Durarara!! Review

Title: Durarara!! / デュラララ!!
Type: TV Series, 24 episodes
Genre: Action, Psychological, Romance, Supernatural
Themes: Gangs, High School, Dullahan, Social-Networking, Violence
Year: 08.01.2010 till 25.06.2010

Plot: Ryūgamine Mikado is a boy who longs for the exciting life of the big city. At the invitation of his childhood friend Masaomi, he transfers to a school in Ikebukuro. Masaomi has warned him about people he doesn’t want to cross in the city: a champion fighter, an informant, and a mysterious gang called “Dollars.” Nervous from Masaomi’s stories, Mikado witnesses an urban legend on his first day in the city, the Headless Rider astride a black motorcycle. From then on, the existence of supernatural cases and a gang called the Yellow Scarves will rise to the surface, and Ikebukuro will pushed to the breaking point.
ANN

Review:
Durarara kicked off on a pretty fast pace from episode one and through out the series, adrenaline rush is all over the place because of the insane variety of insane characters. Mikado seems always afraid of encountering either the headless rider, or one of those alleged gangs, or even worse the crazy and most powerful man Heiwajima Shizuo, but yet he’s excited and curious to meet any of them. You can sense that there’s something Mikado is hiding from the rest of his friends and specially his close childhood friend Masaomi and his newest friend that he met when he moved to Ikebukuro, Sonohara Anri. Masaomi Kida is always hyper and an energetic guy, whatever happens he always smiles, seems like he’s also hiding something behind that smile and he knows everybody in Ikebukuro, while Sonohara is not a talkative person at all. The headless rider who roams all over the city with her scary sounded black bike scares anyone sees her and she’s in an eternal quest to retrieve her stolen head. With the crazy events happening everyday in Ikebukuro, Mikado befriended the headless rider too who turned out that she’s such a nice helpful girl and she became known the headless rider no more, her name is Celty. Then there’s two guys one is trying to avoid the other, because whenever they see each they start a fight, they’re Heiwajima Shizuo and Orihara Izaya, Izaya is an informative who sells whatever information you’re looking for or a person trying to find or even an object. Shizuo has a natural power no man ever had, even he’s scared of it and can’t tell where it comes from.

Durarara!! has a big cast, each and everyone of them has his/her own story, explained in details in each episodes, and eventually they’re all connected to each other some way or another. Every individual in Ikebukuro is involved to either an underground gang, an institution or an incident. Also what makes the show crazy is how daring it is to have so many twist in the beginning of  series, although it loses its pace before it ends, but yet there’s something makes keep watching, it keeps you attached to it in a brilliant way, as what the classic animes used to have. One more thing to mention, the streets of Ikebukuro in the show are identical, no they’re EXACTLY the same as the real district.

Animation: 6/10
Storyline: 7/10
Characters: 8/10
OST: 8/10