Review of Durarara!!

Let’s say that the soundtrack is exellent. If you happen to find yourself neglected by the people who actually know what’s going on in the series, don’t ponder over your miniature power of understanding and just follow the tune... An ordinary boy leaves his small hometown and moves Tokyo. A good point to start the story of the town he’s suddenly in. But it does make you wonder whether the story is about the town itself or the boy we’re following as the main character, since the series itself doesn’t take sides, which is ok in the beginning, but gets confusing as the story progresses. BaseBrains + Aniplex = beautifully animated, stylish and lively. Dynamic camera movements, nice shots, carefully chosen point of view etc. I don’t want to underestimate anything, but after Kaiba, everything just seems mediocre. What you truly like about the atmosphere is this insisting on the danger, on the dark side of the town. You sit and watch an honest and naive boy in the midst of the urban jungle, all its dangers being presented to you, one by one, (thus bringing in new characters and story elements); wondering is he actually aware of all the things lurking from the dark?

Wait. What things? Well, the mysterious part that gets you tangled up in the story in the beginning is very soon explained and elaborated. Too soon, in my opinion. While it does feel necessary, and it is the main drive in all stories containing the horror or mystery element, I still didn’t think that you could uncover what lies behind so recklessly and get away with it. This series did. And when it started uncovering the rest, the disappointment started piling up.

And what gets you most is the narrative. It’s mechanical, made to make you think it’s not linear thus cool, as if that meant anything by itself. In order to turn your head away from the potential problems you may imagine developing and deeply damaging the series, you are confronted with a growing pile of main characters, and they’re all positive. The whole series reeks of being world/peace/human/whateverthef loving. In order to cover that up, you are presented with: a question of suicide/sick love/cowardice/WWII aura experiments on humans...

The characters can’t deliver the message well because they’re omnipotent, and when they clash – wait, he was omnipotent in the previous episode, so he must win; but if you don’t remember, the other one was also super cool, and he’ll even say it out loud. Just to remind you. And I don’t like that. Recapitulations without a good cause, or to fill the void of oblivion that the character fell into while you were following the other seven having a lazy stroll? I don’t like things falling out of authors hands. I did see a movie once where all characters are bad, and it was a good movie. But having them all good puts you in a position where the real opposition is impossible. How do you solve the problem in the end, who will make the balance; even the police are way out of the line cool. Even if you go with the flow and empathise, the “I’m sorry” part stabs you in the back. Teenagers need a catharsis too. You can’t just think of them as dumb.

It did have a good start, though. But the main ingredient failed. The myth you just might have fallen in love with, gets neglected by the author. Or, a less optimistic viewer might say the author didn’t know what to do with it. It’s like you have a god appear in your script and you don’t know what to put in his mouth, so you decide to let him be. But a silent god is still a declaration, so you decide to have him, but have him sleeping. And that’s about it to the series. You won’t hear it.