Durarara - 10
This is a question to the Japanese people who happen to stumble upon this post. It’s something I’ve been wondering for quite a while now: are punks in Japan really such incredible morons? I mean, in just about every anime out there, punks dress like ridiculous Elvis rejects. I’ve seen a few series here and there that portray them differently (Kaze no Yojimbo for example), but the overwhelming majority of animated punks all have strange haircuts and over-the-top accents. Are those kinds of people really common on the Japanese streets, or is it a stereotype that evolved into this medium?
In any case, this episode’s big twist was Mikado’s sudden change of character. Now it makes sense why the creators chose such a seemingly dull lead character, as they had interesting plans for his character-development. Rather than being your typical loser, he was more like an alarm-clock, waiting to go off, and I think that his weird name was a bit of a hint for that.
The color gangs still are a big mystery at this point. This showed that they don’t actually meet face to face, but instead are a bit of an online community that happens to be stationed at Tokyo. I’m not exactly sure how that works, to be honest, but I believe that those chatboxes have a much bigger role than what they seemed to be at first. Also note the previous episode, in which Izaya’s chatbox was completely empty. Seeing as how he’s likely to also be involved with those dollars, that might have been a bit of a strange hint.
One thing I noticed was that this episode was one of the most linear ones out there. Really, nearly the entire episode was focused on Mikado aside from a scene or two, and there only were a few tiny flashbacks. It was surprisingly straightforward, and with this series I have no idea whether the creators intend to be more linear in the next number of episodes, or whether it was another one of those “build-up” episodes that’s there to give the future episodes the chance to go all out.
Rating: * (Good)