For those who haven’t made this connection yet, the three in the chatroom were Mikado (the boring blue avatar), Celty (the avatar wearing headphones) and Izaya (the pigtails one that’s always hyperactive). In that sense, it was kinda cool seeing the three of them together in real life, even if they didn’t know it themselves, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Izaya had an idea of who he was talking to. The chatroom is on the Dollars website, a connection I only made in this episode, which suggests that both Celty and Izaya are part of Dollars too. I’m still at a bit of a loss as to what Dollars is meant to be other than a chatroom. Mikado set it up so nobody takes orders from anyone else but theoretically, if he had control of the Dollars network, then he is easily the most powerful person in ‘bukero.

When you look at the cliche gang members, like this guy and his nonsensical haircut (do they honestly have those haircut in Japanese gangs?) or that ‘yo yo hey man!’ guy who Izaya scalped in episode 3, I can’t help thinking they are intentionally made to appear as nonsensical as they are to offset the eventual arrival of proper gangs. Whenever there’s a mention of the yellow scarves of the blue shape that-I-can’t-quite-remember-which-particular-cuboid-version-it-was, Kida puts on his SERIOUS FACE, which suggests that these gangs are much more dangerous than those that have appeared thus far. Getting real gangs into the picture will only end up messy. Again though, I can’t see how the Dollars tie in with them as of yet because I still don’t quite see how they’re able to achieve anything.

Sorry for blabbing on about the Dollars website but I’m trying to wrap my head around how it works. You get an invitation to the site and the password (which, btw, is BACCANO. Oh Brains Base and your constant references to your older series and random other series while your at it. There was a Railgun reference in this episdoe too). Set up your profile and chat to people. Look at the above picture with Mikado looking far cooler than he usually does. It just looks like a chat site where you can see who else is online. It’s hardly that different from something like 4chan, except with far less meme abuse. Unsurprisingly, a Dollars website has been set up here, but it’s all in Japanese. However I think I managed to unintentionally taunt Gargron, the guy who designed this site, into making a Dollars website of his own. It would be pretty cool, and inevitable, that some sort of chatroom website would be designed based off this series.

If Izaya is plugged into Dollars during most of his wakening hours, which he certainly appears to be, no wonder he is such a great informant. Just toss out some questions into the Dollars website and answers will start to appear. A lot of them could be nonsense but where’s there’s smoke, there’s fire. Speaking of Izaya, he is such an absolute nutter isn’t he? His leaping on an unconscious gang member isn’t quite as awesome as the phone stomping scene (which already has over 21000 views on youtube)  but was just so typical of the guy that I couldn’t help laughing. It’s a tough choice to pick my favourite character in Durarara. It’s a toss up between Izaya, Celty and Shizuo.

Wild facial expressions in anime. They’re such an easy method to make the audience laugh but they still get me. Some random other thoughts before I run over my 1000 word count would be where has Scarneck gotten to? Speaking of her, I was given some convincing theory in the comments in my last post by Rakuen that she isn’t actually wearing Celty’s head at all. The general idea was that they never convincingly showed a dead Mika Harima and kept obscuring her face so the idea was that they’d performed surgery on her face to make her look like the Celty head. Seiji, as Shizuo found out, is so blinded by his ‘love’ that he wouldn’t notice, Mika has found a way to be with the person she loves and creepy incestuous sister has a way to keep Seiji away from the real head. It also works in well with the flow of the story. The grand reveal in episode 9 that she was wearing Celty’s head was pretty obvious and felt like a bit of a let down in terms of grand ending plot reveals. If it turned out that wasn’t the case and Durarara had trolled us all then I’d be mightily impressed. My gut feeling still says she’s wearing Celty’s head but I’ll be damned if I can come up with convincing evidence to counter this argument.

Is there really any better way to end this post than with Celty showing off her figure?

Ryohgo Narita, the author of Baccano and Durarara, actually has 5 different series written but only one other book looks like it has a chance of being adapted into an anime is Vamp!, which you can tell was written by him thanks to his love of exclamation marks. The synopsis of the book sounds awfully generic if you didn’t know it was Narita. “A comedic dark fantasy about vampire clans, a vampire princess, and the man who hunts them!”. You could just see people going ‘bleargh, more Twilight spawned vampire anime’, until they see the name attached. Ah, one can only dream of an anime adaption I guess.

