kida basically accused Dollars of fucking with the Yellow Scarves and Dotachin stood his ground, which is fair play IMO. He gets a thumbs up from Simon for that.
It didn’t seem like Kida anticipated that response either. He went to them apparently expecting full compliance from the Dollars but was met with serious face Dotachin and some otaku with dangerously low levels of temper control. Their message was quite simple really. Fuck with the Dollars and we won’t take it lying down. Which puts what happens at the end of the episode into harsh detail. Yellow Scarves have attacked a kid specifically because he was in Dollars, which is exactly what Dotachin said they would react to. Plus I’m pretty sure Dotachin knew this would happen after his ‘you know the Yellow Scarves have changed in your absense’ line. He knows the violent members of the Blue Squares had joined the Yellow Scarves and that tension was boiling between Yellow Scarves and the Dollars. What’s bugging me is why is nobody doing anything about it?
When Kida sees that the phone number is Izaya’s, he realises yet again that this is all entirely part of Izaya’s grand master plan. And yet he still goes to Izaya because he has no other choice. Izaya himself knows that Kida knows and spends his time in this episode rubbing it in his face. Kida knows that Izaya is fucking with him and yet he continues on. It’s like on a board game like draughts when you realise that you’ve fallen into a set of moves that will result in your loss but you can’t do anything about it and are left playing out these moves set in motion by your opponent.
Practicing ma’ Gendo Ikari pose~
What’s worse about the whole situation is that none of the leaders of the three groups can turn to anyone for help. Kida can’t turn to Mikado for help because he’s just found out he’s head of Dollars. He can’t turn to Anri because that’s the very person he’s trying to protect from all this. He’s left turning to the Yellow Scarves for help, which is exactly where these problems are stemming from. Similarly Mikado can’t reveal he’s head of Dollars to his two friends so he’s left trying to get help from the Dollars, which is being hounded by Izaya and only contributing further to the problem. Anri has also joined that chat and is also being subjected to the shit-stirring skills of Izaya and Celty is no bloody help whatsoever in there because she’s too busy being frightened by the police.
He really has got this all perfectly worked out. The Yellow Scarves will cause violence by themselves naturally because they’ve inherited violent people. He can manipulate the Dollars leader in the chat room, while constantly providing even more fuel to the fire of Celty’s almost continuous worrying. Many people can see all this happening but nobody is capable of stopping him. Namie Yagiri is the best of the lot. Izaya has her pinned down so all she’s now able to do is point out what a troll he is. They’re like an alternative universe version of Lelouch and C.C.But watching Izaya trolling for the past few episodes has gotten kind of dull. Either this war has to break out soon or we need Celty and Shinra back in the mix again.
Taiga from Toradora, Shana from Shakugan no Shana and Horo from Spice and Wolf. Oh look. Reference dropping. You know, I’d probably prefer these scenes if I didn’t know the characters in question. In my ignorance I’d just be looking at Erika and Walker doing geeky stuff. Instead I found myself trying to pick out every reference in every scene change. It got to the point that I was missing what the subs were saying because I was trying to work out if the BL manga in the background sported Lelouch and Suzaku on the cover or not.
10 Comments
DRRR has fallen into a lull with the chatting that goes nowhere and that jerkface Izaya just manipulating a bunch of angsty teens. Yeah, a real victory there, jerkface. The series is just not reaching the same highs as the supernatural mystery in the first half.
Also, Dotachin’s group, always at the right place at the right time, seems to have a lot of power and influence for as enigmatic as they are. I want to see their goals and motivations revealed sooner than later.
That is a rather scarily accurate description of what these past few episodes have been like.
I never felt like Dotachin’s group had that much influence. They always felt like the characters the show turns to to show what feeling on the street is to recent events.
Yeah, that’s Durarara’s big weakness compared to Baccano — the latter was always moving, always going somewhere, whereas Durarara will spin its wheels every so often (such as in this episode, where it hits a lot of points that have already been hit upon before). Something seems as if it is going to give pretty soon, though, so hopefully everything will get moving already.
I hope they find out each other identities soon so we can stop with the long chat room scenes. If this was Baccano, Rail Tracer would have given somebody a railroad face peel by now.
I think pretty much everyone agrees that these episodes are kinda dull by normal DRRR standerds. We really need Celty to take stage again. She’s probably the only character in the show that’s more interesting to watch go through her daily life than it is watching her get involved in the plot. When things aren’t moving quickly you need Celty.
Oh, and congrats Shinmaru on reaching 100 comments on this blog~!
While these episodes are a bit on the slower ends of things, they are interesting to watch the gear turn on the situation. If nothing else, the fact that the kid in the Dollars getting attacked might cause shit to get real now.
I hope that’s the breaking point for everything because these gears have been turning awfully slowly recently.
I think you made an error there, Dotachin knows there are violent people in the Yellow Scarves right now, he doesn’t knows these are the very Blue Squares they are sheepishly pretending never existed. Kadota is the only one that (vaguely) remembers the name Horoda. Even though they knew exactly who that was less then a year ago.
He gave a big hint that he did know tha they’d joined when he said that the Yellow Scarves ‘aren’t the same group from a year ago’. Maybe I took it the wrong way but that said to me that he knows who’s in the group now
But after their meeting he went “Horoda, Horoda… Hmm, I think i knew someone by that name… Nah, probably not important.” He also said that Masaomi wasn’t making sense with his ideas that there are still elements of Blue Square that are still after him. It might have been nice to mention that he was right, and his lieutenants are the ones in question.