Durarara!!X2 Ten Review

Normally when I do a review, I break down Story, Characters, Art/Animation/Sound, and give my final thoughts, but with Durarara!!x2 Ten, this is the second cours of a three-part season so most of that has been covered in my last review of Durarara!!x2 Shou. So I’m mainly going to go over the story and include my final thoughts in one paragraph since there hasn’t been any new characters added during these last twelve episodes and the animation/art is still the same style that you know and love from the series (which is great, by the way.)

So with that being said… Let’s Jam!

The Story

This picks up right where Durarara!!x2 Shou left off and what I loved right off the bat was that there was no “get reacquainted” episode.. it just continued so if you were marathoning the first two cours back to back, it would be a nice, seamless transition from one arc to the other!

As always in the Durarara!! universe, there are many stories going on all at once. This time around, the focus shifts onto Mikado Ryuugumine and how he is wanting to purge The Dollars of people who are acting on their own and giving the gang a bad reputation, however, Aoba has Mikado in his back pocket and has incorporated a slimmed down, yet, revitalized Blue Squares into The Dollars, but it also seems that Mikado is using Aoba as well. Aoba knows Mikado is using him, though, and Mikado knows Aoba is doing it back to him.. which makes this whole thing a little weird, but even though it is odd, it works!

We also follow up on Izaya after he was stabbed at the end of x2 Shou. He ends up recovering in the hospital (which leads to a pretty entertaining back and forth between Izaya and Shinra) and returns to being the same old Izaya we know and love. One thing they did touch upon with Izaya was Celty’s head. During x2 Shou, that story kind of got put on the back burner in favor of developing the internal struggle with The Dollars and introducing us to Aoba, Sloan, Vorona, and the Awakusu mafia group. While nothing was really resolved with Celty’s head, it served as a nice reminder that the story is still there.

Speaking of Vorona… we got to see her new role as someone who now works for Shizuo Heiwajima. In part one, Shizuo was a target of Vorona’s, but she never really realized just who he was. When Shizuo stopped off for some Russian sushi, Vorona had ended up as a part-timer there and she wasn’t exactly working out, so Shizuo took her with him and Vorona acquired a newfound respect for Shizuo after seeing his strength in action. Shizuo, however, got arrested and that took care of him for the rest of this arc! As for Vorona’s partner Sloan… he’s now someone who works directly for Izaya.  That’s going to make for some interesting situations later on down the line!

The final big story piece here was the return of Masaomi Kida to Ikebukuro. In part one, he tried to warn Mikado of the things going on within The Dollars, but Mikado chose his path and now Masaomi has reunited the Yellow Scarves in order to try and stop Mikado.

It’s really hard to touch on everything that happened, but those were the major story points, but there are many others that happened as well. Some people were calling this the weakest story arc in the series so far, but what people fail to realize that this is a bridging arc. The first season of Durarara!! set up all the characters we know and love while x2 Shou reintroduced us to that world after a multi-year break and introduced us new characters, continued old stories, and began new ones. x2 Ten is the continuation on that world building that x2 Shou set up.. and come January, Durarara!! x2 Ketsu should put a nice bow on everything and be the big finale we’ve all been waiting for.

So don’t worry about the strength of this season… I still enjoyed it even though some of the characters from x2 Shou were kind of forgotten about (Ruri Hijiribe anyone?), but there were some put into the spotlight that didn’t get much attention in the series overall (Like Walker… who knew he had it in him, right?)

Overall, I still enjoyed it and I ask that you wait unitl x2 Ketsu in January before you make any final judgments on the quality of the series. It’s going to get really good, people… trust me! So with that… my score for Durarara!! x2 Ten…

Overall Score 8/10