Durarara Season 2 [SUB] (2015-2016) Review

 Durarara!!X2 (2015-2016) 7/10

Hello everyone and welcome back for another anime review. Durarara!!X2 is the second season of the series, with it being split up into three arcs. The season aired from March 10, 2015 - March 26, 2016, clocking in at a total of 36 episodes. I gotta say, this season was very entertaining, but disappointing. Let’s begin this clusterfuck of a season.

Our story takes place 6 months after the events of the first season. Mikado and Anri are still attending Raira Academy, Masaomi and his girlfriend Saki run away together, Kadota and his little group are still doing their own thing, Izaya is still causing trouble as an info broker, Shizuo is still working for Tom, and Shinra is still living with The Headless Rider: Celty. All is well until a string of murders rock the city of Ikebukuro once again. The serial killer is nicknamed Hollywood and these murders will kickstart a new scheme by Izaya that will test and transform everyone in the city. By the end of it all, a bunch of gangs, including the local yakuza, will get caught up in the lives of Celty and Mikado and emerging new Saika wielders.

So like I said earlier, the story for this season is split up into three arcs. It’ll be too much of a hassle to go into each arc, so I’ll be reviewing this season as a whole. This shit gets complicated. Like REALLY complicated. By the end of the second arc, I had to sit there and contemplate what the fuck I had just watched. By the end of the first arc, Mikado absorbs the Blue Squares and undergoes an internal purge of the Dollars. After learning about the Blue Square’s resurgence, Masaomi brings back the Yellow Scarves to deal with them. Anri is still dealing with her internal conflict with Saika. In the first arc, we are introduced to a bunch of new characters. Hollywood serial killer, another famous actor, Mr Akabayashi, Aozaki, further development for Izaya’s sisters, former Blue Square leader Aoba, Varona, and a couple of others. There is A LOT of information to go over, so I’m not going to go into too much detail here.

My favorite new character is Akabayashi. This badass lost an eye to Saika, fights against drugs, and is an overall awesome dude. He seriously surprised me. Another character that surprised me is Varona, a Russian hitman. Her backstory is pretty good and her development was great as well. I love the way she speaks as it furthers her character and how she was brought up. Izaya’s sisters were very fucking weird. They act like they are in a yuri relationship, kissing and shit even though they are twin sisters. Mikado was awesome. I love his shift in perspective and his drive to clean out the Dollars, but at the very last minute, I feel like they dropped the ball on him. I’m hoping for another sequel to the series to continue his story.

One of my favorite scenes of the season is the start of the third arc, where almost everyone is huddled up in Shinra and Celty’s apartment. They’re all just bullshitting and Celty is trying to get a grasp on everyone’s situation. Walker is doing his usual manga hysteria and Shinra’s father started going on one of his tangents and once the scene finished, I was like “That was awesome”.

Art direction is still the same as season 1, which is a bit disappointing. Music is the same as well. Nothing wrong with this as the OST for the show is very strong. I will say, OP 1 “Headhunt” is one of my favorite anime OPs now. Shit goes hard and it perfectly fits the chaos of the show. The other two OPs are okay at best. Didn’t really care for them as well as the EDs. Voice acting is also the same as season 1. Just like last time, I watched this in the original JP dub. Some of the new voices were great additions, such as Akabayashi, Varona, and Rokujo.

So my main issue with the season is that it’ll introduce a bunch of new characters and give them the proper development, which is fine. Then the show will drop them almost completely, such as Akane, Izaya’s sisters, and the redhead that stole the head. I feel like the writer was just trying to make shit more complicated for the sake of complicity. Hell, Kujiragi was wasted potential. I was expecting her to do a full on clash with Anri and Niekawa. I was also expecting Akabayashi to have another encounter with Mikado. Idk I feel like the overall writing could’ve been done better.

Overall, I enjoyed the build up and development of this story and the characters, but the ending sucked. Like it resolves a lot of the story arcs that’s been going on since episode 1, but I feel like a third season would be necessary for a satisfactory ending. If you enjoyed the first season, go check this out, but be wary of the massive amount of information overload that’s going to be going on here.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.