Durarara!! – 5

I really like how Durarara!! is keeping viewers on their toes constantly, just throwing in a few new characters out of nowhere and not really keeping the focus on them but still making sure they are on everyone’s mind.

The biggest of the newcomers is the so-called Slasher, who along with having a name tailor-made for a series of horror flicks of fluctuating quality, could perhaps be another mythological creature like Selty (although as to what specific creature, I have no idea). I’m not certain how much the episode itself hints at this, but the long-haired, bedridden woman at the end is a dead ringer (so to speak) for the Slasher in figure and hair length. She also seems to be one of the online chatters who appear every so often between scenes. However, there is definitely something off about her — or at least off about the Slasher.

Unless I am insane, it appears to me that the Slasher can actually change forms. If you look at the Slasher during the attack against Selty and the Slasher during the attack against the Yellow Scarves, the appearance of the Slasher in both scenes is quite different — different clothes, different hairstyle and length, maybe even different heights, although it is difficult to tell given the angle during the Selty attack. Just look at the Slasher in this image and compare to the one at the top of the post.

The Slasher pretty clearly comes from the same alleyway where the Selty attack happened, so unless there is some sort of bizarre Slasher tag team hitting the streets of Ikebukuro, I doubt there is more than one Slasher — thus, the shape-shifting. Now as to why the Slasher would want and/or need to shape shift, I have no clue.

But if you want to think there is more than one Slasher (or that the woman typing on the computer is not the Slasher), I have a potentially insane theory: Mika Harima is the first Slasher. Similar hairstyle, similar clothing and a potential connection to Selty if the widely-believed “Mika is ‘wearing’ Selty’s head” theory is true. I’m not completely sure how much I buy into this right now, but I don’t really have enough information available to buy into anything at the moment, so I might as well throw out random guesses that may bear fruit. In any case, the Slasher jumps onto the scene and becomes an immediately interesting figure.

One more thing about Selty and the Slasher: It’s weird seeing Selty so worked up about anything, but I have to admit that I chuckled at her wondering if the Slasher is an alien, and then Shinra laughing it off like, “Oh, don’t be silly!” The funny thing is that an alien life form actually would seem weird and out of place in Durarara!! even with all the strange characters running around all over the place.

Perhaps a less interesting figure — for now at least — is Shuji Niekawa, who appears to be a journalist inquiring about the strongest people in the city. If that woman who lives with him (a daughter? sister? wife?) is also the Slasher, then it is a pretty amusing irony that he lives with someone who by all rights is one of the strongest people in town. But that’s assuming he doesn’t know about this. We don’t even know why he’s poking around about these strong people, anyway. I’m guessing he’s not writing a fluffy feature piece for Superpowered Ikebukurans Monthly.

The final newcomer is the nameless girl in the hospital who seems to share a past with Kida (in which he may have let her down in some way), and more surprisingly, who seems to be on relatively friendly terms with Izaya of all people. I’ve read some people suggesting that Kida was once part of one of the color gangs (likely the Yellow Scarves), and to go a little bit further, maybe his involvement in that gang hurt this girl in some way, which is why he is afraid — or ashamed — to visit her too much. If she is the link between Izaya and Kida, then maybe Izaya helped Kida get out of his situation with the gang somehow. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a debt to owe someone?

Having a choice between remaining in a gang and owing a debt to someone like Izaya sounds like a pretty terrible choice to me, haha.

Because this post is running a bit long now, I’ll just end it by sharing this image I whipped up of a side-by-side comparison of the Mika Harima whom Anri knows and the Mika Harima whom many suspect of “wearing” Selty’s head. Pretty obvious differences between the two all around, haha.