Durarara!! - Ever Try to Fit a Motorcycle in an Elevator?

So I just finished watching through the entity of the twenty five episodes of Durarara!!, and I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about what I watched. But I'm not sure that taking more time to deliberate on it would help me decide.

I'll start with the good. This is the slickest, most well produced and presented anime I've ever seen. The effort that went into this series shows from top to bottom. This series has the best openings and credits I've ever seen. I normally grow a seething hatred of anime openings, but I still like both of the opening and endings the series used. They are just that well done. The also though to put that tedious recap bullshit that animes are know for inside the openings, which makes them much easier to stomach, despite making the openings weight in at a meaty two minutes.

The series also has a really great soundtrack, but then again I'm a sucker for vibraphones. Once they turned on the motors there was no hope for me.

Beyond those superficial qualities, there are just a lot of things that I feel are holding this series back. The characters aren't terribly deep or nuanced, but they are entertaining nonetheless. Shizuo easily cemented himself as one of my favorite anime characters just for being so goddman entertaining. Celty is easily the most sympathetic and emotive character in the entire series, which is pretty ironic if you are at all familiar with her.

The plot is also all over the place. It's once part highschool story, one part super-natural thriller, and one part crime drama. And none of them ever come together in a satisfying way. It all comes to a head in the last two episodes, but before that it's all a nebulous mess.

But the biggest problem the series has is it's second arc. Once it shifted it's focus away from Celty, the series really looses steam and charm as it devolves into stereotypical anime melodramatic naval-gazing bullshit. It also features a major thread focusing on Anri, and she can go fuck right off.

The entire sub is on Crunchyroll and the dub (which is actually quite good) is on Adult Swim on Saturday's if you're an American.

Despite how overly negative this sounds, I recommend that you take a look at it. I don't feel like I wasted my time watching it (like I did with Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt), but if you aren't feeling it by about the fourth episode then you can safely duck out since you'll have pretty much meet everyone and none of them really change. Except Celty.

I just started watching it recently. I'm up to episode 16 now? There were a lot of interesting plot twists in the first half of the series. I really like Celty and Shizuo, too.

Which version did you watch, the dub or sub? As good as the dub is, I do feel like Shizou and his interactions with Izaya loose a bit of their shine in the dub.

I watched the sub. But I just looked up the English voices and holy fuckkkkkkkkk OMG like all of my favorite English VAs in one place I'm going to have to watch it in English. Crispin Freeman and Kari Wahlgren and Kirk Thornton and Bridget Hoffman and Michelle Ruff.

Fangirling over, I just finished watching it. I actually thought Anri was pretty cool and I liked her part in the story.