Review of Durarara!!

Durarara is an interesting take on the urban fantasy genre, and was one of the best anime series to come out of its respective season. The subs great, so is the dub. The only thing that left me disappointing was that this series is obviously a "commercial" of sorts for the series of light novels.... light novels that will almost certainty never be officially translated. The art in Durarara is some of the crispest I've ever seen. Every scene was crafted with 1080p in mind, and you will be missing out if you don't at least watch it in 780p. The aesthetic where unimportant-to-the-plot charactersappear as grey silhouettes allowed the animators to portray Ikebukuro as bustling as it actually is without dumping their entire budget into crowd animation or relying on tacky still-frames. The sights and sounds of the city are perfectly recreated, from humid subway stations to cramped restaurants and dark alleys. It makes you understand how city dwellers fall in love with their cities.

The story in Durarara is a web of intersecting plots, plans, grudges, and coincidences. It's a character centric story, and the episodes are just as likely to deal with foiling a kidnappings, investigating a corrupt biomedical group, or breaking up a gang war as they are to deal with everyday things such as a visit by obnoxious in laws or sibling relations. It's an interesting mix, as there is quite a bit of drama and action, but there are slice of life elements as the series reminds us that these people's lives do no revolve around the central conflict every waking hour. The downside, due to the fact that the anime is based on an ongoing light novel series, is that many loose threads are left hanging during the last episode. the plot arc in the second season, dealing with an entity known as "Saika", starts out scary but winds up falling face first into every item on the yandere cliche checklist. While it is not enough to scuff the great overall story of Izaya VS pretty-much-everyone, the use of those cliches did put a damper on what was otherwise a very original tale.

As stated before, characters are Durarara's strong point, and it has a ton of them. It's almost too much of a good thing, as there's not enough screen time to divide amongst the two-dozen-plus fully fleshed out characters. While Celty may be the main character, Durarara treats nearly everyone's story as equally important. Unlike Narita's preceding work to be adapted to anime, "Baccano!", Durarara only jumps from character to character, instead of jumping from year to year AND character to character like the former.

Musically Durarara has a solid soundtrack with quite a few memorable pieces. While there are some mishaps (such as the violin piece that's supposed to play during heartwarming scenes but instead invokes an aura of cheesiness) the overall quality of the soundtrack overshadows it's flaws. The jazz pieces are especially great, capturing the atmosphere of a city at night perfectly.

Overall, Durarara is an experience unlike anything else and worth checking out. It's a fun ride that's over far too soon.