The story of Durarara begins when a boy named Ryuugamine Mikado (apparently his name sounds like either a manga hero or an air conditioner according to characters in the show) moves to Ikebukuro from the middle of nowhere, Japan to start high school in the big city with his best friend from a long time ago, Kida Masaomi (my personal favorite character). Don’t get the wrong idea though, Mikado isn’t really much of a main character. While I guess he is the main character, like Baccano! Which was also made by Brains Base, Durarara focuses more on the group as a whole than the individuals choosing to tell different episodes from different characters points of view with the first being told from Mikado’s POV. They do this for most of the first half of the show and then switch it up in the second half as everything comes together. I can’t say much about the story, since it is a show about secrets. Whether you realize it or not, all of the characters have something you won’t know about them just from looking at them or watching the first half of the show.
The art in Durarara is good, but you can easily see where they slacked. Similar to Brains Base’s other show, Mawau Penguindrum, they took the route of making ‘lazy background characters’ who are just colorless and ever present in this city. While I admit I do actually like this on most cases, it is still a little lazy. The sound for Durarara is good on the whole but it lacks any standout tracks to set it apart from everything else. Instead it just has great background music, but you won’t notice it much unless you focus your attention on it.
The characters are Durarara’s strongest point. It has a lot of main characters, but I’ll just talk about the most important ones, skipping Mikado since I already talked about him. Kida Masaomi is a boy who talked to Mikado over the internet after moving away many years ago. He loves talking and girls. Like most characters in this show, you won’t know why he’s my favorite character until the second half of the show, so I can’t say too much about him. Sonohara Anri is the female in the three-friend-group along with Mikado and Kida. She’s often picked on by girls for her large…. uh quantities of fan service as well being hit on by one perverted teacher. She tends to distance herself from everyone else having many problems that are revealed in the second half of the series along with everything else. Orihara Izaya is one of the biggest trolls in anime and probably the main antagonist in Durarara, though he mostly just acts as the catalyst to get everything moving. Izaya is an information dealer who knows almost everything, meaning he is the one person who knows just about everyone’s secrets. Heiwajima Shizuo, aka Ikebukuro’s Strongest, is a man gifted with incredible strength which he uses to throw everything that is unfortunate to be sitting on the street near him from lampposts to people. He is Izaya’s rival, though most fangirls just put them as a Yaoi couple. The last character I’ll talk about is Celty. She is a Dulahan, a headless rider from Celtic lore. She rides around on her motorcycle working as a courier, often for Izaya. She is the one character who is nice to almost everyone and helps out Mikado, Anri, and Shizuo on many occasions.
Overall, I really enjoyed Durarara!! It is one of my favorite shows with one of my favorite character casts. Just wait around for Episode 10 where everything starts to get really interesting as it goes into the second half around Episode 12. I highly recommend Durarara!! for everyone especially if you like Baccano!
