Durarara!! x2 Shou

Episodes 1-2 (Streaming on Crunchyroll) – This review contains spoilers.

“Biologically speaking, if something bites you, it’s more likely to be female.” – Desmond Morris. 

Perhaps the biggest of the returning titles of this season, Durarara!! is back, and once again it is full of all sorts of strange stories and even stranger people.

The series takes place six months after the end of the last and continues to look at the more unusual residents of Ikebukuro, Tokyo. None, of course, are stranger than the “Black Rider” herself: Celty Sturluson, an Irish dullahan or headless horsewoman (turned biker) who is still searching for her missing head, unaware that it is currently in the possession of the amoral and sadistic information broker Izaya Orihara. Celty is still making money as a transporter, while living with underground doctor and love interest, Shinra Kishitani.

Currently Celty is making some extra money from Shinra’s gasmask-wearing father Shingen by being experimented on by Shingen’s new love, Emilia. But after leaving with her latest payment, Celty gets chased by both the cops and TV crews wanting to reveal the true identity of the Black Rider. While she does manage to escape, during the chase she accidentally loses all the money she has earned, and now a TV company is offering a ten billion yen award to anyone who reveals her identity.

Meanwhile, things have moved on for Mikado Ryugamine, founder of the online gang known as the “Dollars”. He and his friend Anri Sonohara are now second years at the school, and once again are together in the same class, but their old friend Masaomi Kida is now no longer there, following the “Yellow Scarves” incident. Mikado has to deal with (amongst other things) a new arrival in the school called Aoba Kuronuma, who figures out that Mikado is one of the “Dollars” and joins their ranks. Kuronuma asks for Mikado to show him the sites of Ikebukuro, a task Mikado thinks is easier by taking advice from otaku duo Walker Yumasaki and Erika Karisawa.

There is also a pair of twin sisters in the school: Mairu and Kururi, who are already pretty disturbing even by Ikebukuro standards. Mairu dresses like a bookworm but is very outgoing, claiming to everyone in class that, among other things, she likes encyclopaedias, manga and porn. Also, when Mairu gets bullied, her way of getting back is trying to force people to swallow drawing pins. Kururi, meanwhile, dresses in her gym uniform but is very quiet, and in fact even more aggressive than Mairu. 

So far these opening episodes have been setting the beginning of the story and the new characters. Some old favourites have made appearances, such as super-strong and easily-angered Shizuo Heiwajima, while the end of the most recent episode referred to the Russian Sushi restaurant, so we can probably expect an appearance from Simon Brezhnev.

But already the many of the new characters have been leaving a good impression. The twins certainly came on with a bang – or to be precise, setting someone’s bag on fire. The narration is, of course, a strong point. I was personally rather fond of Shinra’s narration of the second episode, which he did while trapped inside a black orb created by Celty. It is also the first of the narrations in which you see the narrator breaking the fourth wall and deliberately talking to the viewer on camera.

The soundtrack is also good. Most people tend to be of the opinion that the opening song, “Headhunt” by Okamoto’s, is better than the ending, “Never Say Never” by Three Lights Down Kings, primarily because the latter uses quite a lot of Autotune, but I personally think both are good.

It looks like this series should be as good as the first, but we still have quite a bit to go, so it is best to wait and see if it lives up to the high expectations.