Durarara!! - Episode 20

Thanks to the sighting at the end of the last episode of Selty and "the Slasher" together as she raced to rescue Anri from the Yellow Scarves search, some kind of link between the Slasher and the Dollars is now firmly embedded in Kida's head, and throughout this episode we see him exploring that possibility.

His first port of call is Kadota, who tries to help him out as best he can be assuring Kida that there's no link between the Dollars and the Slasher, while also trying to put to bed (with some "interesting" help from Walker and Erika) any thoughts that some off-shoot of the Dollars, or even former Blue Square members, could be involved. Eventually, Kadota at least relents enough to give Masaomi the telephone number of someone who knows the identity of the Dollars' leader, and of course this turns out to be none other than one Izaya Orihara.


The big question from here is - Just what is Izaya going to tell Kida? The answer, which is either surprising or not dependant upon your point of view, is the absolute truth, as Izaya tells Masaomi straight-up that his good friend Mikado is at the top of the Dollars' tree. This naturally throws Kida into a full-on dilemma - For now, his loyalty appears to be towards his friend as he instructs the Yellow Scarves to stay away from any conflict with possible Dollars members. The trouble is (and as Kadota astutely noted earlier in the episode), Masaomi's sphere of influence over the Yellow Scarves' members isn't what it used to be...

As episodes of Durarara!! this was a bit of a slow-starter, not really helped along by Walker and Erika's narration during this instalment which didn't really sit well with me - While there were some mildly interesting thoughts to be derived from their use of anime and manga as a replacement for reality (and it was fun to see much love for J.C. Staff shows too), it's not an aspect I can relate to or associate with in terms of my own interest in those areas. Aside from that however, things picked up once Kida goes to see Izaya, who once again handles and manipulates everything going on around him with a chillingly cold expertise to fit his requirements, and come the end of the episode we're closer to the "war" that he's looking for than ever. Despite this instalment's shortcomings (it looked a little shabby in terms of animation too, unless it was just me), Durarara!! still manages to bring about the feeling of a run-away train that is gathering pace here - Last week we saw Anri struggling to put the breaks on her side of the triangle, and this episode most certainly suggests that neither Mikado nor Masaomi will have sufficient clout to keep tabs on their own respective organisations. That, of course, is what is going to make the coming weeks very interesting indeed....