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**finally got strenght enough to finish the last 4 episodes....holy shit that was a headache - felt like a chore**

Durarara!! is an anime about ..... About what ? This is the taste that stays in my mouth, the more I delve into the plot. There are so many characters, with such bland backstories, that the plot itself, which unfolds episodically, exists for the simple fact of making the anime keep going, despite having no destination. The narrative wants to be a web of interconnected revelations, which in the end, feels entangled. Each episode in which we have a small (and forced) flashback to try to ... emerge some connection of the viewer with a character, the series sinks in personality development and ecstasy of revelations. A world and actions that need to be explained by the characters themselves in each episode, what each gang does or did and why, in that way, makes this universe's image less convincing. Finally, this "gang war" becomes the main focus of the anime shortly after the fragile introductions. But anyway, is the plot about that? Or about something else?

Is it about high school friendship? Yes. But without the high school life itself - the 3 student protagonists have beaten personalities that do not evolve. They exchange very few deep or thought-provoking dialogues.
Is it supernatural? Yes. But that is lost trying to merge the supernatural with the real. It presents itself in an original way in the first episodes, to become irrelevant over time.
Is it about fights and urban life? Yes. But the more you are obliged to hear about "city life" and how things are, the more boring and tedious are the events - for example, when they morph in extraordinarily weak or expendable moments of action ( looking at you, fight with "gray zombies" with knives).

This anime could be about a lot of things, but it wants so much to show the variety of themes and to reveal the hidden and ugly urban life, which serves us a medium, uninteresting (with an almost childlike vision), with shells of characters that do not bloom. You hate violence and still make use of it because "you do not know how to be otherwise", not only is schizophrenic, as it is a cliché (believe it or not, this is the face of the character Heiwajima Shizuo). The mysteries are unmasked in a simple and predictable way - and in some cases as of Celty Sturluson (the "supernatural" character who is a headless creature, called dullahan) in an anticlimatic way. Relationships are superficial, without substance.
In fact, the only character that caught my eye and seemed different to the point of being explored was the supporting Brezhnev Semyon. A black russian man working in a sushi restaurant. And yet, I feel that if they had turned the spotlight on him at some point, they would probably end up making him less interesting than he appeared to be.

Only with this amount of information, you can get an idea that Durarara !! covers various corners of different genres. A great variety puree, that tastes like nothing.

The good points are the audiovisual and environment. Often the scenery and animation has an interesting tone. But this idea of ​​highlighting the protagonists in graying the rest of the extras only passes the assumption of cretinism of the production.
The songs, in fact, are the best the series could offer me. The 2 opening songs were really good (can't say that about the endings tho).

I would give a 4.0 / 10.0: it is average/bad.

The anime is not bad - it seems that it tries to take itself seriously, but afraid of really being serious.


I also tried watching Baccano, but fell asleep in the third episode. I guess that I just don't like these shounen that tries to look like seinen. It's childish, indeed. Durarara!! is the shounen that thinks is edgy and profound but just sounds like a teenage ranting. Probably the target audience are people under their 20's.
I would recommend to those who like something that is different, but at the same time does not go too deep - it's just shallow.

A.I.C.O.: Incarnation has a very intriguing story, yet poorly developed. Maybe this is the case just because I like slow paced stories, but this one in particular seemed ran over time.

A lot of the dialogues and storie development are plain boring. Just that simple. Such a great storie, great plot twists, are presented to us in the most simple of ways, whereas it could`ve been dramatized. While irrelevant moments are dragged with vain information. One of those unecessary moments, for example, would be dialogues or scenes with government agencies/scientists, talking about politics or projects with weird names/acronym. Don't think that I'm belittling just for being ... "politics" or "science stuff", saying that those things weren't necessary. On the contrary, they would make much more sense if were better elaborated or explained with more emphasis if they had the time (24 eps would be a good time to properly develop this world imo). Everytime they started talking about any project or politics, I wandered to other place, thinking to myself why on Earth we need to see this agencie if they have no effect whatsoever in the main characters. For a militarized city/base, those guys could kidnap pretty easily (from both sides). And what the fuck is that zone with only explorers? Anyway... Whenever new information was introduced to us, I just wish it wasn't so obtuse and shallow. Also, no need to scream at our faces what is going on, let us unveil it little by little.

The graphics and animation are superb. I confess that it was the biggest reason to binge watch it. Pure eye candy.

In the end, as I said earlier, the storie is great. Too bad it was served too raw. A.I.C.O. fails for wanting to throw their world at us before asking how we like it.