Reviews

You must let yourself be seduced by Ikebukuro - that is, if you want to continue enjoying Durarara. New cours of DRDR have all faced similar criticisms: the cast continues to grow beyond what can be expected, the art is at times shoddy, the vast number of subplots are at times difficult to keep track of, the pacing is glacial. DRDR inches forward one subplot after another over the span of several weeks, and beloved characters like, say, Simon, are put on the backburner, though paraded about for what seems more like fan service than necessity. Simon, ever the minor character, is not the only one, though; even Shizuo and Celty are more withdrawn in this cour, often appearing without their usual significance, while Orihara Izaya receives more screentime, and backstory, than ever before. This may be regrettable to some – perhaps it even feels as if Ikebukuro is no longer as recognizable.

Indeed, as the show wraps itself up in more and more intrigue, introducing and emphasizing individuals and groups with ease, DRDR's trademark sense of ambiguity becomes a liability. Huge casts, after all, tend to fall along moral lines, with groups of Good and groups of Bad, giving the viewer some mental freedom to assign characters into digestible categories. DRDR is not so merciful. Everyone is a character – not a character type, as they almost all seem on the surface, and as usual the unique style of narration, vintage Ryogo Narita, feeds us stories about the inner and outer lives of the cast.

There are problems of clarity with the plot, too, as the light novels, dense with information, grow even more difficult to adapt. This is, of course, a recipe for disaster; more characters come in, developing more subplots, and resulting in a need for more information. However, this is not as overblown as some have made it, and by and large DRDR remains the comprehensible mess it's always been.

But, when DRDR works, it works extremely well. When the unique, though now predictable, formula of chaos that governs Ikebukuro produces a major plot point, the result is pure gold. DRDR lives off an implicit promise it has with the viewer: that what is insignificant or unclear alone will become significant when whole. It's to the benefit of the viewer that DRDR tends to work, that all of its kinks and issues do not for the most part stop a satisfying result.

I am keen to admit DRDR's flaws, if only because I consider the majority of them the inherent risks involved in using an ensemble cast to depict the life of a city – which, as a choice of style/narration, does not seem to me worth harping on about. There are legitimate criticisms along the lines of pacing and cast, I'm sure, but I myself hardly notice any of those sort of problems. As always, the soundtrack – integral to the narrative – is fantastic, and the pacing, if glacial, has not disheartened me in the slightest.

But I have, I admit, been seduced by Ikebukuro. When DRDR is at its best, it is a masterpiece; and when it isn't at its best, it's still more interesting than the vast majority of anime. If you are burning to know the mystery behind Celty and Seika, or what the schemes of Yodogiri Jinnai will result in, and so forth, the pace may perturb you. But my mild curiosity about these things is overwhelmed, completely, by my interest, at times almost Izaya-like, in DRDR's Ikebukuro and its abnormal residents; and it is for the atmosphere of Ikebukuro, the air that seems to tingle with mystery and the unknown even with characters we know the best, that I continue to watch DRDR.