Up until now the ‘plot twists’ or general plot developments in Durarara have been things that have already happened. Celty was already living with Shinra. Shizuo already hated Izaya. The way this anime set up the first 8 episodes was by bringing Mikado to ‘Bukero and set the scene around him. What was different here was this was the first time we’ve seen some real plot developments happen in real time. Celty finding her head is a huge change to the set up of this anime and from here on in everything is happening in real time. All the characters have had their current stories thus far explained well enough to move the story on from here. The scene has been set, although it did take 8 episodes to do so. It all felt very well done IMO but at the same time I can see why someone might’ve been annoyed that it took this long to reach the actual plot.

So this scene was the big twist of the episode. I certainly did not expect Celty to find her head so quickly. I suppose after they revealed that the head was Celty’s head in the last episode (and I use the term ‘revealed’ loosely because most of us had that figured out by ourselves anyway) there wasn’t much need to keep the lid on things anymore. What the entire scene did prove was that Mika/Celty (we need a fan-name for her, and no I’m not calling her Melty) really doesn’t want to be re-united with catsuit Celty. In fact, I couldn’t tell who she was afraid of more. Celty or this creepy siscon character.

When Celty/Mika/Scarneck says she doesn’t want her ‘getting in the way of her love’, part of me thought she was talking about catsuit Celty (this is getting frustrating to differentiate) but it’s more logical to assume she’s talking about Namie Yagiri. While Celty is getting in the way of her love, it’s more of a byproduct for having to be carted around and throwing buckets of blood at people. Namie is getting directly in the way of her love. That is a really weird love-triangle to be caught in. The daughter is in love with the son who is in love with a head in a jar which has been attached to the head of his stalker by his incestuous sister after he murdered her. Yup, the Yagiri family is slightly dysfunctional to say the least.

Falling  in love with a head in a jar. I can understand why maybe it might be peaceful to sit with the jar and talk to it, or maybe just be with it. I can imagine sitting there with the head on my desk, imagining what they’re thinking and telling it your troubles. But falling in love with it, at first sight none-the-less, is a bit crazy. I’d say it’s a combination of auld Celtic Magic and the inherent unusual sexual preferences of the Yagiri family. What I want to know is how it came into their possession. I had a hunch that maybe the uncle was actually Shinra’s dad but I didn’t spot any of his signature pen-twirling so that’s probably out.

I’m now starting to doubt that Shinra knows anything about Celty’s head. If he did know something then he was a pretty good actor when Celty told him about it. The head was in the Yagiri family possession for a long time, at least around the same time that Shinra met Celty for the first time so I really doubt that he knows anything about it. Maybe this is just another part of my dislike for Shinra dropping and I still think there’s things he’s hiding from Celty but in regards to the head I think he’s clean. Also, he delivered the most telling line of the episode. Will Celty really try to take back her head when it’s attached to another body? This takes an extra layer when said by Shinra because of his totally undisguised desire to keep his headless crush headless.

And then Mr.Ordinary, Mikado, gets dropped into this story in the most dangerous way possible. The poor guy has no idea what a big clusterfuck he’s worked his way into, although the next episode preview showed him talking to Celty. Again, this is proof that it is Celty who ties all these characters together in some form or another, albeit through two different bodies. I doubt Mika/Celty is going to stay at his house for that much longer, although that depends on what’s happened to Seiji. Last we saw of him he had been just headbutted by Shizuo and the police were closing in on him (first time we’ve seen them all show).

Mid-action shot. I love the level of panic on his face. Actually, knowing the Yagiri family, he’s probably turned on by all this.

It was weird seeing Shizuo not once lose his temper over the course of this fight, bar maybe one little twitch where he hurled Seiji into a lorry. Considering he considers someone stealing his pudding a fridgeable offence, getting stabbed in the leg with pens seems worthy of at least a golf buggy to the face. It must’ve been the calming effect Celty has on him or something. If he had just met Seiji after a meeting with Izaya then Seiji could kiss his worst–eloper–ever life goodbye.

