Review of Durarara!!

this show is a mess. and that's not necessarily a bad thing. in fact, it's the show's strength. with its massive cast of characters, interweaving plotlines, nonlinear storytelling, and jumbled mess of quirky themes highlighted by an equally-quirky score, it's hard to find a show that's quite as unorthodox. the best parts of the show derive from this messiness. seeing bits and pieces of an event, stretched out over several episodes like an art was entertaining as hell, especially since the characters (the CRUX of a show like this) were all so diverse and just straight-up fun to watch. durararararararara!!!! is a bigass ball ofmulti-colored yarn: it's a clusterfuck, it's a big jumble of threads that seemingly have nothing in correlation to each other, but when you unravel it, you find that GASP! it's all CONNECTED.

it was fun as shit to see how exactly all of these plot threads and characters were connected, and again, the storytelling style of this show, with its nonlinear insanity and timeskipping/forwarding/rewinding really added to the experience.

so it fucking sucks that the show was bogged down by one thing: linearity.

i don't know if it was the studio decision to make it more audience-friendly or what, but after the first arc or so, durararararararararararararara!! honestly got tiresome.

and surprise surprise, it got the most tiresome when the show began to start telling its narrative in a traditional manner, revolving around the three main characters.

yes, it was very exciting to see the twists and identities of these characters become revealed, but God, did we really need TWENTY FOUR episodes around them and their arcs? the momentum from the first handful of episodes was effectively stomped out when the show slowed down to a molasses crawl trying to focus on them, and it became a chore to follow through and see the inevitable plot threads and tensions come to a head in the climax.

if it weren't for all of that meandering around, all of that pesky linear, traditional storytelling that bogged down the insane, nonlinear momentum in the first quarter of the show, the inertia would have kept going to really have made this first season of dura! something truly special.

but oh well.

regardless, the show still has excellent, consistent art design, fantastic direction, a great score, and, most importantly (this is the reason why i don't flat out just don't like this show), fun and diverse and engaging characters that will hold your attention all the way through, even during the show's lowest points.

this ball of yarn may drag and sag, but when it becomes unraveled, it explodes.