Watch as the threads of Ikebukuro weave their way into every facet of the story.
Creative Staff:
Creator: Ryohgo Narita
Character Design: Suzuhito Yasuda
Art: Akiyo Satorigi
Translation: Stephen Paul
Lettering: Lys Blakeslee
What They Say:
The Yellow Scarves are threatened when an unknown individual infiltrates their hideout. Just when the Yellow Scarves have their quarry cornered, the Headless Rider, urban legend of Ikebukuro, comes to her rescue. The incident leaves the entire neighborhood unsettled once again, and the resulting turmoil forces Masaomi Kida, leader of the Yellow Scarves, to come face-to-face with the painful past from which he once fled…
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
There are now three factions, it seems: the aforementioned Yellow Scarves and Dollars with the addition of the Dullahan Celty—loosely associated with the Dollars—and the Slasher as one entity. But as a result of the loose connection, the Yellow Scarves believe that the Slasher is associated with the Dollars. The Night of the Ripper incident was orchestrated by the Dollars to attack the Yellow Scarves, with the ringleader attacking some Dollars members to throw the Yellow Scarves off their trail. All because Anri called up Celty to get her out of the jam she found herself in.
A good portion of this book is spent with Masaomi, delving into both his current situation of the revival of the Yellow Scarves, so to speak, and his past war with the Blue Squares, which led to his girlfriend, Saki, going to the hospital. It’s full on gang warfare all because of territory. TERRITORY. That’s how easily these people will get riled up. They fight over who gets to hang out where and who’s dominant where. Its dick waving in its finest form and no one knows who’ll come out on top.
It’s undoubtedly the Blue Squares that were in the wrong, though. You don’t kidnap someone, you don’t break the girl’s legs when you kidnap her, and you certainly don’t make a fucking snuff film out of it. Going that far certainly wasn’t necessary to get the point out that the Blue Squares aren’t particularly nice dudes, but the point of the sequence was, as the others, squarely (ha! puns) on Masaomi. He’s a man that was willing to kill to get his girl back, but couldn’t move when he had to take the final action. If not for Kadota, she would have been in much worse shape.
But that’s exactly what Durarara!! is about. Durarara!!—the Dollars, actually—is about a community coming together and doing what’s right. It’s being frozen in the moment of action because you have a million different options and can’t for the life of you choose which one to take. The adrenaline is taking over, but the brain still dominates. The child was frozen in place and has to live with that regret every day now, even up until now. And now that he’s grown, he can stand up for what’s right. He can stand up for his friends that were attacked, no matter how small because he wasn’t able to before.
In Summary:
Durarara!! loves to weave thing into thing into thing and that’s really what makes it so intriguing. This happened, BUT this happened, BECAUSE this happened. The only AND THENs that happen in Durarara!! are and then we went to this scene instead of that scene, but there’s still a narrative flow. Even the seemingly disjointed conversation between Shinra, Celty, and Shingen will be connected eventually. The AND THEN in that scene was simply Celty going to save Anri, which is arguably BECAUSE Celty is someone Anri can count on BECAUSE of the events of every previous volume. Everything leads to something and it’s like a police board with yarn all over it trying to decipher it all.
Content Grade: A-
Art Grade: B+
Packaging Grade: B+
Text/Translation Grade: A-
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: November 18, 2014
MSRP: $12.99