Gotta wrap up this post now but a little mention to Izaya, doing his version of the Gendo Ikari. The guy has that same infectious delight for carnage that his Baccano counterparts had, except in a far more manipulative way. On the whole I still think I prefer Baccano but if there’s one part that I think Durarara outclasses it, it would be how many great characters it has. There’s so many great personalities in this anime and they’re worked into the story a lot better than the multi-story Baccano managed, especially when you know that any character in Durarara could meet any of the others and frequently do cross paths. They’re all connected in this present storyline, unlike the Baccano connected-over-time storyline. And that person they are all connected by?

Well, both versions of her.

So what are non-Durarara fans watching this season? What anime out there do those who don’t think Durarara is the best thing since Eden of the East Bakemonogatari sliced bread say the best of the season is? Some are enjoying the greatest trap from all time (apart from Moyashimon) in Baka to Test while others are enjoying Sora no Woto. Now usually here is when I’d go “these people have no taste mwahaha go my biased views go etc.” but both of those are actually quite good anime. But I’d still be pretty annoyed if both those series outsold Durarara in DVD sales.

OK, spoiler-less first paragraph out of the way, I would like to sit back in quiet contentment and proclaim that I was indeed right all along. Mika Harima is indeed wearing Celty’s head. An Irish head, which might explain why her eyes are so wide compared to the other characters. Finally I can stop theorizing about events that might happen and stop doubting myself while doing so. Most of my questions I’ve been asking are still around, such as the blatantly obvious question of why. Instead, lets look at what each person knows about this whole affair, because it’s very hard to figure out who’s in the loop in all this.

First up, Seiji Yagiri knows that this girl is Celty because that’s what he bloody calls her. That is what he called this girl who he is also calling his true love. Now I don’t know about you but I find this whole thing pretty fucked up. The guy is currently eloping with his ex-stalker with the head of an Irish Fairy attached. WHAT THE FUCK!?! That’s what every man wants in his life really. They want a stalker except with the head of an Irish Fairy attached. Which, if I might care to add, was an operation probably carried out by his rather creepy and possibly incestuous sister.

Then there’s Mika Harima herself, otherwise known as Celty’s head. I think we were given proof this isn’t the conscious mind of Mika Harima by the fact that Seiji told her that she didn’t have to remember her past, which shows that her Celty’s Head (I’ve got to come up with a better name for her) is also suffering from memory loss. She also knows that Celty is searching for her, judging by that scene in the first episode where we see her running away only for Celty to come tearing round the corner moments later. This suggests Celty’s head actually has some memories as her time as a Dullahan although she has no interest in becoming one with her head again, which suggests that those memories she has might not be the nicest. Plus she’s quite clearly in love with Seiji, although how that romance came about is beyond me. Seiji probably saw her disembodied head, got turned on and wanted to stick it on the nearest available girl. Hey, that actually makes sense. Mika Harima, the stalker, has her way of being with the person she loves and people do some pretty crazy stuff when they’re in love.

Picked the one picture where Shinra looks like a prick (difficult to do since most of the time he has a jolly/fascinated look on his face) because this guy probably knows where Celty’s head is. He works at that pharmacy place and knows ‘they’re secret’, whatever that may be although I’m pretty sure it involves the head of a certain Dullahan. Interesting how neither he nor Seiji want their loved ones to regain their other half. I wonder if he does know that Celty’s head is involved in that fucked up relationship. Actually, Shinra kinda grew on me a bit in this episode, if admittedly probably in comparison to fucked up Seiji. I mean, look at him here.

D’aaawww, poor man~. I don’t like him because he’s clearly holding information back from Celty while pretending to be helping her to suit his own lusts, and I’ve been completely won over by Celty’s moe factor so anyone who’s mean to Celty I automatically won’t like, but I disliked him less in this episode. I love how he’s always fascinated by parts of Celty’s powers and can’t help but investigate the stuff she does, like when he started poking that black hole Celty created. I wonder why he is so afraid of Celty getting her head back. What’s going to prevent her from still liking him when she gets her head back? This, yet again, hints that Shinra knows something that would lead to a different Celty. Maybe he’s afraid a combined Celty will like Seiji more? Meh, too much theorizing hurts my brain.

