DRRR!!x2 begins rather slowly. In fact, it feels quite a bit slower than the first season since the new characters (at least, the new focus on different characters) aren’t very compelling in the beginning. The Orihara twins are downright strange, and the anime gives no explanation or justification for their strangeness. They experience no real growth or change in the show; they’re weird from the start and just as weird at the end. The show seems to expect viewers to simply accept that the girls are weird because they’re related to Izaya, who is undoubtedly very unusual. The Hollywood serial killer isn’t interesting; we have no idea why the pop idol kills people or why she resists killing Yuuhei. As a character, she lacks dimension. Like the twins, she simply sticks out of weaving of DRRR!! without any apparent connection to the other characters except Yuuhei who inexplicably likes her. We see that she considers herself a monster and compares herself to Shizuo, Yuuhei, and Celty, but she can’t decide whether she pities them or whether she admires them. Yuuhei is boring; he adds interest and dimension to Shizuo’s background and personality, but Yuuhei himself doesn’t add much to the show.
Honestly, all of the scenes involving Hijiribe Ruri/Hollywood, Yuuhei, the cat, and the stalker should have been omitted. They don’t add nothing to the main story, don’t offer any explanations for events or opportunities for meaningful character development, and don’t result in a conclusion by the end of the second arc. The only reason Ruri seems to matter in the big picture is her connection to Yodogiri Jinnai, but that group could have logically been introduced with its trouble with the yakuza and Izaya. As a viewer, I have no investment in Ruri’s wellbeing, no interest in her vague past, and no idea why she was put in the mix at all. The stalker arc essentially ends with the stalker(s) still on the street, potentially plotting for future trouble that is not even mentioned in the last episodes of the season. Yuuhei’s attraction to Ruri makes little sense since all he knows about her is that she’s killed several people, and he doesn’t even care to know the explanation for her crimes. The show hints that Ruri killed the people who were involved in her father’s murder, but we don’t know why he was murdered or why Ruri agreed to work with Yodogiri in the first place except as part of a desire to be “a real monster” as a pop star. The show doesn’t even bother to explain how a pop star is like a monster from Ruri’s or Yodogiri’s point of view.
One possible cause for the lack of apparent connection between the characters and lack of depth in each new character is the fact that there are so many new characters in the second season. My sister and I struggled to remember who was who when a character mentioned someone else by name. Even worse, most of these characters don’t seem to matter in the long run, and far too much time is spent on showing their back stories and showing their conversations that could conclude in a few seconds. The addition of Varona works for me, but her character isn’t developed quite enough. Sloan makes sense as her partner, but he isn’t seen much in the show, so I find that I don’t care about him. Akabayashi is an interesting character, and I appreciate his connection to both the yakuza and Anri. The brother and sister who run the dojo where Mairu Orihara trains don’t seem important at all—why do they help Izaya even though Izaya seems to have been involved in the woman’s rape? Why do we have to know about them at all?
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| Eijirou Sharaku. Durarara!! by Ryohgo Narita and Suzuhito Yasuda and published by ASCII Media Works. |
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| Mikage Sharaku |
Seriously, who are these two?
I get the feeling that DRRR!!x2 is trying to pull off the indirect-and-multifasceted connections method, which is great and probably the perfect way to organize the complexity of both the plot and characters, characters who change and grow dynamically and realistically. With this method of showcasing connections in mind, the second season deals with the introduction of Aoba and the return of Izumii, the former leader of Blue Square who caused many of the problems that come to impact Mikado, Anri, and Masaomi in the first season. Aoba has resurrected Blue Square and apparently wants to take over the Dollars just as Blue Square attempted to take over the Yellow Scarves in the previous season. Already, this goal is boringly obvious. We don’t even have to wait for Aoba to tell us what he wants to do to know his plan—he is suspicious from the moment he is introduced in the second season. His strange decision to allow a group of girls to deface the Orihara twins’ desks and then rat the girls out speaks of an Izaya-like penchant for trouble. However, I think my real bias against him began when I saw his eyebrows. Those brows are not trustworthy.
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| Aoba Kuronoma. |
When we learn his identity, he becomes immediately the kind of interesting, unpredictable character that is familiar to the first season. Then he reveals his goal.
