since Durarara as a franchise will have a total of 5 cours by the end of this winter. So here's the new plan. The second season of Durarara(titled rather unimaginably Durarara!!x2) which was split into 3 cours, will be reviewed by cour using the 'In 500 Words' format. In other words, each of Durarara!!x2's parts, Shou, Ten and Ketsu, will each receive a short 500 word summary by me explaining my thoughts on that part alone, and when I'm done with that, the first season will be reviewed in typical fashion, containing my more general thoughts on the franchise as peered through the lens of the first season rather than the more specific !!x2 cour-related stuff that this 3-part series will contain. Got all of that straight? No? Well then, if you can't follow something like that, you probably shouldn't be watching this show anyway.
Hello people of "The Wired", my name is Quan, I hope you're having a great day, and welcome to a new addition to 'In 500 Words'. Today, Durarara!!x2 Shou, the start to a second season that is promising to build to something great. Let's get started.
In 500 Words
The five year gap between Durarara's first season and Shou may in fact be its greatest weakness. It's rather abrupt seeing these characters after so long, brought to life by a new, rougher art-style and now entangled in a complicated web of relations with new characters we don't yet know; it all is a little alienating at first, especially when the first episodes of this new season are largely spent parading around the setting of Ikebukuro, a large deviation from the action-packed finale of season one. I can't hold that against Shou, however. Its job isn't easy. It needs to recover old fans of the franchise while attracting new ones, set the ground-work for a second season that will be spread over three cours, while still having a definite narrative of its own that has a beginning and end, and it had to accomplish all of this in just 12 episodes. When you look at it that way, it's actually quite amazing Shou turned out as well as it did.
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| Ikebukuro remains the same. Or maybe not. |
True, the beginning is slow and rather abrupt in its presentation, and while the writing is good, Durarara as a franchise has never held it accountable over fun action sequences and crazy characters. Sometimes I can't help but feel that Shou is simply adding things in order to make everything more complicated, because for all the setting-up it does for multiple characters arcs later on in !!x2, there are a few times it simply doesn't go anywhere, wasting precious time in a franchise whose pacing basically is already defined by being rushed and incoherent.
That's when it becomes frustrating, and that's when I sincerely get angry at this show, because it's too caught up in its own insanity to actually concentrate on the bundle of things it has on its hands that are actually really interesting, a pit-fall its older cousin Baccano! was able to side-step with flying colors. But I know that's redundant and unfair. If there's anything Shou was able to do, it was to define Durarara!! as its own entity, one that promises to end up in a very awesome place indeed by the end of all three cours of !!x2. And speaking of which.
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| The storm gathers. |
That's when it becomes frustrating, and that's when I sincerely get angry at this show, because it's too caught up in its own insanity to actually concentrate on the bundle of things it has on its hands that are actually really interesting, a pit-fall its older cousin Baccano! was able to side-step with flying colors. But I know that's redundant and unfair. If there's anything Shou was able to do, it was to define Durarara!! as its own entity, one that promises to end up in a very awesome place indeed by the end of all three cours of !!x2. And speaking of which.
The OP: "HEADHUNT"
Final Verdict: 7/10
P.S: "Then why are you smiling?"
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Find Me At:
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| https://hummingbird.me/users/Quan |
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| https://twitter.com/QuanReviews |
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