I almost considered not writing a review for Duarara!!x2 Shou for the simple reason that it seems to completely be a setup for the next two cours that make up the second season of the explosive and interwoven narrative of Durarara!! . To be sure, things happen in x2 Shou, and in the end its story could exist without any further seasons in store. The various characters, all going about their own business and solving the mysteries in front of them, wind up meeting at center stage for one reason or another as the narrative folds over on itself. But Durarara!! is about interwoven stories in the city of Ikebukuro, not separate stories that happen to take place in Ikebukuro and happen to meet one another at the very end. x2 Shou feels much more like a collection of separate stories that all happen to end at the same place, and only because of the scale of the ending confrontation.
Dozens of new characters enter our ongoing tale, each with their own deeply fascinating backstories and motivations. The style of narrator-driven character exposition in Durarara!! is in full swing again, and as entertaining as ever. What the new characters thoroughly lack is further progress. The original show wove stories together in a way that allowed the characters to develop on neutral terms, but now with a series of independent linear paths they have nowhere to go. Only one has any development whatsoever: Hijiribe Ruri, the idol mentioned in passing from the first season, who struggles to overcome a divide between herself and the rest of humanity. And “development” is in the form of sudden inexplicable revelations, something many anime use to summarize the process of true human development but that Durarara!! has traditionally done a good job of avoiding.
Not that no characters get development; for every new character that is left underdeveloped, an old character gets new dimensions added. Mikado, who originally found himself a place in the crazy world of Ikebukuro through the online organization of the Dollars, is now forced to confront the idea of not just losing that place, but of never truly having had that place to begin with. His friend Masaomi, while being relegated to the outskirts of the show after the first season, does find ways to assuage some of his unresolved anxieties, and we are given many reasons to believe he will once again become crucial to the plot from here on out. I generally do not agree with using side characters for the sole purpose of pushing protagonists forward, and it certainly sticks out in x2 Shou, but I will hold out hope that their development is in the works.
The other major development goes to the city of Ikebukuro itself, which I still hold to be the main character of the Durarara!! series. With the characters following their paths to a better future, crossing and bending with one another, Ikebukuro grows and changes as they change the structure of organizations and relationships. With the gang wars of the first season, Ikebukuro threatened to implode. Now, it threatens to morph into a monster that is completely unrecognizable. External threats appear one by one, and as the city fights them off and maintains the status quo, the status quo inevitably shifts. It is the underbelly of the city that slowly begins to rise up through the events that transpire, and by the end the line between forces for order and forces for chaos become more and more indistinguishable, with notions of good and evil being even more unbalanced.
But will this be the conflict that continues to grow? Will these questions begin to come to a head as the seemingly resolved stories from x2 fold back in with the rising tensions and create an interesting and meaningful narrative? Having so many questions about the future of Durarara!! speaks volumes about the taste x2 Shou has left in my mouth, for better and for worse. Certainly by itself, x2 Shou tells a decently interesting story about very interesting characters in a pretty interesting fashion, which easily qualifies it as entertaining. The price of this is the clear sense of purpose and driving energy that made Durarara!! a fascinating story about very interesting characters told in a spellbinding fashion. Had all three planned seasons of x2 been allowed to be released in an unbroken fashion, the story would not have been streamlined to exist as an entity by itself, which for now leaves x2 Shou as a wholly less memorable experience that leaves me wanting for more.