Or uh, Dyurarara, or Dulalala, or DRRR.. hell, I dunno, everyone and their mother calls it something different. anyway it's most commonly romanized Durarara!! so we're going with that.
I didn't watch this when it was airing because I was too distracted with other shows (I can't remember what now, must have been amazing huh?) But I came across it hosted on 4shared on accident, and since nothing decent is airing on the weekends.. why not. I've heard good things.
I've heard many things actually. So many, I actually had no idea what it was about. Headless Irish fae monster? Gang fighting in Tokyo? Love triangle? Internet fads? Man with super strength? Katana wielding spirit?
The answer is yes. Yeah, all of that, and some other things.
So I started watching, and immediately had trouble telling what genre I was supposed to be in the mood for, as you'd expect with a plot lineup like that. Basically, you have to be ready to switch from comedy to action on a dime was the general feel I got, and be able to read either Japanese or subtitles really fast because there's a character who speaks with text and a lot of internet chatrooms.
What I'd really like to do is introduce the main characters, but not only is that riddled with spoilers, almost every character in the series is a main character. I suppose Mikado, a boy who heads to the city of Ikebukuro at the urging of his best friend, would count for this but much of the series is focused on varying people and events.
In the end all the characters wind up having their plots entwined, making something as simple as trying to show you the focal characters look something like this:
And that's still missing a few characters I would have included.
I'm definitely not complaining though, the characters made this worth watching no contest. I don't think there was a single character I didn't like - I mean I didn't like them because they were evil or something, but they were all really well written. The relationships between the characters are completely believable, which is good since half the show relies on the connections between people to tell the story.
There are a lot of people to keep track of, but the series manages it flawlessly with the intermingling relationships of everyone that's introduced. You start to know and care about who everyone is because the way they fit into this enormous circle of people is so clear.
The only issue with the characters I found was the series tendency to forget about certain minor ones for a time, or in some cases never go back to them after establishing a role for them. This includes a police officer, a father, and a girl and her boyfriend among other people, they just sort of dropped out of the show after their section was done.
This is probably due to episode constraints though and is likely written in more depth in the manga, which I haven't read yet.
Other than that, I was really happy with the way the show went even though it does sound like it was all over the bloody place. What seems like random events and unrelated side plots actually tie in together in a fantastic way that answered most of my questions. What wasn't answered was left in a pleasantly open way that lets me make things up for myself.
It was a really exciting series with twists and turns and some intense fight scenes just to make sure you're still paying attention. There's also a few scenes where fights are attempting to be prevented which I thought were more exciting than the actual battles.
I don't want to spoil anything because even explaining the name of the show is an unfortunate giveaway and I think a lot of the fun part of this anime is not knowing what is what. With that horrible excuse for a series description, I definitely recommend it.
Durarara!! is the property of its creators, owners and licensers
No comments:
Post a Comment