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| Aoba Kurunoma, referring to Blue Square as the sharks who are to infiltrate the deep waters of the Dollars and take over the organization. DRRR!!x2 episode 22 |
He wants to make the Yellow Scarves and the Dollars actually fight a war in the streets. Which was Izaya’s goal for the second season. Which means either he will team up with Izaya or Izaya will find something else to preoccupy him. So… no new plot, really.
However, the second season fails to show meaningful and deep connections between the characters. The characters in the first season, however, connect on multiple levels. I categorize the original cast in three main groups of what I call Underground Ikebukuro: the high schoolers/low-level underground people, the street workers/mid-level underground, and the Big Money/high-tier underground. Masaomi, Anri, Mikado, Mika, Seiji, and pretty much all the other high-school age characters, along with the reporter Niekawa, fit in the first group. Kadota/Dotachin, Walker, Erika, Togusa, Shizuo, and Tom comprise the mid-level underground. Simon and Dennis also fit in this group despite their high connections with Russian assassins/gangsters. Izaya, Yagiri Pharmaceuticals, Namie Yagiri, Jinnai Yodogiri, and Shinra’s father clearly make up the high-tier underground with their large financial privilege and essentially unrestricted access to resources. Using this description of the high-tier underground, I would classify the yakuza as part of this group, but their hierarchy logically includes mid-level workers. Celty and Shinra are like the yakuza to me; they dwell mostly in the mid-level underground, but they have strong connections to the high-tier underground.
Mikado and his two friends are low level, but they connect to the mid-level and high-tier through the Dollars, Yellow Scarves, Saika babies, Kadota and friends, Izaya, and Celty. Mika and Seiji connect to mid-levelers via the Dollars and to high-levelers via Yagiri Pharma and Seiji’s sister. Celty and Shinra know pretty much everyone thanks to Shinra’s father and Izaya. Izaya knows everyone because he’s Izaya and tends to get involved with mid-level kidnappers and Celty’s transportation business. The actual gangs Dollars and Yellow Scarves are mostly mid level, but the Dollars encompasses low-level underground and regular people as well.
In the second season, the most successfully dynamic characters are those with multiple connections. The Russians connect to Simon and Dennis and seem to have high-tier connections with Yodogiri and the yakuza, and Varona partners up with Shizuo, thereby tying her to the mid-level underground. Egor is a bit of a mystery, but he’s probably mid-level to high-tier only. Akabayashi appears to be a high-tier yakuza, but he is close with Anri, who is mid-level with Saika, and is seen cooperating with Celty and Niekawa, the latter of whom is low-level. On the other hand, Aoba is strictly mid-level, as are the Orihara twins as far as I know, as are the unexplained Amphisbaena and Heaven’s Slave and. . . that one guy (Nakura) who seems to have started both of those groups and is now being psychologically tortured by Izaya. I’m not sure about Izumii; he seems to have been mid-level for a long time and still seems to be, but his connection to Izaya may put him closer to the higher tier. Ruri is basically a normal person being used by high-tier people, but her actions as a murderer and relationship to Shizuo’s brother Kasuka put her in either the low- or mid-level. But Kasuka is not an undergrounder himself, so Ruri’s connection to the mid-level is tenuous. The dojo people know the Orihara twins, mid-levelers, and now also Akane, potentially high-tier because of her yakuza family but still too young to really be an undergrounder, but they seem to be normal people until they help out Izaya. Therefore, I’m calling them strictly low-level.
The second season is wholly frustrating. The repetitive unoriginality of the main action, along with the uninteresting static characters (e.g., the twins) who fail to add the main action, is a huge problem for the show. The first season is distinctly unique, but the second one falls flat, banking off a watered-down version of the previous plot because it was successful for the first season. I have a lot to say about my frustrations with the Russian assassins, the yakuza, and Yodogiri, but, readers, let me know if you want a post about some of these frustrations. Overall, DRRR!!x2 thus far lacks emotional tension/pathos and dynamism except in Mikado; it simply has scattered drama that fails to tie up too many loose ends. Although Mikado’s change is arguably negative and difficult to explain (and I do have some problems with it and with Masaomi), he at least remains interesting and true to his love of change and flexibility. I guess all I can do is wait for the continuation in January 2016, and I look forward to the third part of the season, but I can’t shake the feeling that the organization of the DRRR!!x2 is messy, drawn-out far too long, and disappointing compared to the first season.
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