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Friday, February 10, 2012

Posted by IceCreamNinja in News Articles August 03, 2010 at 08:51:53 AM

Written and directed by the same individuals responsible for the surprise 2007 hit Baccano!, Durarara!! offers yet another plunge into a richly realized world of quirky characters and complex relationships. In addition to another exclamation point at the end of the title, this latest offering shifts the action to the streets of modern day Ikebukuro while still managing to retain some of the earlier work’s more fantastical and paranormal elements that kept many fans of the prior series interested through to the end. Unlike Baccano!, it also refrains from the hectic time skips, flash forwards and flash backs that at times so twisted the prior series’ plot into a nigh-incomprehensible morass that it was all but impossible to accurately judge where one was on the show’s timeline.

Durarara!!, like its predecessor, is built on a massive cast of characters. There’s a black Russian sushi vendor who speaks Japanese in an odd and rhythmic manner, a bleached blonde bartender whose uncontrollable rage allows him to throw vending machines and punch a man so hard he literally flies right out of his clothing, a headless Celtic Dullahan on a silent motorcycle, and three apparently normal high school friends who each nevertheless conceal secrets of their own. Set against all of this is the backdrop of Ikebukuro, a lively neighborhood of Tokyo once famous for its gang problems and the seedier elements of Japanese society now employed in the series almost as a character in its own right. Throw in a few more gang leaders, otaku, illegal street physicians, evil informants, ruthless corporate leaders and crazy school girls, and what you are left with is a diverse cast and engaging setting with huge creative potential.

One of the most appealing aspects of the show is the way in which it anticipates and turns the expectations of the viewer in an unpredictable direction. There are countless points where, based on the assumptions of other works, it’s easy to predict or believe that one has predicted the outcome of a conflict or the nature of a character, only to see it then handled in an entirely new and unexpected way by the show’s creators. One of the best examples of this phenomenon is the amusing run-in Celty, the immortal, otherworldly headless rider, has with the local Tokyo motorcycle police. After being cornered by four officers in a deserted lot, she attempts to scare them with a frightening display of her power, only to have the lead officer calmly discuss at length how characters like themselves are often expected to be weak cowards or cannon fodder used simply to emphasize the strength of the protagonist. That’s fine by him, since it was fiction and there was nothing they could do. But if, as he says, “a monster, evil psychic, android or ninja actually does appear, I have only one thing to say: don’t underestimate the Traffic Police Force, monster,” –before relentlessly pursuing her for the rest of the day. Thus, for the rest of the season, Celty, the fantastical mythical scythe-wielding immortal becomes inordinately frightened of bike cops.

It seems to be the tendency of the author to develop a strong set of characters and then throw them together in an interesting setting without actually plotting out an overarching storyline beforehand. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but because it is predicated on the peculiar and often unexpected reactions of the characters to carry the plot, it does lead to some problems. Baccano!’s hook was immortal alchemists and a period train ride across Prohibition-era America. And while the characters and setting, when taken individually, were incredibly detailed and engaging, often, the motivations and reasons behind those character’s actions were lost in the chaos of the warped timeline and the bloody battle royal unfolding on the train. Durarara!! in contrast benefits from a longer season, and therefore can afford to spend time fleshing out the stories of its characters and the nature of their actions in the world. This in turn allows the audience to empathize with and connect to them far better than most of their counterparts in Baccano! Thus, Shizuo Heiwajima, the raging berserker who rips vending machines out of concrete and throws them ten city blocks, becomes a much more understandable and interesting character than Ladd Russo, the bloodthirsty hitman of the prior work, because the audience understands him better despite the fact that both characters look and act, at least superficially, as almost the same person.

The problem with this approach—in relying on setting and the quirks of one’s characters to carry the story—is that occasionally certain actions and plot points tend to feel hollow and contrived, especially when they appear to have no other purpose than to give the characters something to do or be opposed to in their free time. Make no mistake, Durarara!! is an incredibly enjoyable work that often plays against the audience’s expectations in surprising and creative ways. However, there are points where, for whatever reason, the author and the creators of the series simply fail to follow through. An early example of this is in how the series treats the storyline about the Dullahan and her quest to find her missing head. As she searches in the first half of the season, the audience slowly uncovers in pieces through the eyes of the show’s many characters a mysterious and possibly malicious pharmaceutical organization that in addition to holding her head is also quite probably kidnapping people and carrying out horrible human experiments. At various points in the first half of the show, we either see or hear about people being kidnapped, are told that these disappearances are the fault of the pharmaceutical company, are told that the subjects in the experiments never come back, see a subordinate in the company get threatened with forced induction into these experiments if he fails at a certain task, watch a man try to break into the company to save his girlfriend, and see the supposed results on a schoolgirl who seemingly was killed and somehow brought back.

All of this therefore conspires to paint this organization, in the audience’s mind at least, as the primary evil entity and that which must be overcome and subverted by the heroes by the end of the series. Or not, if this were a tragedy. Regardless, things seems set on this course until about the 13th episode, and then suddenly…nothing. We flash forward six months, the company is out of business, its CEO working for another character who eventually becomes something of the antagonist in the second half of the show, and all that talk about human experimentation, people disappearing and Celty’s search for her head falls by the wayside and are never really mentioned again. This thus has the effect of leaving the events witnessed in the first half of the season with a rather hollow pointlessness to them. Things are learned and new aspects about certain characters are revealed which are then explored in their own right in the latter half of the series, but because no resolution is offered for what seemly was the most important storyline of the show up to that point makes everything that happened seem as nothing more than an empty trick by the creators to ratchet up tension and drive the audience’s interest until they could either find a point for it all or shift the focus to something else they thought had more potential.

The fact that this happens at several points in the show, and particularly in relation to Celty, her search for her head, and the inconclusive resolutions surrounding the main antagonists, all conspire to hamstring Durarara!!’s story. Ultimately, the show comes off feeling more like a “day in the life of”-type work, where the audience is just along to watch weird characters acting weird and appreciate the relationships that develop between them, as opposed to a show with an actual engaging story to tell that comes with a definitive beginning, middle and end. And honestly, that’s okay. The show’s inherent style, its diverse cast of colorful characters, and the way in which it superbly populates the lively ward of Ikebukuro lets us overlook its occasional and peculiar failings. It still stands as one of the most original and engaging works to come out of the industry in recent years, and a nice improvement on the shortcomings of its predecessor. We can only hope that the creators continue to learn and develop their craft as they have in the past so that their next collaboration proves to be even better.

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