[Phaeton99]

Hopefully, this will the first of a series of discussions looking at the way anime (and manga) weave their often complex narratives.

For this inaugural thread, I have chosen a new show as the topic: Durarara!!.

I'm going to presume that anyone who follows this thread has already watched at least a few of the episodes.

If you haven't watched it yet, I recommend doing so — whether this discussion interests you or not. It's worth the time.

Anyway: storytelling.

As I have been catching up with the latest anime shows, I have noted an interesting development in how stories in anime are related, and Durarara!! is a prime example: recursion, a pattern of revelation that build up detail and depth by repeating parts of a story in slightly different fashion. It is an ancient approach to storytelling that has been rather uncommon in modern media, which has taken a rather single-track linearity as its presentation model. I am of the opinion that the re-emergence of a more circumspect telling improves the material, lending a gravity to the narrative that a more straight-forward telling would not only fail to imbue, but likewise even cheapen the core concepts.

This brings me to Durarara!!.

Taken of its own, the premise of the the series is not entirely novel, even a bit cliche: a embroilment of urban highschoolers in supernatural circumstances. That phrase could describe so many anime, past and present, that it alone is almost meaningless as a description.

For the sake of avoiding spoilers, I will not go into specifics here.

What matters is how the mode of telling enriches the basics.

First and foremost, Durarara!! has an almost stream-of-consciousness approach to its episodes. One the one hand,m this does make it a bit meandering at times, drifting from point to point naturally, but seemingly randomly. But this is framed by the story, which tends to open an episode with a critical (and often inexplicable) event, then works it way back to that event from an earlier point in time, demonstrating the interrelated nature of it all, and weaving its loosely tied characters closer together without outright tying them with hard plot points (which will likely come latter and seem perfectly appropriate thanks to this buildup).

Thus, the slightly wandering — almost documentary — approach to the story tell suits going back over events and revisiting the same scenes. The consequence is a remarkable amount of development of setting and character without too much straight exposition — and even when exposition is resorted to, it feels natural.

In retrospect, it becomes rather clear that not much has really happened in the first five episode beyond a handful of brief, interwoven events.

Yet, the setting of the series is already becoming firmly established, seeming far more familiar and confident of its footing than a more linear approach is likely to produce over so few installments. The viewer already is gaining insights into characters and how they might affect each other directly and indirectly. Even if the outcome might prove obvious, in the end, the trip there should be interesting as a result.

So: how do you feel about this sort of storytelling?

[b29g_debo]

>amine

[Huntfreak]

I love it, the story is build up greatly what makes you look out and makes you yearn for more information about every characters and there connections.

this makes Durarara really stand out though compared to other animes.

[Mitsuki~hana]

I love Durarara too!! I'm attracted to the anime from the first episode and I don't know why, I love the opening song so much (music & lyrics) . What I like about Durarara is it have many characters with their own unique character that reflects most of the people nowadays. I loved Orihara Izaya the most from all of the main characters. ^-^

[Pikaboose]

If you like this anime, I suggest you watch Baccano if you haven't already.
Its from the same dude who wrote durarara!!, and it features the whole recursion, multiple perspectives and plenty of great characters.

[Tubby]

^this, plus the random cutscences which made Baccano! so awesome. The show itself tells you in the first episode that you cannot tell WHO is the main character, also WHEN is the mainplot.
For me, Durarara pales in Comparison to Baccano, but Durara is only at its sixth episode so far, but nevertheless Durarara didn't "get me" like Baccano did back then.

[ARTHURIUSS]

Yeah it's called non-sequential story telling and is not so uncommon on the Japanese Light Novel scene but among animes only Baccano comes to mind.

[Frediloc]

Personally I love this style of storytelling, and I hope that it is ultimately executed as well as in Baccano. Obviously Bacaano is an easy comparison as both are executed in the same style by the same people, but Baccano differs from Durarara in that in addition to laying out the exposition amongst the seemingly random non-linear elements the plot also came to completion at the same climactic moment that the dust rose and all the connections became clear.

This led to a very exciting on-your-edge experience for the entire series, but at 13 episodes it didn't feel like they were dragging out the exposition of this disconnected-plot type story. I wonder if at 24 episodes Durarara will keep up this style until the end, or the 'exposition' will come to a relative close somewhere halfway through.

[Titens]

Durarara so far is easier to understand than baccano. And with this I mean, unlike baccano, durarara's episodes are centered in one or two characters, even if there are conections to the rest of the guys. But in Baccano, you had the mixed timelines, the diferent characters, the diferent places, all mixed up in a same episode, making it really hard to follow at first and perfectly making more sense as the episodes moved on.

[lisyaoran]

where can i find baccano?