Durarara likes to rely on the 'Rule of Cool' but there's not much cool about it. It doesn't even have the complete pandemonium that makes its predecessor Baccano so great. It's not set onboard a zany animated Orient Express... It's just a normal city in Japan. They repeatedly reference a 'Color gang war', an apparently important event in the city's history, but we never learn anything interesting or important about it.
The characters aren't exception. You've a country bumpin... Who moved to the big city... To *sigh* GO TO HIGH SCHOOL.
Yoou've got a class rep with big tits with a dark secret, a dumbass pervert best friend, and oh big surprise, they're in a love triangle with the protagonist.
Side characters aren't special. You have anger issues man, slimy knife man, otakus, and token diversity character (tried to cross off a lot of squares, he's a giant black dude from Russia).
These characters get no development. Their introducitons are bland, their hastily added backstories are cringeworthy, and everything about them seems to exist just so you can tell them apart... Like NPCs in a bad video game.
The only character who gets any depth is Celty. She's a Dulahan (Headless spectre from Celtic mythology) in Japan searching for her lost head. I don't know if she's a good character of if she's just the only one who isn't terrible... But either way she's better than the rest. If I could change it, I'd focus on her story. Her motivations, conflicts, and interactions are easily the best part of the show, and the only reason the characters get a 5/10
The soundtrack isn's bad. Funk and jazz, very Baccano - the opening theme is almost comically similar. There's some amazing unconventional tracks with solo upright bass. Like Baccano, both the Japanese and the English dubs are great. Shame it doesn't save the show.
The animation isn't bad either, but it's not great. You get the sense they're saving the budget for a huge awesome payoff... That never happens. If you're gonna go full rule of cool it has to LOOK cool, not just average all the time.
Enjoyment? Well, if you watch the show as brainlessly as possible, you'll enjoy it for the first few episodes, but the flaws will quickly become impossible to ignore and you'll lose your patience, so when it gets boring it's really frustrating. It has a few good moments, but I found it hard to finish.
Everything that this show gets wrong, Baccano gets right. And everything that this show gets right, Baccano does better. This is obviously a tribute to Baccano, and honestly... If you want to watch a tribute to something, I'd recommend watching the real thing. Go watch Baccano instead. Durarara is a waste of your time.
This show has an absurdly volatile and defensive fanbase, which makes it even harder to like. They hype it up as a masterpiece, and it's so far from it, you're annoyed before you've made it halfway through.
