Durarara!! - Episode 6

It was just last episode that Masaomi Kida asked some of his friends to tell him everything they know about the group known as the Dollars, and in answer to that query we have ourselves this sixth episode of Durarara!!, told through the eyes of one of those friends; Kyohei Kadota (aka "Dotachin", whether he likes it or not).

Indeed, Kadota's tale turns out (perhaps surprisingly) to be a first-hand example of the Dollars in action as he, alongside Erika Karisawa, Walker Yumasaki and Saburo Togusa are in fact members of said gang themselves. In fact, compared to the rather dark stories we've heard thus far, the truth about the Dollars seems like quite a pleasant and dare I say ordinary one, although whether this is also true of the wider organisation remains to be seen.


Anyhow, the focus of this episode is upon something known as the "Kaztano incident", and involves the group of kidnappers we saw back in the opening couple of episodes up to their usual tricks again. It appears that this group aren't the only kidnappers roaming around either, with rumours surfacing about humans being kidnapped for experiments, or even to be used as food - Rumours that his episode seems to back up with some of its material. The Kaztano to which this incident refers is a friend of Togusa who becomes the victim of these kidnappers, sending our intrepid quartet of Dollars to rescue him and search out the culprits.

What follows is a criminal farce of which Guy Ritchie in his Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels era would be proud - At its highest level, this episode is a fantastic example of taking a dark subject and making it utterly hilarious, be it via our inept kidnappers or our unlikely heroes who choose their torture methods via volumes of Ladies versus Butlers and the like (as if reading Ladies versus Butlers wouldn't be torture enough on its own). In keeping with my Guy Ritchie comparison, this instalment also throws out some fantastic dialogue and one-liners which had me laughing out loud, while even the bizarre use of Nessun Dorma and Kadota getting caught in mid-narrative monologue where simply fabulous.

Of course, this being Durarara!!, there was also plenty of opportunities taken to link various characters and events in an almost exhausting fashion - I could try to explain some of them here, but it feels almost like everybody is linked to everybody else sometimes so I'm going to stop thinking about it for a while before my heads starts hurting. Instead, I'll just leave it as read that this was another excellent episode of the series - By far the funniest this show has offered so far, but it's a little unfair to rate episodes against one another this way considering how different each instalment has been up to this point.