Thursday, March 11, 2010

Durarara!! 09: You seem to be missing something

Introducing Yagiri Namie, her maybe incestuous affection for Seiji and Celty's not-quite reunion with her head.
EPISODE 09: Yearning and Loving

The episode begins with Namie trying and failing to contact her brother, Seiji. Namie then takes us back to the past when she and Seiji were still children and spent most of their time together. Namie was favored by her uncle and constantly received presents of dolls from him. While Namie didn't care much for the dolls, Seiji always seemed to be enamored with them. One day, Namie caught her uncle in his study talking with a strange specimen: a woman's head! Later, when Namie showed Seiji the head, that became the moment that Namie would regret the most for Seiji had fallen in love with the specimen, much like he did with her dolls.

Namie eventually grew up and went to work for her uncle at Yagiri Pharmaceuticals. She was assigned to the lab and there she decided to keep the woman's head, partly to keep it away from Seiji and partly as an experiment. Seiji, however, broke into the lab and stole the head. Later, Namie received a call from Seiji, telling her that he may have killed a woman. The woman turned out to be Harima Mika, a girl who had been stalking Seiji and accidentally saw him with the head. When Namie found him, she promised to take care of it. This new creature Namie created with the head and Harima Mika's body remained hidden inside the Yagiri Pharmaceuticals lab but it somehow managed to escape and found Seiji again. Namie had been keeping track of her brother ever since until now.

Meanwhile, the present shows us that the scarred girl, in a fit of jealousy, had taken Seiji's cellphone and thrown it into the public fountain without his knowing. Namie goes to the local informant Izaya Orihara and asks him to track down Seiji for her. After doing some checking in his computer, Izaya tells Namie that she would receive a call from the police and it's going to be about Seiji. True enough, Namie does receive the call and hurries out of there.

Back to Seiji and the scarred girl, it is revealed that Izaya is in contact with the latter. He warns her that they're coming for her and tells her to leave. The scarred girl takes his warning to heart and urges Seiji to leave with her. Seiji, however, resists and the commotion catches the attention of Shizuo and Celty. As the scarred girl runs past them, Celty suddenly recognizes her own head and gives chase. Upon seeing Celty, the scarred girl screams and runs away, eventually running into Mikado who helps her get away from Celty.

The day ends with Celty talking over the encounter with Shinra, Mikado offering his apartment and safety to the scarred girl, Namie ordering her people to catch the girl and take her down, and Izaya, who seems to be the only person able to connect all these things, entirely entertained.

COMMENTS:

Another revealing episode. We're finally seeing more of the darker, crazier characters. Namie's love for her brother is definitely disturbing but makes a little sense, considering their crazy family dynamics. Two little children left to themselves in a huge, empty house? An uncle who talks to a severed head? No wonder Namie turned into a ruthless scientist with a major brother complex and Seiji became a co-dependent with a streak of violence.
It's interesting how Celty's head is likewise suffering from amnesia. Celty thought that most of her memories are contained in her head. Turns out, that isn't the case, and Celty's head without its body is just as lost as Celty's body is without its head. In the previous episode, Celty admitted matter-of-factly that she is probably in love with Shinra. I wonder how she's going to feel once she finds out that Shinra knows more about where her head had been than he lets on.
Am I the only who is rooting for Shizuo x Celty?

EDIT 03/12/2010 9:07 p.m.: This is episode 9, not 8. Sorry.

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