Durarara!! episode 7

For the first time ever, I got to watch Dur­arara before every­one bar the raw watch­ers because it was on Crunchyroll before gg subbed it (gg are cur­rently hav­ing some mana­gerial dif­fi­culties). CR’s acquis­i­tion of Dur­arara is an odd one. It’s not a true sim­ul­cast because it doesn’t get on CR until a day or so after it airs on tv. Then there’s the very fact that they even got Dur­arara in the first place, see­ing as they nor­mally only get the dregs of the sea­son. It really brings to ques­tion how much they had to do to get their hands on the OBVIOUS HIT of the sea­son. Not that this really con­cerns most of you out there because you don’t have CR accounts *grumble grumble*

Shizuo cent­ric epis­ode this time round and it panned out pretty much the way I thought it would given the hints we had been given thus far. It was pretty clear that Shizuo wasn’t one of those joy­fully angry people the same way cer­tain Bac­cano char­ac­ters were. It’s really not much more than a tem­per prob­lem, except com­bined with Her­culean strength, which is a com­bin­a­tion from hell. The thing is I never felt like Shizuo has made that much of an effort to con­trol his tem­per. He even at one point said that he just let him­self go. Obvi­ously it doesn’t help when you have Izaya goad­ing you at every avail­able oppor­tun­ity, although I’d say that hav­ing a fas­cin­ated Shinra by your side, con­stantly crav­ing to see your bizarre strength in action wouldn’t help either.

Maybe it’s just because he’s hid­ing stuff from Celty but I can never trust this guy. I mean, look at his evil face in that pic­ture! He had a dad who encour­aged him to cut open naked Irish Fair­ies and so the guy developed an interest in the unex­plain­able. Con­sid­er­ing how this guy is drawn to Celty I’m not too sur­prised that he was drawn to Shizuo either, try­ing out explan­a­tions for his Her­culean strength. Not that I think Shizuo really cares why he has that strength of his. Shizuo struck me as though he was more con­cerned with his tem­per than his strength. Not that Shinra cares and as I said earlier, I think he was prob­ably det­ri­mental to Shizuo keep­ing his cool. The main reason being this:

Shinra intro­duced Izaya to Shizuo. Izaya was nat­ur­ally inter­ested in Shizuo because for someone so fas­cin­ated by self-destructive human beha­viour, how could he pass up the oppor­tun­ity to meet and har­ass someone as wild as Shizuo. Shinra wants to see more of Shizuo’s powers in prac­tice and Izaya wants to put these powers to his own amuse­ment so this was a per­fect match for them. As for what are Izaya’s motives for piss­ing off Shizuo so much, I would not be sur­prised in the slight­est if this was all for kicks. He strikes me as the kind of guy who would do that.

Shizuo’s brother is the new char­ac­ter of the epis­ode and boy is he ever the polar oppos­ite to our crazy Shizuo. Totally calm and col­lec­ted to the point that he appears indif­fer­ent to his sur­round­ing, what sur­prised me was how close a bond he had with Shizuo. There isn’t the slight­est bit of ill-feeling towards them, although Shizuo doesn’t seem quite as com­fort­able around him as you might expect. In fact, there’s only one per­son Shizuo seems to act totally relaxed around. A cer­tain Irish Fairy Biker Head­less Chick.

Well, when I said ‘relaxed’ around Celty, that’s provid­ing he’s alone with Celty and prefer­ably without Izaya within a 5 mile radius of them. This finally puts the pieces together on why each of them all seem to know Celty, although it doesn’t really explain why they are all so accept­ing of her head­less state. Then again, con­sider the two of them. Shizuo doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to ques­tion that sort of stuff and would prob­ably take it in his stride. If any­thing, the idea that there’s someone even more inhu­man than him would prob­ably relieve him some­what. As for Izaya, he would just see this as some­thing even cra­zier he could have kicks with. Heck, there’s even a chance Izaya has some crazy powers as well.

Jab to the solar plexus! There’s so many reas­ons why Celty is awe­some in this show but some­thing struck me in this epis­ode. Maybe it’s because she can’t talk (notice she wasn’t typ­ing away on any iphone in those flash­backs) or, more likely, because she is a weirder creature than any of the people in this show, but Celty is the only true friend each of these char­ac­ters have. Look­ing back to epis­ode 2, that is by far the closest any­one has had to a heart-to-heart with Izaya. Shizuo acts totally relaxed around her and opens up to her, some­thing I can’t ima­gine him doing with the guy he’s pro­tect­ing. She can’t inter­rupt you so you can have your mono­logues with Celty and feel a whole lot bet­ter. If she really wanted I’m sure Celty to round up the most dan­ger­ous char­ac­ters in ‘bukero on her side, some­thing that bro-con doc­tor from the pre­vi­ous epis­ode might want to watch out for.

I think I might cre­ate an folder called ‘Shizuo des­troy­ing shit’. The amount of screen­caps I take of Shziuo spawned carnage is ridiculous.

So for you lazy folks out there, here’s a tl;dr for you:

1. Shizuo has tem­per prob­lems (under­state­ment of the century)
2. I wouldn’t trust Shinra as far as I could throw him (since I’m not Shizuo, that wouldn’t be very far)
3. Izaya is doing all of this for the kicks
4. Every­one loves Celty
5. Dur­arara is awesome