1. There would have to be a train in one piece.
2. It would have to be on a set of railroad tracks.
3. It would have to be capable of moving in some direction.
Durarara!! is more like starting off with all of the train cars scattered across the yard, then having an earthquake and expecting them to somehow find each other AND put themselves in the correct order. (Nevermind getting on a track AND traveling somewhere.)
To put it in layman's terms: DRRR is a mess. There is no logical flow or coherence or reason in events that happen throughout the course of the series. I wonder what "Durarara" actually means; if I were to venture a guess, I'd say "crazy shit happening why because it's cool does it make sense no but that's okay because it's cool." In the first two episodes alone, they introduce a number of characters not much less than two dozen. How many of them actually end up being significant? Well, not many. How many of them is it possible to care for? Not many. Then why the hell are we wasting so much screentime? No idea.
The pacing makes absolutely no sense. In the first 7-8 episodes, nothing of any real importance happens at all: just a bunch of tiny events that one would think COULD be setting the stage for much more important things later on, but really aren't. Basically, all they do is establish the fact that "this is our city and crazy shit happens sometimes." Well, ain't that wonderful. It took you that long? When things DO finally start happening, they come out of nowhere, get dropped and forgotten abruptly, picked up again just as abruptly, and end anticlimacticly in some aesop... er, cute little outro about how "things went back to normal" for them er... whatever. Yeah, in a city where crazy shit is supposed to be a regularity? Guess how long that lasts. These little expositions simply serve as bookends that define where one arc ends and another begins. They may as well just say, "Okay this arc is over now; time for the next one," and it would have the same effect.
The writers obviously have no clue about what the concepts of buildup and foreshadowing are. Granting for the sake of argument that there is in fact a complete train on the tracks and it is in fact in motion, the train is screeching and lurching and starting and stopping and running off the tracks then back ON the tracks and skipping stations randomly and... Well, you get the idea. Here's one example: Out of nowhere, it is revealed that some dude started a group called the Dollars. There is absolutely ZERO allusion that this may have been the case previously; ZERO hints dropped to get us thinking. Nope. They just throw the fact in your face when it becomes relevant and expect you to accept it. Why did he do it? BECAUSE HE WAS BORED.
That brings me to another problem: Characterization occurs as the plot demands. Suddenly, CRAZY SHIT HAPPENING OMG WTF WHY. What's that? It's all about some character who seemed completely insignificant until now? Uh-oh. Time for a flashback. --5 minutes later-- "And that's how he/she got to where they are today" or "this is the secret he/she has been hiding." Er... wut? 'Scuse you? Another example: Suddenly, the guy with superhuman strength is saying that he's always hated his powers. Wait, what? He's been using them liberally on people, in front of people the entire show, and hasn't seemed to care in the slightest. Okay... There also seems to be a character who they were occasionally, half-assedly trying to paint as some type of MASTER OF PUPPETS AND I PULL YOUR STRINGS, but it's honestly impossible to tell whether he had any REAL significant role in the matters at hand or not.
The more I think about it, the more DRRR reminds me of Guilty Crown--in that GC ALSO likes to throw a shitstorm at you and then try to explain it as though it made sense afterwards. (Oh gawd; drawing parallels to Guilty Crown; not a good sign.) At least DRRR doesn't do it to quite an extreme degree.
The only exception to this trend is the case of one person whom they actually do a half-decent job dropping hints about the possibilities of his past and connections. Why couldn't they do that for everyone else?
*sigh* Anyway, on to sound and art. The OPs and EDs leave a bad taste in my mouth; there's no other way to describe it. The OST is composed entirely of a bunch of slow, nonchalant, beep-boopidy xylophone tracks that sound pretty much the same--regardless of the events transpiring on screen. No, actually, I think it's the SAME EXACT SONG over and over again. (At least it sounds like it.) The animation is generally pretty nice, although some big corners are cut at points--usually action sequences. One time, a mob of generic, unimportant people (signified by the fact that they're completely gray) is attacking someone, and they all somehow morph together into one giant amorphous BLOB. Seriously, guys: they're all gray. At LEAST draw some lines in there so it looks like they haven't turned into some monster out of a '50s B-stock horror film.
So why the hell is DRRR's mean score so high? Your guess is honestly as good as mine. To its credit, it DOES have come pretty cool characters (Shizuo, Izaya, and Celty [rest are trash]), and there ARE some cool moments (almost always revolving around one of these 3 characters). (Again, seriously: why do we spend so much time looking at dumb/pointless characters? If they had just capitalized on the decent ones...) Crispin Freeman and Johnny Yong Bosch put on a great show as always. But that's it. Some cool points.
OH I ALMOST FORGOT. They seem to REALLY enjoy throwing the word "love" around in the show A LOT. No, I don't think you get it. They do it. A. LOOOOOOTTTT. There's this whole ordeal about a guy who "falls in love" with a head in a jar. His obsession is nothing less than what can be classified clinically as a mental illness. Love WHAT? And that's not even the HALF of that story. Seriously some of the most screwed up shit I've ever heard. If I recall correctly, there's exactly ONE situation where the word is used that isn't mind-bendingly perverse or nauseatingly messed up.
The series really isn't very memorable in any way. I've already forgotten most of what happened (except for the seemingly important stuff and cool doods). Hell, I've already forgotten most of what happened in the episodes I watched just LAST NIGHT. I think 17 episodes is more than enough to base an accurate review off of; if, after 17 episodes, it's still so physically painful to keep watching the show, then for the sake of my mental state, I refuse to keep going.
