Monday, June 28, 2010

[Ended] Durarara: The Best of 2010


Just like Baccano!, Durarara is very intricately constructed, every single piece of the clue, no matter how insignificant it looks at the time of introduction, all became useful contribution toward the grand puzzle in the end.

The early part of of the story is somewhat confusing, in fact, it's almost chaotic. However, having already seen Baccano!, I was somewhat expecting it. Instead of hopping back and forth in time, it hops between people: most early episodes were told using first person narrative from different people, in a daisy chain manner. What's more interesting is the fact they are introducing characters in a deceiving way: in the end, all characters ended up being something different as they originally seemed. In fact, in a way, the whole story is a big deception: in the beginning, it seems the story is all about headless rider and her head. Slowly, by shifting one step at a time, the story shifted its focus off the Celty and became something completely different.

Oh, yeah, one last thing to note, like Baccano!, there are lots, I mean lots, of names to memorize. What's worse (depends on your language background), unlike Baccano!, most names are Japanese. So to most English speakers, it's not nearly as easy to remember as they are in Baccano! where all people have western names.

Final scoreboard:

Drama: 93 (Lots)
Comedy: 88 (Good enough)
Action: 91 (Dark)
Art/Animation: 88 (Interesting)
Sound/Music: 90 (good)
Character: 95 (Lots, and lots)
Plot: 97 (Well constructed)
Ending: 91 (Solution for everything)

Re-watch value: 80 (Because there are so much information, you might catch some more details you missed first time)

Overall: 92 - Very Interesting

Recommendation: Well, I said it for Angel Beats!, and I'll say the same thing for Durarara: if there is one long season anime you have to watch from the first half of 2010, this would be it. Because it's getting my

Best Long Season Action/Drama for Top Half of 2010

award.

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