7.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 4.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
Ikebukuro, Tokyo. Mikado Ryugamine is a young man who yearns for the city like no other. At the invitation of his childhood friend, Masaomi Kida, he leaves his hometown and enters Raira Academy in Ikebukuro. Masaomi warns Mikado about the mysterious organization of unknown origin known as the "Dollars" and some dangerous people in Ikebukuro to watch out for. In particular: the brawling champion Shizuo Heiwajima and hobbyist information broker Izaya Orihara.
Starring: Miyuki Sawashiro, Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Mamoru Miyano, Kana Hanazawa, Daisuke OnoAnime | 100% |
Foreign | 96% |
Supernatural | 10% |
Action | 6% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
Japanese: LPCM 2.0 (48kHz, 16-bit)
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Five-disc set (5 BDs)
Region A, C (B untested)
Movie | 4.5 | |
Video | 4.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 4.5 |
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.
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!! 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.
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:
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.
(Still not reliable for this title)
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