Durarara!! 23 – Surgery Squick

Animated violence rarely grosses me out, because it does not often look real at all (and the more real violence seems, the more disturbing it is), but anything related to surgery is automatic squick material. There’s just something about opening up the human body and fiddling around that just creeps the hell out of me . . .

Anyway, it’s funny how anticlimactic Izaya’s plan has turned out to be, although at least part of that has to be because the anime has presented his plotting as if it is the be-all-end-all way for Izaya to awaken Celty’s head, whereas the events in the second half of the series are no doubt one part of a larger plot, because that is how these things work. Taken in that view, Izaya’s plan is slightly less dopey; however, it won’t make his inevitable smugness at the end of the series any less infuriating.

(By the way, it’s also funny how Izaya is already setting up Horada as a potential scapegoat if his plan fails. Maybe Izaya should choose a better representative than some creepy old dude (is he old? He sure looks old) who has risen in the ranks in a gang of middle- and high-schoolers.)

So, Kida finally mans up and goes after the Yellow Scarves, which makes me respect him slightly more. Now, he doesn’t really have much of a choice here (there is a hit out on Kida, and he does not want to run away again, so he might as well go after Horada), and he did help get himself into this mess in the first place, but hey, nobody’s perfect. At least the new wave Yellow Scarves knock some sense into Kida — literally — by showing him how wrong he was in his assumptions about Anri and Mikado. (I could not have been the only one thinking that it was appropriate that Kida’s head is apparently as thick as a brick wall, right? :p)

Horada’s hand position makes it look like he’s playing Goldeneye. He probably uses Oddjob, the cheater.

Anri and Mikado are getting in on the action, too. Anri has already resolved to change, so there is not much to say on that front. The fact that she not only searches hard for Kida but also makes the effort to save him and worry about whether he’ll die tells me that she doesn’t really buy the story that Kida ordered the hit on Shizuo, so that is nice, at least. Saika must be pretty strong if it (she?) can slice through a metal door like that. Anri should try to wield the sword like a lightsaber and carve through those things like butter.

Meanwhile, Celty gives Mikado a reality check — but not with the traditional anime “Snap out of it!” slap to the face that I half-expected the entire time — and gives him a ride to Yellow Scarves Central. Mikado is a bit less annoying this episode, probably because he does not speak much at all, and because he does not flip out regarding the shocking revelations involving Anri and Kida. He’s probably a bit bummed out about Anri, though: She’s fully capable of protecting herself, so Mikado trying to play Prince Charming and rescue her from trouble will just look silly from now on.

Not a bad episode (certainly better than most of the past month or so), but one of the more disappointing aspects of Durarara!! that is highlighted here is the sharply reduced role of seemingly important characters. What has Shinra done the past couple of months? Where has Shingen gone? Kuzuhara (the cop)? And Simon has done jack the entire run aside from look really cool. In Baccano! the wealth of characters wasn’t really a problem because a good sense of balance was achieved, but there’s something off about the way the characters are used in Durarara!!