Big Time in the Big City

After I finished watching the coming-of-age-in-the-big-city anime Durarara!, I knew that I loved it. But as soon as I tried to wrap my head around how I would actually explain it and express why I loved it, I felt like my head would explode. Back in the day of writing grade school level essays, we often had to write a statement along the lines of 'This book was about ____” when we were brainstorming so we could collect our thoughts on what the themes and the overall plot were, but some things just don't fit into neat little expressions like that. Drrr! is about Ikebukuro. Friendship. Telling the truth. Gang battles. Connection. Finding a place in the world. It's about all that, but that isn't even the half of it.

The usual Drr! suspects

Anyone who watches even a few seconds of Drrr!'s opening credits knows that they are in for quite a handful of characters (this show is from the creators of Baccano, after all), and each of them have an important role to play. Even when the stories seem independent of one another, they are still in actuality working together and affecting the same group of people. It's a small world after all comes to mind, and in the setting of Ikebukuro, this seems to be particularly true. Even people who seem to have no real emotional connection with one another are probably closer and more alike than they think.

The story starts off with Mikado Ryuugamine, a simple country boy coming to Tokyo to go to school with his former middle school best friend, Kida Masaomi. Mikado seems like a shy little kid stepping into Wonderland for the first time as the bubbly Masaomi pulls him through the streets, talking and laughing and making the world seem like a full and dangerous place. He seems especially wary of the recent gang troubles in the area between the Blue Square and the Yellow Scarves (or Turbans, depending on your translation), and the new emergence of a gang without a color, the Dollars. Even while downplaying the continuing prevalence of gangs, even the new alarming rise in mysterious 'Slasher' killings, Masaomi comes up with quite a list of characters Mikado should avoid, all of which he inevitably runs into in the next few minutes.

The series' BFFs: Mikado and Masaomi

Some of the first people Mikado meets are the members of 'Dotachin's' little group, including Erika, Walker, Togusa, and Kadota 'Dotachin' himself. Former members of Blue Square, the friends are now operating under the radar doing occasional vigilante work against illegal human trafficking, while keeping their new allegiance unknown. Erika and Walker are notable for being huge otakus who use torture ideas inspired by the manga they read (such as soldering a demonic contract into the eye of a victim, as in Black Butler. Ick!) to get answers out of their suspects.

The Dotachin group. Innocent, right? Think again!

Also roaming Ikebukuro is Shizuo Heiwajima, the strongest man in the city. He looks like an ordinary bartender with a tendency of wearing his sunglasses at night, but he also has the world's shortest fuse, and will attack anyone who offends him with nearby projectiles including sign posts, vending machines, and trash cans. He works as the bodyguard of debt collector Tom, who does his best to provide a calming influence for his temperamental friend, though it only works from time to time. As soon as Shizuo lays eyes on his arch-nemesis, Izaya Orihara, he is bound to start heaving around the heaviest thing in the general area to smash on him.

There's a reason fans call Shizuo 'the gartender'.

As for Izaya (Izzzzayyyyyaaa-kun!), he claims to be an information broker, but he is actually an epic mind-screwer who gets a kick out of seeing what becomes of human expectation and potential. He knows who is behind the Yellow Scarves, the Dollars, and the Slasher killings, and he isn't afraid to use what he knows to set factions against each other and see what becomes of his experiments with the lives of people. He is clearly the chessmaster behind the plot (he even plays around with chess pieces, as well as pieces from three or more other games), but his intentions are largely unclear. His plans seem to have something to do with the local urban legend, the Black Rider, but he doesn't seem particularly perturbed when things don't work out as he plans them to; he simply seems to enjoy watching the chaos unfold around him.

Ikebukuro's number one shady character. Trust him at your own risk.

The Black Rider in question is a mysterious biker involved in vigilante justice around the city, although certain supernatural elements seem to be at play with her bike and scythe-like weapon. The Black Rider, in fact, is Celty Sturluson, a legendary Dullahan missing the head she's supposed to tote underneath her arm. When she takes off her helmet, she's cut off at the neck, issuing forth clouds of black smoke from her missing body part. Creepy, but Celty's actually one of the more well adjusted characters of the series. She's on a warpath looking for her head, but she's a normal girl at heart: she communicates through PDA, watches TV, and is afraid of aliens and traffic officers.

Living with Celty is backdoor doctor Shinra Kishitani, a childhood friend of Izaya and Celty's major love interest. Shinra is an all around nice guy, but doesn't want his girl to find her head since he is worried that when her memories return, she'll become a different person and will no longer want to be with him. A valid concern, especially since the two of them have a rather special connection. Shinra seems able to tell what Celty is thinking, even when he can't see what she's typing away on her PDA.

It's not every show where this is the most normal couple around.

While Izaya may be manipulating at the heart of this group of people, it is the actions of Mikado, Masaomi, and their timid classmate Anri Sunohara that determine how the story unfolds. The three classmates seem rather simple on the surface. Mikado is a dogged nice guy, Masaomi a failure of a skirt chaser, and Anri a shy mouse of a girl who has found herself at the point of their love triangle. But as we've learned from the other characters, very few things are actually as they appear to be.

This "love triangle" is fall from stereotypical. I mean, just look at Anri's face! She's not even enjoying herself!