As for what Celty herself knows, it appears that she knows very little, to the extent that I doubt she’d know what her head looks like when she sees it, although she’d probably be able to sense it. It’s bizarre that there’s this plotline of Mika Harima with Celty’s head and yet there’s a whole other plot going on with Dollars and Shizuo X Izaya and Mikado X Anri. There’s faint interlaps between the lot but they haven’t started to collide, mainly because they haven’t really started moving yet. No character in Durarara is normal and the thread that connects them all appears to be Celty, judging by the message the ending gives us. Ironic considering that Celty is having a hard time considering herself as a human.

There was a hell of a lot more that happened in this episode other than Celty’s head and body and their respective lovers, such as fireworks boy here. Very random scene indeed. Then there was Kida disappearing off, claiming he knew who was hiding Anri’s shoes, probably using his vaguely established gang contacts. But I’m hitting that dreaded 1000 word mark so instead let me fangasm over something: Celty speaking in Irish! Ta me ansea, I am here. What made it even better was that it was Engrishy Irish. That last scene made my patriotic side swell up (and it’s even higher now thanks to Ireland beating England in the Six Nations, wooh~). Since I’m talking about Irish stuff, I might as well add in here that I’ve been nominated for the Irish Blog Awards in the Best Youth Blog category (hit ctrl+f, type in ‘cart’ and you’ll see me). I think the judging may be done by actual judges but if it comes to a popular vote I might try spam my readers to vote for me so be forewarned.

Of course I forgot that moe is the cancer that is killing the industry. Celty appears in pajamas and an apron in the same episode? This definitely follows the moe handbook. So you can dismiss my last 8 episodes of fanboying over this show. Durarara is actually moeblob and all crap and stuff.

One thing that no site seems to be able to agree on is how many episodes Durarara has. Some say 12 and others say 24. Now I know most people plead that their favourite show will have 24 episodes and I’m sure people will say the same with Durarara. Something along the lines of ‘we need more time to get the plot rolling’ or something like that. But many of the more reliable sources (aka: not MAL) says that it might only have 12. Thinking back, I did think it was odd to see Brains Base suddenly make the jump to a 24 episode series when they haven’t done that before. I simply assumed it was a natural jump to make given how much they were hyping up Durarara (with good reason, as it’s shown thus far). So as much as I’d like it to have 24 episodes, I’m going to have to brace myself for 12. At least then if it does go on for longer I’ll be pleasantly surprised. It’s all pointless speculation anyway. Which, by curious coincidence, is exactly what most of my posts are.

::Edit:: Shimaru just informed me that psgels said the official site says 24 episodes. Convoluted system of learning this info aside, hurrah for 24 episodes! I was just trying to be optimistic with that opening paragraph but I really do feel this needs 24 episodes.

I won’t say I was looking forward to these guys finally getting an episode of their own, because that’s not quite true. But I did think that is desperately what Durarara needed because these guys were becoming an odd group that seemed to serve no purpose except to make otaku references and carry round cardboard cutouts of hot wolf girls. But what I didn’t expect is for them to perform so well, this was my favourite episode of Durarara so far. Being a member of Dollars was a total shock. I assumed these were the normal people in the show (to a given value of normal) but that’s been shoved in my face. Everyone is involved somehow in this giant gang war and headless hunt somehow. Except Mikado. Again, the reason he sticks out in this show is because he is the only truly normal person in this show.

Talking about Mikado, his short scene with Anri and Kida was one of the many highlights of the episode. Sometimes the normal character in a show full of nutters can drag any scene down he’s in (Reki from Claymore anyone?) but their scene was quite a lot of fun, although that was mainly down to Simon. I’m not sure if it’s because he has a funny accent or because he always starts each scene with ‘Irashai, irashai’ but I always find myself grinning whenever Simon comes on the scene. I wonder what he does outside of working at that Sushi shop of his? The only references to him being anywhere else always comes back to his sushi shop. His fight against Shizuo? Making a delivery. Knowing about human parts in other sushi restaurants? Checking out his competition.

