Durarara!! x2 Sho

Title:Durarara!! x2 Sho
デュラララ!!×2 承
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , , ,
Notables:
A half a year after the events of the first season, Ikebukuro has begun to return to normal. High school is in session, Izaya is back to scheming, and Celty, the legendary headless rider, is still chased by the police as she rides through the town. But a few unusual things have slipped into the mix. Gradually, thanks to outside elements, Ikebukuro will be thrown back into chaos.
(Summary Courtesy of Anime News Network)


Series premiered on January 10, 2015.
Animated by Studio Shuka
[edit] The ↗Durarara!! franchise:

OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent 8 8 8 6 7 7 Ggultra2764 [series:3003#1552]
Continuing from its first season, Durarara x2 Sho retains most of the cast from the original series with some new characters entering the mix as Ikebukuro gets caught in another gang war when Izaya manipulates in-fighting with members of the Dollars and Shizuo gets caught in the middle of a conflict between yakuza and Russian abductors as he makes off with the daughter of an influential member of said yakuza. Whereas the original series had multiple story arcs, it seems like this season decided to focus around multiple ones with some rather mixed results. Several of the new characters get enough fleshing out where you can care for what happens with them, though others are underdeveloped and there are points where this new conflict can get hard to follow what goes on. Much of this difficulty has to do with the rather large cast of Durarara as 12 episodes is rather limited time to devote enough focus with many of the major characters from the first season getting caught up in the mess and get little development since the series is trying to keep up on giving screen time to the cast. A couple major shocking twists in the finale meant to continue the plot into the second part of Durarara x2 are decent hooks, though the series will have to tighten up its storytelling to devote more focus on relevant characters for whatever story it wants to tell instead of dragging in mostly irrelevant characters that get little in the way of fleshing out.

Last updated Saturday, March 28 2015. Created Saturday, March 28 2015.
Unevaluated Stretch [series:3003#628]
(One episode watched):

It looks like no less than two TV series have already been green-lighted as sequels for Durarara 2. If the series is excellent, that'll be good news. But if it is anything less, I'll be reluctant to sign on for such an extended run. The longer an anime runs, the better it needs to be in order to hold my interest to the end. I recall that the original Durarara started off with an intriguing mystery--why is there a headless girl riding a motorcycle around Tokyo?--but then wandered off into a somewhat less interesting romantic triangle of which she was not a member. Episode one of D2 is encouraging in that Celty, the headless girl, seems to be the main character again. Otherwise, it basically reintroduces the countless other characters in the cast, and there are so many that there isn't time for anything else to happen. So, the jury is still out as to whether D2 and its successors will be worth watching. It's always possible that there never will be any explanation of Celty, and she's just a wild character that we are expected to accept without asking questions. Apparently six months are supposed to have passed since the end of D1 (or the couple of specials), but for us viewers it's more like six years. Another good sign was that after all this time I still had at least a vague memory of who most of the characters were, and that is something which is very easy for me to lose after an unremarkable series ends. Nobody will ever accuse Durarara of not having enough colorful characters.

...and when the time came to watch episode two, and really get the story underway, I found I just couldn't summon any interest to do so. Maybe it was a 'fool me once, shame on you' sort of thing after the original series had spent so much time on the triangle rather than Celty. While the characters remain vivid, I don't recall ever having any that I really liked and cared about. They seemed a little too cool, like show-offs to me. They have nothing in common with me. It seems that Celty is simply some sort of Irish spirit, which means there probably won't be any plausible explanation of her forthcoming. And I don't recall Durarara making me laugh. So, I would rather watch re-runs of shows I liked than commit myself to this extended run of Durarara. The original series wasn't good enough to justify the time and trouble that the lengthy run of D2 and sequels will require.

Last updated Sunday, February 22 2015. Created Thursday, January 15 2015.

Other Sites
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Official Japanese Series Web Site http://www.durarara.com/

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