Durarara!! Episode 15

Missed doing 13 and 14. In keeping up to date, moving on to 15.

「 15 – Even a fool may give good counsel 」- Our trusty reporter is back on the case, but where will it lead him?

Durarara!!「 デュラララ!! 」

I love your sushi roll, hotter than wasabi.

Find Durarara!! on: ANN – MAL

Summary: This episode begins with us once again meeting up with our trash-magazine writer, looking to find out information on Shizuo aka “The Strongest man in Ikebukuro”. He begins his quest at the Russia Sushi restaurant, where he has a conversation with Simon. Being ever the pacifist, Simon will only briefly talk about Shizuo and not speak of his strength or about his fighting. Simon’s boss says that he will refer him to someone else who would know more about these things, since it’s not something that Simon himself will talk about.

Tony Montana, mang.

He meets with this supposed Yakuza boss, who begins to tell him about the current situation in Ikebukuro. He mentions that the Dollars and Yellow scarves are causing a trouble there, but as long as they don’t get into their business they won’t mess with them. After talking for quite some time, the boss finally gets down to who he thinks is the strongest man, and he of course says Shizuo. Being nice for some reason, the boss says he will refer him to someone else who knows quite a bit about Shizuo, as long as he keeps the information about him quiet. That person is none other than Izaya Orihara.

I see wut u did thar.

The infamous informant, who has a fascination with Shizuo Heiwajima, though not for a good purpose. Our reporter finds out these things as he digs deeper, and also realizes that Izaya already knows many things about him. Izaya proceeds to talk to him a bit about Shizuo, and states that Simon is the strongest in a fist fight, but overall Shizuo is stronger. Besides this information, Izaya doesn’t provide much more as he prefers to not have to talk about Shizuo. He does however refer him to someone else who knows Shizuo better, so on we go again.

Celty's phone is awesome.

We finally reach our final stop of character hopping, and arrive at Celty, who is more than happy to talk about her good friend Shizuo. She states that Shizuo is a friend that she can trust, and upon being told that people think that she may be the strongest she laughs it off, stating that Shizuo is much stronger than her.

Cute Celty is Cute.

Celty continues to talk about Shizuo, and Niekawa is very surprised to hear the urban legend herself speak so highly of Shizuo. Now feeling like he has enough information, he decides his search is done. Before leaving however, he asks Celty to please take off her helmet, which she does, and promptly leaves him in shock. Niekawa proceeds to head home, contemplating everything he has learned throughout the day. He proceeds home, and decides that he’s going to finally talk to his daughter face to face…

Pwned.

Before he can realize what has happened, he’s been stabbed in the back by the “Slasher”. He turns to look at his attacker, and falls to the ground. After a productive and eventful day, our reporter finds himself struck down, right before a possible development for the better in his life. We then move on to Mikado, Izaya, and Celty in the Dollars chat (If you didn’t know this by now, then I don’t know what series you’ve been watching). Izaya informs them that Niekawa has just been attacked by the Slasher, and they are shocked to hear it, especially Celty who had just spoken to him hours earlier. Just as they are talking about this incident, “Saika” the perceived Slasher enters the chat…

Shizuo.

“Saika” begins to state that they have cut someone, referring to Niekawa. They then go on to say that they have found someone that they “love”, and it turns out to be none other than Shizuo Heiwajima. Apparently they want to kill someone strong, and love strong people, so Shizuo is now their target. We then quickly jump over to a dream that Anri is having, about being with her parents…

It's a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake.

We get a bit of back story on Anri, and how her parents were apparently killed in the first Slasher incident. It seems that this was a major factor in making her how she is. As in the last episode, we hear about how she hates to depend on people, but can’t help but do so. During all of this, we see that the person waiting outside of the school at the end of the last episode was Niekawa, who now has red eyes like the slasher. We find out that after getting stabbed, he was placed in the hospital, but left before he was supposed to. He has apparently become possessed by the spirit of the slasher, or something of the sort.

Gonna kill him, gonna kill him, gonna kill him...

We now join Celty and Shizuo, out on “patrol”. Shizuo is determined to kill the Slasher for attacking Celty, which apparently has him pretty excited. Before they can begin their search, a few Yellow Scarves try to pick a fight with them, but Shizuo promptly deals with them.

I walk alone.

We see Anri walking home, being followed by the possessed Niekawa. She is wandering around thinking about her life, and the current situation that she is in. Dotachin and friends spot her being followed, and realize that there is about to be trouble. They begin to follow behind them, as to stop anything from happening. Anri returns to where the recent slasher attack that she was involved in occurred, only to find Niekawa walking up behind her with a knife. Before he can get to her, Dotachin tells Togusa to run him over with the car. Hearing this happen, Celty quickly turns her bike around and heads to where it happened.

The ultimate team.

Dotachin and his group approach the apparently dead Niekawa, only to find that he is not dead. He stands up and swings his knife at Dotachin, almost cutting him. He then begins swinging his knife around wildly, and upon spotting Anri rushes at her. Right before he can cut her, Celty hits him with her bike, knocking him back across the alley.

Dem eyes.

Once again, Niekawa stands up, showing just how possessed he is. He is very excited at the appearance of Shizuo, and begins to say how much he had wanted to find Shizuo, and that he loves him. We hear a bit of Niekawa’s true thoughts in his mind, about how he felt that if he could write his article about Shizuo it would fix his life and make everything okay again. After hearing what Niekawa has to say, Shizuo says simply that he will kill him…

Door'd.

Shizuo proceeds to rip the door off of Dotachin’s van, and runs at Niekawa with it. He basically bulldozes him over, which apparently kills him since the sound it made was pretty gruesome. This is where our episode draws to a close.

My Thoughts: I think I say this every time, but I can’t believe how every single episode of Durarara seems to be better than the last. For me, it’s raised itself to a level that no anime has reached in a very long time. This was quite possibly my favorite episode of the entire series so far, and that is really something. The whole search for information about Shizuo was really entertaining, and I came to like Niekawa quite a bit, so it’s sad what ended up happening. Seeing Celty gush about Shizuo was incredibly cute, and it was really interesting to see how highly she regards him. If it wasn’t for how solidified her relationship with Shinra has become in recent episodes, I’d totally say she had something for him.

The slasher showing up in the chat, and talking about how she loves and wants to cut Shizuo was extremely creepy. It was interesting to see that it pretty much left all of them speechless, including Izaya. That said, it was very awesome to see Shizuo team up with Celty to go after the slasher, and how eager he was to protect Celty and get the Slasher back for attacking her. His hopping on the motorcycle was just awesome, he was almost like a little kid with his excitement.

As I said earlier, I was sad that Niekawa had to be killed, but the whole scene involving his death was pretty epic. I’m very anxious to see where all of this goes in the next episode, and to see if the real Slasher is going to be still be after Shizuo.

I give this episode a 6 out of 5 stars: ★★★★★★ (Yes, it was that good.)