Yeah, cannabalism. This is where my crazy theorizing comes into play yet again. We finally got to see the final character from the opening we’d yet to meet. Namie Yagiri, the brother of the worst eloper ever, Seiji Yagiri (seriously man. I’m no expert at eloping but shouldn’t you at least leave the town you live in?). Now I seriously doubt there’s any cannabilism from anyone in this show, but she definately confirmed they were experimenting on humans. Go into a slum, nick yourself a foreigner (but not Simon. They may be thugs but you’d have to be some idiot to take on Simon) bring it back and she’ll experiment on it. And that brings me to this.

I’ve grown quite attached to my ‘Harima is wearing Celty’s head’ theory so working my way around that, what we have here is possibly Harima’s head and the girl who has the Dullahan’s head is now eloping *pfft* with her brother. What sort of fucked up world to this lot live in? Let me get this straight. Seiji has a stalker so his sister takes the head of a mythical Irish fairy and transplants the head onto the stalker, keeping the head in her possession, and now Seiji falls madly in love with her.…wow, that is seriously messed up. Maybe my theory isn’t right after all. That all sounds too crazy to be true, even by Durarara standards.

Any character who listens to Pavorotti will instantly become one of my favourites, especially if they sing along. What I enjoyed about him was how at first he seemed like a rather racist characature of foreigners. I mean, just look at the picture. Notice the wider eyes and the hairy palms (Asian men have seemingly no hair. That Singaporean guy in my flat must shave his legs or something, especially compared to my Gorilla legs). The episode even went to portray him as a bumbling idiot, only to later on show that they guy has a bit of brain even while drugged. He was seen as a valuable friend by the Dollars gang and one who they could also rely upon in a pinch. It was quite a smart piece of work by Durarara looking back at it. They manipulated me by getting me to dismiss this guy only to show his usefulness later on. This should teach me never to dismiss a man who can sing Nessum Dorma.

So  this is why Celty was afraid of aliens. Watching these crappy conspiracy programmes. We don’t have them in Ireland. Nobody ever thinks they’ve been abducted. They assume those nights they can’t remember and that funny mark on their arm to be from a drunken night out when they fell in a bush. Which is normally true anyway. Talking ’bout Celty, episode 4 has had an unusual effect on her appearance in the anime. When she’s bombing about Ikebukero, she’s no longer this mysterious figure who we all wow over. She’s been humanised and gets scared or embarrassed like any other human It’s odd how the character who has one of the most normal human emotions is the one without a head.

Me while watching Durarara. Yes, I’m totally in love with this show. I have to keep my word count down to not much more over 1000 per post so I’m going to have to shut up now, but this episode shoved Durarara even further ahead of any other competition this season. Even the characters who I thought would be the dull ones of the season have turned out to be an epic group of Dollars who torture people by making them read Ladies vs Butlers. Then next week we’ve been promised narration by Shizuo.

Duararararararararararararararararararara

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.

So why was this episode so awesome. I hate to be the guy who constantly compares this to Baccano, but it used the same tactics that made Baccano so enjoyable. You had a bunch of total psycho wacko characters interacting and fighting. One thing that’s different between the two is Mikado. The idea of having a normal guy as the main character in a show full other nutters would be frustrating but it’s been hugely entertaining to see his reactions to everything. Baccano never had the ‘straight man’ character. I originally thought that Mikado would just be a bystander in all this chaos but it appears he might have something to do with the overall story. Is there any other way to explain why Izaya (phone-stomping guy, in case you forgot the names. I certainly do) looked at him when saying ‘I was searching for someone’.

