Durarara!!

• 1. Introduction

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  Durarara!! begins with a headless rider on a black motorcycle that sometimes neighs like a horse, weaving through the neon-lit streets of Ikebukuro. That image alone tells you this is not an ordinary story. The rider is Celty Sturluson, a dullahan from Irish folklore, searching for her stolen head while working as an underworld courier. Around her swirls a cast drawn from roughly eleven different perspectives: a violent man of superhuman strength, a calculating information broker, an anonymous internet gang, and a teenager from the countryside who just wanted the excitement of city life. How did a light novel written by Ryohgo Narita and illustrated by Suzuhito Yasuda grow from a single impulsive title into a franchise spanning novels, manga, anime, radio, and video games? That is the question at the heart of what follows.

• 2. A Name That Means Nothing

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  Narita states plainly in the first light novel volume that the title "Durarara" means absolutely nothing. He had been finishing edits on the manuscript when his editor called and asked for a title. Narita recalled that he "just randomly gave a name, 'Du...Durarara?'" His editor responded positively, saying he liked ambiguous titles. That is the entire origin story of one of the more recognizable names in Japanese popular fiction. The title has often been misread as an onomatopoeia for a revving engine, but Narita himself has pushed back on that interpretation. The first novel was released in April 2004 under ASCII Media Works, through their Dengeki Bunko imprint, and the series would run for thirteen volumes before concluding in January 2014.

• 3. The World of Ikebukuro

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  Mikado Ryugamine moves to Ikebukuro to attend Raira Academy alongside his childhood friend Masaomi Kida, reuniting at the train station after years apart. Masaomi wastes no time cataloguing the city's dangers: Shizuo Heiwajima, described as violent and superhumanly strong; the information broker Izaya Orihara; and a mysterious gang known simply as the Dollars. That gang turns out to be internet-based and anonymous, a detail that shapes the entire tone of the series. Celty, working beneath the city's surface as a courier, is looking for her head, which was stolen from her. The story tracks all of these characters with roughly equal weight, showing how each person's partial knowledge of a common incident builds toward a larger picture. One unnamed narrator appears in every episode of the anime, offering opinions and explaining what drives people to stay in a city with, as the source describes, "a large underbelly." That structural choice, rotating among approximately eleven perspectives, was carried directly from the novels into the television adaptation.

• 4. From Page to Screen

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  An anime adaptation was announced inside the wraparound sleeve of the sixth light novel volume. Brain's Base produced the first season, which began airing on the 8th of January 2010, on MBS, TBS, and CBC simultaneously. English-speaking audiences received a simulcast within 24 hours of the Japanese premiere, a relatively ambitious arrangement for the time. The first season covered the first three novels across 24 episodes and ran through June 2010. Beez Entertainment licensed it for European release, while Aniplex of America confirmed its North American license at Anime Expo 2010 and later produced an English dub at Bang Zoom! Entertainment, with a January 2011 release. The music for that first season was composed by Makoto Yoshimori, who had previously scored Baccano!, another Narita work. Aniplex of America sold the series in three digipak, two-disc sets through RightStuf.com and Bandai Entertainment's online store. The first set arrived on the 25th of January 2011, the second on the 29th of March 2011, and the third on the 31st of May 2011. On the 26th of June 2011, Durarara!! began airing in the United States on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block, running through to the 18th of December 2011.

• 5. A Second Season and Wider Reach

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  On the 15th of March 2014, a new television series was announced under the title Durarara!!x2. The core staff returned from the first season, but the production moved from Brain's Base to studio Shuka. The second season was structured in three cours, or quarterly broadcast blocks, subtitled Shou, Ten, and Ketsu. The first cour launched in January 2015, the second in July 2015, and the third in January 2016, with the final episode airing in March 2016, bringing the episode count to 36. Crunchyroll simulcast the second season across North America, Central America, South America, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. Aniplex of America licensed the run and made a dubbed version available through Crunchyroll, Funimation, and Hulu. An internet radio programme hosted by Toshiyuki Toyonaga and Kana Hanazawa, the voice actors for Mikado Ryugamine and Anri Sonohara, aired from the 26th of February 2010 through the 25th of March 2011. Two visual novel video games were released for PlayStation Portable, the first on the 22nd of September 2010 and an expanded edition on the 25th of August 2011, with the latter later ported to Android on the 22nd of November 2011. A port for PlayStation Vita with new minigames arrived on the 19th of June 2014 as part of the franchise's tenth anniversary project.

• 6. Manga, Sequels, and Spin-offs

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  A manga adaptation of the first arc, written by Narita and illustrated by Akiyo Satorigi, first appeared in the May issue of Square Enix's Monthly GFantasy, published in April 2009, and became a regular series from the July issue published in June 2009. Yen Press licensed the manga for North America and released the first volume in January 2012. Later arcs were illustrated by Aogiri. A crossover manga with the series Yozakura Quartet, titled YZQ x DRRR!!, was bundled with a limited edition Blu-Ray release. Manga adaptations of two video games were also serialized in ASCII Media Works' monthly Sylph magazine between 2013 and 2015. A sequel light novel series, Durarara!! SH, set two years after the original, started in 2014. Only four volumes of Durarara!! SH have been released, with the series stalled, a situation the source attributes to Narita's health conditions. Yen Press announced its English-language license for the SH novels in October 2020. Chinese-language editions have been published in Taiwan and Hong Kong through the Taiwan branch of Kadokawa Media, and Daewon C.I. has handled Korean releases in South Korea under the Newtype Novels imprint.

• 7. Reception and Circulation

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  According to Oricon, the ninth volume of Durarara!! was the first in the series to top weekly bunkobon sales, during the week of February 7-13; the previous high-water mark had been the eighth volume, which reached second place. By March 2018, the light novel series had over 5.6 million copies in circulation. A 2019 Forbes article on the best anime of the decade identified Durarara!! among the five best anime of 2010, with critic Lauren Orsini describing it as having one of "the largest casts I've ever seen in a show, all introduced at once" and calling it "a wild ride with something for everyone." Crunchyroll staff writer Sergio Vaca praised the series for giving "multiple characters" the chance to show "different perspectives of these events," keeping viewers "on the edge of our seats with unexpected twists." Those structural ambitions trace back to choices made in the original novels, which Narita designed around approximately eleven rotating viewpoints, each revealing a different piece of the same puzzle.