SPOILER. Goody-goody Mikado is actually the mastermind behind the Dollars, which he created due to his need to have a less ordinary life than what he was used to in the country. Using the anonymity of the Internet, he binds together people who want to be a part of a greater connection while remaining invisible, forming a gang that acts in the shadows and steps in mysteriously wherever they are most needed. He keeps his role as leader a secret, and no one around him seems to guess his identity (although Izaya and Celty both figure it out), especially not his best friend Masaomi. His gang actually includes a grand portion of Ikebukuro, including Dotachin's group, Shizuo, Celty, and technically Izaya (although Izaya is just around to spread information and mess with everybody).

Masaomi, on the other hand, is keeping plenty of his own secrets. Back before Mikado came to Tokyo, Masaomi was the ridiculously young leader of the Yellow Scarves during the days when they fought Blue Square. He was dating a subordinate of Izaya's, Saki, and often relied on the help of Izaya during the gang wars. However, Blue Square takes advantage of his feelings for Saki, and kidnap and threaten to kill her if Masaomi doesn’t confront them personally. Masaomi runs off to her rescue, but soon after freezes in terror at the thought of the danger he is putting himself in. He repeatedly calls Izaya, trying to beg for help, but Izaya (fully aware of the situation, naturally) does not answer, and Masaomi is left to his own devils when Saki is eventually rescued by Dotachin and co after receiving a few broken limbs. He is too ashamed to face up to Saki after abandoning her, and leaves the Yellow Scarves up until the point when they beg him to come back after they begin to suspect the Dollars of being behind the Slasher killings.

As for Anri, she is the kind of girl who acts as a parasite to people more vibrant and emotionally alive than she is, allowing herself to make it through society based on their efforts rather than her own. Her original 'best friend' was Mika Harima, an enthusiastic stalker who went missing after getting a little too close to classmate Seiji Yagiri. Seiji, taking creepy to new levels, fell in love with Celty's head (owned by his family's pharmaceutical company through a certain Izaya-kun), got caught ogling it by Harima when she breaks into his house, kills her, and tries to get his sister to put Celty's head on Harima's dead body! Eww! To make matters worse, his sister has incesty feelings for him, and takes the stance that she will do whatever it takes to make her bro happy, even if he isn't in love with her 'right now'. Of course, Harima ends up not being dead, and Namie Yagiri gives her plastic surgery to make her look like Celty's head. Seiji and Celty!Harima date this way for a while until he eventually finds out the truth, but continues to date her anyways until he can get a shot at the real head. Ew, ew, ew.

This is not an advisable method of finding true love, by the way

Going back on track, now Anri hangs out with Mikado and Masaomi, both of whom seem to be in love with her. Anri is blandly receptive to their friendship, but in reality is unable to feel the emotion 'love'. In truth, she is the owner of the demon blade Saika, who feeds on love for humans and slaughters them through whoever it possesses. Luckily, Anri's inability to feel love makes it possible for her to control Saika, and when she 'slashes' her victims, they don't die, but fall under her control and can be manipulated much like her own personal gang. However, some of the slashing victims go out of control when they gain the will to take out their love with their own versions of Saika, and Anri is unable to bring them under control before the other gangs catch wind of the Slasher killings occurring around the area.

Much of the anime takes place with the three friends in the dark about each other's histories and the conflicts rising between their three respective groups due to these misunderstandings. The Yellow Scarves think that the Dollars are behind the Slasher's killings, and when Anri finds out that Masaomi is behind the Yellow Scarves who are actively attacking the civilians who might be Dollars, she isn't sure what to think. At the heart of Drrr! is the issue of connection and trust, and much of the conflict happens due to fractures in communication and an inability to realize how deeply everyone is intertwined, whether by gang color or through shared history.

I don't want to quite reach a conclusion of what happens here, as I am still working on the light novels and manga, and hope to write about them later. But those of you've who've seen the anime know that while certain conflicts are sorted out, there's still the question of what else Izaya has on his mind and what's going to end up happening to Celty's head. SPOILER END.

As I've said already, even the seemingly independent parts of Drrr! are interdependent. If you're interested in watching this anime, you're going to have to invest yourself in the plot and full cast of characters or else you're going to end up super confused as to what the heck is going on. It might not hurt to keep track of who is who and what online names they use (Mikado, Izaya, and Celty are the big users of the chatroom, if that helps), and pay extra close attention to which voice actor is which, especially in the Japanese version (which I recommend, of course!) It will take some attention to detail, but once you've got everyone down, Drrr! ends up being quite a beautiful, thought provoking show that will keep you wondering after every single episode. I tend to get a bit philosophical after everything I watch, but this anime amplified it by quite a bit. As soon as I finished, I wanted to rewatch it again as soon as I could!

The fun continues online, too! The Dollars have their own website (the password is Baccano)

However, the complex nature of the plot may turn some viewers off, and I understand that. I was almost thoroughly lost in the beginning since I was feeling under the weather when I started watching it, but the atmosphere of the story was enough to keep me drawn in. For anyone having trouble in the beginning, I would advise sticking with it. There's always the old fall back of switching to the English dub when things get tricky, or rewatching fast paced parts like the chatroom scenes if you've missed out on details. But it would be a shame for people to miss out on this show, so I suggest putting in whatever extra effort is needed and working through the 24 episodes and one bonus. The soundtrack is excellent, too! Just listen to that opening theme!

Next up will be the wonderful bishie-galore series Saiyuki!