Argh, if I was to try go through this episode in my usual way I’d end up typing a string of endless praises and desperately trying to think of synonyms for ‘awesome’. Instead, I’m going to go through this by how awesome each character was. Number 1: Masaomi

It’s easy to forget, what with that fight in the second half of the episode, that he even did anything in the episode. The guy’s a nutter, like practically every other character in this show. His enthusiasm is infectious but he manages to toe the line that most hyperactive characters in that he never gets on your nerves. With other hyper characters like Tomo from Azumanga Daoih, their hyperactive nature stops being infectious and just gets annoying. What makes Masaomi different from the rest is he’s clearly not an idiot. He spotted the worried look on Mikado’s face and interpreted it correctly, albeit with his usual added flowers and fabulousness. Plus, it was a bit of a shock to see him act so reserved around Izaya. Even if we hadn’t seen him semi-convince a girl to commit suicide you’d still know there was something seriously dangerous about this guy.

Last episode I wasn’t quite convinced by Izaya. He was more of those all-knowing villains he plod around and spout monologues on how there is no good or evil and so on and so forth. That’s why I loved watching the guy getting clobbered by the bin. It took the guy down several rungs and it showed that he’s not quite the invincible the last episode portrayed him as. Yep, his best scene of the episode was not the epic phone stamping laugh (which, btw, is absolutely hilarious to listen to fast-forwarded), nor was it his instant scalping technique. His best scene was being flattened by a projectile bin.

But the real star of the show, the guy who stole the episode even though he only appeared for about 5 minutes, was Shizuo. Described rather accurately as violence in human form, what makes him different from the other bunch of nutters both in this show and Baccano is that there’s nothing in the way of flair in his actions. While there’s an odd beauty to Izaya pirouetting around random thugs, brandishing his flick knife, Shizuo is unrefined. In that scene where he systematically flattens that gang of fake dollars, he knocks out one of the guys with a sort of lazy headbutt. This actually makes his trendy bartender clothes all the more ironic. Heck, want something even more ironic? Nicked this off a random forum:

‘Shizuo’ = ‘quiet man’
’Heiwajima’ = ‘peaceful island’

Let’s not forget our narrator for the episode. Simon (thank you Gurren Lagann. Now I will always pronounce it as ‘sih-monn’ instead of ‘sigh-mun’ in my mind) was hilarious to watch, with his amazing advertising. Why, doesn’t the urge to go eat sushi just skyrocket when a giant black Russian tells you that you won’t die from it. Shinmaru theorized that the guy would eventually show eventually show off some sort of phenomenal power and be yet another psycho in a show already packed full of them. I was of the opinion that he would be more of a gentle giant type character. What we got was a hybrid of the two. While he only jumps into fights to stop them, anyone who can take a punch from Shizuo and keep his clothes on is worthy of respect.

And that’s just those characters, there was just so much packed into this episode that I loved. Did anyone else notice that thug doing some sort of pocket masturbation behind those girls? I know gang members quite often walk around with the hand cupping their groinal regions but his hand was moving far too vigorously for it to be anything else. That might explain why the guy’s trousers were a bit wet afterwards. It had nothing to do with being scared of Izuya. He had just…ok, I’m going to stop that train of thought before I go too far.

From left to right: Durarara; Cencoroll; Not entirely sure, could be Kuroshitsuji or Baccano again;this time with Maiza and Csez. don’t know; don’t know; Hell Girl. They even tossed a Yozakura Quartet book in later for the hell of things.

OK, theorizing time! Props to Extrange for pointing this out to me; in the opening just at the end we see a head in a jar. Does that belong to our favourite headless horsewomen? Does it look that similar to the head of the girl with the scar on her neck? There hasn’t been any talk of the whereabouts of Celty’s head thus far so it’s kinda hard to theorize something that hasn’t been alluded to in the show itself. Just for a quick comparison, does the head look any similar to that girls?

Hmm, it’s kinda difficult to tell but there’s nothing blatantly obvious to say they are different. Same hair colour, same length. Ah who cares, let’s just now bask in what was a glorious piece of madness. Brains Base, you’ve done it again. I swear, if wasn’t for Akikan, I’d say they were one of the most consistently awesome studios. With an awful lot of people touting Shaft as the great new studio, I’m sticking my neck out for Brains Base. Let us just compare the two for a second. This season, Brains Base released Durarara. Shaft have gone with that travesty that is Vampire Bund. Brains Base > Shaft.

