Seeing as it’s what all the cool kids are doing, from now on I’m going to spell Durarara!! with it’s token exclamation marks, although it has the unusual effect of making it look like Durararall. One a season preview I saw someone once say in relation to Durarara that they had never heard of this strange show Baccanoll everyone was talking about.
Our narrator this time was the hyperactive Kida, who was actually a lot less fun to listen to than I expected him to be. As interesting, although not entirely surprising, it was to see that his act is a bit of a facade, Simon has still been my favourite narrator so far. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the more unusual characters take the mic later on, such as Shizuo, Izaya and especially Celty. I was joking about when I called her headless state a moe attribute but seeing her panic over the possibilities of aliens was quite cute. As for her having a voice, I was very sceptical when she started ‘talking’ in the last episode. The voice acting is spot on and does add that extra layer to Celty and any attempts to convey what a person is feeling without a face or a voice would be an unanimatable feat, but it does take away a certain level of silence that I feel Celty should have. I guess it was a lesser of two evils to give her a voice. Trying to convey her feelings through body movements might have resulted in over the top reactions, which would not have worked.
Kida’s past is an interesting one. I think it’s safe to assume he was part of a gang, most likely the Yellow Scarfs judging by his rather dismissive attitude towards those punks who called themselves Yellow Scarfs. How he got messed up with Izaya is a much bigger mystery. Judging by how similar they looked, I’m guessing that girl in hospital is Izaya’s sister. In a way, it’s probably a good thing to have someone like Izaya on your side, simply because you don’t want him not on your side. So something terrible happened to her that put her in hospital, Kida feels guilty and has stopped visiting? Maybe that’s why he’s so scared of Izaya. Izaya is not afraid of killing, as we’ve seen before, and if anyone harmed his charming imouto then heads would roll. Kida was witness to the revenge? Who knows, I should stop theorizing so much when talking about Durarara.
Before this episode aired, I had the plan to mention the idea from Kabitzen at Sea Slugs that Mika Harima was indeed friends with Anri but now has a different head, which explains why she ran after her in episode 3 only to realise it wasn’t her friend when she saw her face, but then this episode went and practically proved that anyway. The picture above is shamelessly stolen from Shinmaru, which shows quite clearly the different heads they have now. What I want to know is what personality does Mika Harima have now? If she still has the personality of the stalker, then why is Seiji suddenly so smitten with her that he’s eloping with her (pretty miserable attempt at eloping if you ask me. They’re still in Ikebukero). Alternatively, if the theory that she’s wearing Celty’s head is indeed true, then you get the mightily crazy scenario that Seiji has fallen in love with Celty’s head. I might try concoct one of those relationship diagrams based off my theories. I’m pretty sure no other relationship diagram has ever had someone falling in love with a stitched on head. That sure makes the love triangles awkward.
Perverted teacher having a good old stare right there. BTW, that guy running away from Celty with the briefcase looked awfully similar to the perverted teacher. Which brings me onto the Slasher. Out of all the things introduced in this episode, that character was the most supernatural. I’m going to leave aside my theorizing for now simply because we weren’t given enough information to chew on. I even took a look back through the opening to see if there was any reference to her. While I did spot that those angel chicks are outside Simon’s sushi restaurant in one of the scenes, I saw no sign of the Slasher so no luck there. So we have yet another super-powered creature running around Ikebukero. This town isn’t big enough for the…5 of us?
“Heiwajima Shizuo!”. My favourite scene of the episode. Brings us right back to the idea that everyone knows these urban legends are wandering roung Ikebukero, doing odd jobs like Sushi flyer distributor or barman, or cheap thrill-seekers like stamping on girls’ phones. It really is crazy seeing all these nutters running around Ikebukero and they’re treated by the public as some form of topic of discussion when maybe any news has gotten stale around the area. People turn round and watch when Celty drives by, but that’s about it. If you read Terry Pratchett, then you’ll know what I mean when I compare Ikebukero to Ankh Morpork. The city has so much legends inhabiting such a small area that these people, legends in their own right, just get sucked into the madness and become just another backdrop.
Sorry Kida but you have a long way left to go before you reach the level of cool that these two reached.
Something I’d like to add before I close this post. It’s easy to forget that Durarara is based off a light novel and therefore the story has already ended. Therefore there are people who obviously know how this anime will turn out. Now this generally isn’t a problem with light novels unless you’re really stupid and go searching for spoilers, but sometimes spoilers come from the most unusual places. I won’t ruin it for you lot but scanning imageboards for Durarara fanart I was mildly spoiled that a certain character has more to them then I would ever had thought. This isn’t like Sora no Woto where nobody has a clue where it will go. There are people out there who do know what happens. Spoilers lurk in the most unsuspecting of places.
13 Comments
For me, this episode actually made me like Kida more.
