Durarara!! – 16

The truth about ‘Saika’ all comes out this week, quite different to what I had imagined –  needed to watch the episode twice to get it straight in my head!

I’m not bothering with a summary since I have a feeling this post will be long enough as it is!

So as so many suspected, Anri has the original Saika sword, but the rest of the stuff about Saika was completely unexpected!  Seems the viral analogy is the best when describing the sword’s ability.  Saika is sentient, and the emotion it feels strongest is that of ‘love’ – the blade has fallen in love with humanity.  Anri’s self-professed inability to feel love  since her parents death, means that she allows the blade to possess her so she can feel ‘love’ through it.

Haruna Neikawa believed that she had the original Saika, and that she was fulfilling Saika’s wish to spread love by creating masses of ‘child-Saika’.  However it turned out that Haruna’s Saika was just another ‘Child’.  Haruna and Anri both seem to have kept control of themselves despite being possessed by Saika, so perhaps the Saika possession strengthens as its transferred person to person.  The Saika possessed drones sent after Shizuo certainly don’t seem to have much self-awareness – this was seen with Neikawa last week too, his own will seemed to take a back-seat to Saika’s desire for Shizuo.

Speaking of Haruna, she turned out to be much crazier than I was expecting.  I thought she would end up being this withdrawn emo child, instead she turned out to be a psycho stalker bitch obsessed with the pervy-teacher!  The Slasher’s she created were after Anri as Haruna wanted her love rival out-of-the-way.  As for Pervy-teacher himself – he looked scared shitless when he saw Haruna; makes you wonder just what she did to him – Haruna was probably forced to move schools to ensure his safety.  This actually makes more sense as a teacher assaulting a female student would never be allowed to hold onto his post, if it was the other way round of course the student would be forced to transfer.  Doesnt make his advances towards Anri any less creepy though!

This episode also gave us a bit more Shizuo development.  Shizuo immediately takes off to confront Izaya after the Neikawa incident as he theorizes that 99% of shady goings on originate at Izaya’s door.  Watching these two insult each other never gets old – gotta love the way Shizuo calls Izaya’s name 😆  Of course Celty arrives just in the nick of time to whisk Shizuo away to the park, so they don’t get to move on to physical violence.

Shizuo has always said that he hated his unnatural strength since it only seemed to hurt those around him.  In this episode he also says he feels that no one would ever accept him because of it, so he’s weirdly pleased by the fact the Saika possessed Slashers proclaim their adoration of him and that same hated strength.  However Shizuo is not lured by Saika’s request for him to join her, rather her speech moves him to embrace his power and direct it back at her!  I can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Shizuo, he’s clearly a good guy but his short-temper and strength have only isolated him from people (Izaya’s meddling doesn’t help matters) so the only person he’s truly himself around is Celty………and maybe Izaya too actually, since Shizuo can be as pissed off as he wants with Izaya – venting is good!  I’m still intensely curious as to what Izaya’s grand plan for Shizuo is – I just can’t see how his constant baiting of the fella does him any good!

Oh, I was pleased to see they got in Togusa’s reaction to Shizuo ripping the door off his precious van – poor guy, he knows he can’t get Shizuo to pay for it!

Also loved Erika getting starry-eyed over the prospect of shipping Shizuo X Izaya 😆  This show is so self-aware its hilarious.

......I feel like someone somewhere is thinking unsavoury thoughts about us......

Erika gets a great idea for a Shizuo X Izaya doujin

Next week appears to be narrated by Izaya!  Woo – really looking forward to that, having that window into Izaya’s thinking is most welcome – he’s not really been involved in the meat of this arc so far so I’m curious to find out what he’s planning.  Seems we’ll also get the full story of Anri’s parents death and how she came to be Saika’s ‘parasite’ – should be most interesting.