I couldn’t find a place to put this picture in so far so I thought I’d toss it in at the end. Crowning Moment of Random?

Now to give you a brief glimpse of how much I loved Baccano, let me list out all the anime I’ve watched in order of how much I like them until I reach Baccano. Death Note. Baccano. There, see? Find me someone who loves Baccano more than I do and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t watched Death Note yet. So even though this will obviously be the most over-blogged show of the season, I could hardly let this oppertunity pass. I’m not so much hopping on the bandwagon as calling shotgun on the passengers seat in the front.

Right off the bat there are several similarities between the two. The most obvious of which is the huge explosion of characters right in episode one. The opening in Baccano certainly helped with that and the names again are listed by in the opening to Durarara. While we may have a full 24 episodes to remember these names, I can already see a potential problem there. This show is on Crunchyroll. CR never translate the opening so I have serious doubts that they’ll translate the names in the opening either. This first episode was done by gg fansubs but I’m pretty sure they’re not going to continue. I hope the names get translated in the opening but just in case they don’t I’m gonna screencap all the names from the opening and stick them at the end of this post. I’m hopeless with names and even worse trying to remember Japenese names. Actually I can’t remember a single characters name, not even this guy.

He spent the entire episode yapping away and I haven’t a clue what his name is *checks screenshots at the bottom* Masoami Kida? Good for him. Being bombarded with so much information in the first episode, it’s impossible to keep up but, again comparing to Baccano, they don’t expect you to keep up. All they expect is to leave an overall impression of the show and little bits of info will have trickled into your mind. So many characters, so many personalities and yet the only thing I can remember off the top of my head is that the main character, err…*checks bottom of the page again* Mikado, is an eensy bit racist. That ‘a guy who just so happens to be black’ made me laugh. OK, I remember a bit more than that. How on earth could I forget her?

Yes her. I’m sure you all noticed those curves in that full body leather catsuit, even fit with a nice pair of ears on the helmet. To think you usually associate fairies with pretty, prancy little creatures with sparkles and flowers. Not in anime I’m afraid. Nope, those things with sparkles are called ‘bishies’. Assuming she is a dullala (no spell checker, not a dullard), one of those headless Irish fairies, you can see we make our fairies slightly differently in Ireland. We give our fairies motorbikes and scythes and then ship them off to Japan.

One thing I liked about the whole fight scene was the the ‘baddies’ (they kidnapped a poor, defenceless and suicidal girl, of course they’re baddies) weren’t all a bunch of panicky wimps. OK, I’d panic at the site of my pal getting his face smashed in by a catgirl on a motorbike doing a wheelie too but at least these guys fought back. Stun gun, quick braking maneuvers. OK, hardly epic stuff but so often you would just see these guys panic and run away, with their trousers falling down for comic effect or something equally dumb. Durarara has more quality than that though.

That’s the most promising aspect of Durarara. No, not the random Horo, although that was certainly welcome, but the fact that it oozed quality from every pore. The true test of quality is whether a show can still be good even when not much is happening. The dialogue is witty, the characters are a wacky bunch (ok, not as wacky as Baccano but I really should stop comparing the two now) and nothing ever feels forced. In the same way that the first episode of Eden of the East embarrassed everything else that season without even doing very much, Durarara does the exact same. Not that this episode was a good as the first episode of Eden, but it definitely eclipsed every other first episode of the current season.

Time for some theorizing. The girl who bumped into the main character towards the end with that scar on her neck will obviously show up again. Now if I remember correctly from the synopsis, this crazy Irish fairy is looking for her head. Any chance that this is the head and that she was running away from the fairy? Think about it, the fairy appeared about 30 seconds after she ran off. I probably shouldn’t be theorizing so early in the game but it’s something to keep in mind.

And now, character names! Sorry about the song lyrics but there was no way of separating the translated names and the lyrics.

What I used to do when watching Baccano was try to name the characters before their names came up on screen. Jacuzzi Splot was the easiestbut I could never remember the name of the Gandor family characters. With them all having Japanese names in Durarara, this will be a considerably more difficult task.