Celty narrated ep 2, and I don’t think anyone else in the cast is going to top that one. And from the way he acts, I think Kida might’ve been the leader of the yellows at one time. He was rather dismissive when those three punks cornered him, and the looks his friends gave him when he went and asked them for information were interesting. Definitely something going on there.
@Janette
I agree simply because Kida in my opinion is now THE most non-nutter in this entire anime.
::Normal Comment::
Yeah, don’t go on Wiki or Animesuki if you don’t want to spoilers. But not even the people you think are pretty innocent are innocent. In fact, the innocent are actually darker. A paradox indeed.
Yeah, Selty being all ‘omg’ about aliens is definitely a cute moment. Even mythological creatures with mind-blowing powers fear the unknown.
I wondered about Seiji, too. How long has he known her? From the way Anri spoke to him, they had to have known each other for a decent amount of time, so he probably knew Harima in middle school. He can’t have not noticed this. A potential personality change isn’t something I had thought about before. Maybe Seiji likes someone who will stare blankly ahead while he does his thing.
Also, I didn’t think about this before, but Anri’s story makes it clear that if Harima is indeed wearing Selty’s head, then it was transplanted onto her pretty recently. I can’t remember exactly when Harima is supposed to have disappeared, but it wasn’t more than a year ago.
@Janette
I do like Kida, it’s just he wasn’t as amusing a narrator as I thought he would be
@halfadeckshort
That was Celty? I was convinced it was Anri. That was before Celty was given a voice so I guess I may be wrong
Thing about Kida being a Yellow Leader is he must have been pretty damn young at that time. I know age means nothing in anime (those kids in Beck were 16 and did some pretty crazy shit) but still, I find it hard to believe he got caught up in too much craziness
@Poro
That semi-spoiler was from an imageboard though, which is such an unsuspecting place to get a spoiler from. So don’t go on Durarara imageboards
@Shinmaru
That brings up the question of where on earth has the head been for the 19 years before that. Wild theorizing here, maybe Shinra realised he didn’t want Celty to find her head and had something to do with transplanting it on?
“Maybe Seiji likes someone who will stare blankly ahead while he does his thing.”
Hur hur hur *perverted chuckle*
Episode 2 preview and narration were definitely Miyuki Sawashiro, the VA for Celty. She says a lot of things about seeing the world that are more interesting when you know who it is and have the context of the last couple episodes to frame her comments. I didn’t know what character she was until Celty started talking, but when she did it all made sense.
Why hallo thar Spike~ So surprising that you should pop up here in my Durarara’s~
For some reason, Kida is starting to grow on me. So his perky, wacky nature is all a facade, eh? Interesting..
Celty freaking out about aliens was cute ahaha~.
I kind of want to know more about Kida’s friends. They seem to be just wandering around and stuff.. xD
Also, that slasher character looks like that long-haired character.
Oh, and i hate that perverted teacher.
Haha, yeah I’ve already had so much spoiled for me just by not being careful… Also I started reading the manga and… Be careful. It takes a fairly different time-line approach from the anime so that “spoiled” some things for me, if you can call it that. Izaya’s even more insane in the manga if you can believe it. Unless that’s a scene we’ll see later in the anime and not just one the modified for the anime adaption… Oh dear I’m giving myself a headache.
And the Ankh Morpork metaphor… Now that I think about it it sorta fits!
As for the opening… It’s amazing how many people you can see in there if you look hard enough. I’m sure the slasher’s in there somewhere.
You know, I was thinking about the slasher’s identity, and at first her hair looked a bit like Anri’s, but then it turned out to be long so… The only person in the cast we know so far with hair that long is the one who showed up at the end of this episode and the doctor lady. (I wonder if they’re the same person…?) It’s probably one of those two unless they’re stylistically messing with the slasher so their identity isn’t discovered too early like they did with you-know-who in Baccano!.
… I need to stop thinking and go to sleep.
@halfadeckshort
I…can’t remember anything she said! Argh, I don’t want to go back and re-watch the episode. That would just feel silly. Oh well, that will have to be something the inevitable re-watch will make interesting.
@blissfullynaive
Kida’s friends don’t really do much do they. The guy with the floppy hat is the only one who seems to have a bit of history so I’m guessing he was in the Yellow Scarfs with him or something like that.
@Siri
The slashers identity is an odd one, especially since she seemingly changed shape halfway through the chase, so there’s a chance there could be a second one. It’s a bit hard to tell really when you’ve got such an indistinct figure like the slasher was.
That ‘you-know-who’ from Baccano just so happens to be my favourite character from that series
Is Kida a member of dollars? I have a feeling that he’s one of them.
@Faye9617
Nah, he did say specifically he had gotten out of all of that so I doubt he’s part of dollars at the moment
Hoo, i smell something good maybe come out from Kida at episode 6, khu khu khu~