Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.5

Durarara!! Complete Set Lunch Box Limited Edition Blu-ray Movie Review

We are family.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 3, 2012

You might be forgiven if you were to think you had stumbled into a reboot of Akira in the opening moments of Durarara!!. We’re witness to a sleek motorcycle speeding through a glittering cityscape and one almost expects a post-Apocalyptic story featuring rival biker gangs to suddenly unfold. How perfectly surprising, then, that if anything Durarara!! turns out to be a reboot of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow of all things, at least with regard to the character riding the motorcycle. But it’s one of Durarara!!’s most appealing features that the motorcycle rider is but one character in a teeming cast of characters, many of whom are quite distinctive and have unusual arcs in and of themselves. The fact that Durarara!! manages to combine all of these stories in a relatively effortless fashion is testament to some very sharp writing and a firm directorial hand that keeps a potentially unwieldy set of simultaneous storylines well under control. Durarara!! is based on a light novel series by Ryohgo Narita, who also gave us the equally labyrinthine Baccano!. Durarara!! (one has to assume the next Narita offering will have three exclamation points) may have the same “cast of thousands” approach that Baccano! did, but in some ways it’s much easier to follow, perhaps because things are united (for the most part anyway) around one focal locale.

Have you ever visited or even moved to a new city and been frightened out of your mind (as well as a little excited) by the overwhelming prospect of dealing with all the noise and bustle, not to mention the crime? I still remember the now hilarious to me reaction I had when I moved to Portland when I was still a teenager, right after I got out of college. I clearly recall standing in a park with my girlfriend at the time gazing out at the Portland skyline and then both of us deciding to run back to where we were staying because it had gotten dark and we were nervous about “bad guys” being in the area. (Portland is not exactly a crime haven, and my only excuse is I had moved from Salt Lake City, a decidedly more tame and provincial town than even Portland.) Something akin to the feeling is experienced by one of the major characters in Durarara!!, a sweet kid named Mikado, who moves from his quaint country home to the bustling metropolis of Tokyo, and more specifically to the wild and wooly Ikebukuro district. Mikado is met at the train station by his childhood buddy Kida, a “kidder” (is that name a kind of pun?) who tells awful jokes but has urged Mikado to come and has also agreed to be Mikado’s “tourguide” as Mikado prepares to enter high school in the new city.

Kida alternately warns Mikado about various people he needs to steer clear of and then almost in the same breath introduces the newcomer to a bevy of friends and acquaintances. Some of these are other kids around the same age as the boys, but there are several adults who are both invitingly funny as well as a little scary. In the meantime we see a hapless teenage girl falling for a ploy and ending up getting kidnapped, at which point we’re reintroduced to the motorcycle rider, who turns out to be one of Durarara!!’s most intriguing characters. She (yes, she) turns out to be an Irish fairy (technically called a Dullahan) named Celty who is headless (yes, headless) and has come to Japan searching for her missing cranium. She is a member of the gang known as The Dollars, and she does not take kindly to seeing this young girl being manhandled. (What is actually happening turns out not to be what it appears, something the recurs rather regularly throughout this series.) The scenes with Celty sitting around nonchalantly with smoke pouring out of her neck in place of her head are often extremely funny, if also a bit disturbing.

Despite the arc featuring Celty, Durarara!! really doesn’t over indulge in supernatural elements, though there are the occasional battles with superpowered individuals, including Shizuo, one of the main supporting characters. This is much more a series about relationships, and one of the best things about the series is how it “spreads the wealth” in terms of giving a lot of the major cast members their own moment (or even two) in the sun. Despite the fact that there are so many people roaming through Ikebukuro’s neon lit streets, Durarara!! does an exceptional job of segueing between storylines and making the interrelationships between everyone very clear and easy to follow. There's also some nice contrasting where people Mikado might initially be wary of turn out to be harmless, while those he trusts may not have his best interests at heart. It's therefore a "coming of age" story that many will recognize and empathize with.

Durarara!! may tempt some to dismiss it as just another typical shōnen outing, and it certainly can’t be denied that the bunch of friends tied at least tangentially by their school identities forms an integral part of this anime. But anyone who thinks of Durarara!! as “typical” is doing themselves a disservice. The huge panoply of supporting characters includes some deliciously outré folks who really give this outing some distinctive color. While there are certain melodramatic aspects that run rampant throughout the series, that’s also balanced by a fine sense of humor that permeates virtually every episode. The frequent use of “online chat boards” to further delineate the many characters adds a touch of realism as well. Durarara!! is more than anything an anime about finding a community, perhaps where one least expects to discover one. The anime has a perfect round robin approach that sees Mikado helping another newcomer standing terrified in the train station as the series comes to an end.

Durarara!! Complete Set Lunch Box Limited Edition Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Durarara!! Complete Set Lunch Box is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Aniplex with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. This is a beautifully sharp and well detailed looking high definition presentation that benefits immensely from some smart choices made by the animators, including regular use of what resembles rotoscoping to pull some characters dimensionally out of the action and place them in the foreground. Line detail is extremely sharp and colors are bold and vivid. There are some subtle uses of CGI (unless the animators are extremely skilled), including the black smoke that emanates from Celly's body when she has her helmet off, and that also looks very crisp and clean.

Durarara!! Complete Set Lunch Box Limited Edition Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Durarara!! features uncompressed LPCM 2.0 mixes in both the original Japanese language as well as an English dub. Once again there's no appreciable difference in amplitude or overall mix between these two languages, other than the language itself. Durarara!! probably would have benefited from a surround mix, at least with regard to the frequent cityscapes it exploits, or even Celty's journeys on her magical motorcycle. But what's here boasts excellent fidelity and some surprisingly wide dynamic range. Dialogue is always clean and easy to hear and the series' nice underscore is also presented with full bodied ambience.

Durarara!! Complete Set Lunch Box Limited Edition Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

How you feel about packaging and swag will probably affect how you react to the so-called "supplements" in this set (the score above is inclusive of the entire package). The on-disc supplements are pretty slim:

• First Textless Opening (HD; 1:31)


• Second Textless Opening (HD; 1:31)


• First Textless Closing (HD; 1:31)


• Second Textless Closing (HD; 1:30)

However, that only tells part of the story. This set comes housed in a metallic lunch box with a take off on the iconic Beatles' Abbey Road cover illustrating one side of the box and a close-up of Celty's helmet on the other. Inside there's a sturdy slipcase holding three standard Blu-ray cases which house a total of five discs. There's also a double sided poster and a nice booklet featuring lots of information on the characters as well as some messages from the creative staff.

Durarara!! Complete Set Lunch Box Limited Edition Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Durarara!! is a very sweet natured anime that manages to be both compelling and adventurous. This is a series with a huge cast, and individual viewers will probably find themselves gravitating to any given set of characters depending on their own individual tastes, but the best thing about the series is how effortlessly it moves between these characters and develops them all rather ingeniously at times. This may not in fact be an earth shaking anime in terms of story innovations, but it has such a gentle and appealing spirit, even when it's quite boisterous at times, that it's hard to resist. Aided by superb animation and an appealing soundtrack, Durarara!! is easily one of the best anime releases of the year. This deluxe edition is spendy and some may question the ultimate value of the swag included with the five Blu-ray discs, but just based on the anime alone, this release comes Highly recommended.