Durarara!! – Episode 08

Last week on Durarara!!, we explored Shizuo’s background, and in the process learned how four of the main characters in the series met.  This week, the show explores the idea of searching, using Selty and her head as a framework.  I hope this episode has what you’re looking for.

I'm looking for my magic pot of gold, have you seen it?

Everyone in this episode is looking for something, and they’re all at different magnitudes of importance.  I’ll list them by probable level of importance.  Simon needs to find ingredients for sushi because his normal supplier is sick today.  Erika needs to find Walker, who can’t be contacted because he needs to find his cell phone.  Someone steals Anri’s shoes, and while she looks for them Kida runs off to search for the culprit.  Shizuo wants to remember what used to sit in an empty lot, and it turns out that it used to have a store selling his cigarettes.  Dotachin wants answers from Yagiri Pharmaceuticals, obviously a dangerous undertaking that he won’t realize yet.  Selty is looking for her head, which you all already knew.  Shinra, her roommate, is looking for love, specifically from her.  And Mikado?  Well, we’ll get back to him later.

By the way, Simon? Yeah, he totally failed.

Throughout this, we see how Selty struggles to cope with her current lot in life.  She desperately wants to find her head, but that desire wars with a growing humanity within her.  Since she finally has a day off, she decides to cook for Shinra.  However, she fears she can’t cook so much that she ends up destroying the meal before he can finish.  It’s when she’s with Shizuo that she realizes that making friends and keeping a job means she’s steadily becoming more human.  Once she finally returns home, Shinra has left, and she feels an all-consuming need to race out and find him.  As she says at the beginning, she feels like she might love the guy, and the way she acts around him backs that up that statement.  Selty is no longer some mythical fairy, the experiences over the past decades have grown her into a fine, though somewhat bizarre, woman.

Yep, she even has nightmares about her lost head.

Unfortunately, we finally find out about Shinra and his job.  A guy with fireworks strapped to his body tries to break into Yagiri Pharmaceuticals and gets badly beaten by security.  A man comes to Shinra’s apartment and takes him to treat the man and mess with his memories.  So, Shinra works for Yagiri, they know that he has the dullahan, and he knows full well who has the head.  If you hadn’t somehow figured it out yet, Seiji has Selty’s head, and they bring that point home with Selty’s dream.  What we don’t know is why Shinra works for them.  He looks summarily unhappy with the thought of unnecessarily displacing the attacker, and also frowns when his cohort talks about Selty.  I suppose we’ll just have to wait to see his motivations.  We might get that sooner than you think.  If I’m pegging the voice correctly, it seems that the next episode will focus on Namie Yagiri and her corporation.

WARNING: After the image, there’s speculation that might be a spoiler.  You’ve been warned.

Because they didn't feel like they drove it into your head yet...

WARNING: Again, speculation. Last chance to turn back.

Perhaps the most important point in this episode, though, has to do with the Lost and Found woman in the first image.  She spends the day asking people to write what they need to find.  When Mikado finds her, he looks through the book, and then makes his own addition.  At the end, the woman looks at the book, likely open to the page he wrote.  He’s searching for Connections.

Now really consider something for a minute.  The Dollars are a decentralized organization that is only unified in their connection to a person who recruited them, and the central website.  Mikado almost definitely must be part of the Dollars.  Perhaps even the anonymous leader?  The group would fulfill his desire to make connections.  Also, keep in mind that the series goes out of its way to point out Mikado is absolutely everywhere and constantly crosses all the character’s paths.

In any case, it seems his current project is Anri.  She talks a little bit about her childhood to him while they search for her shoes, but quickly quiets herself and runs away.  Mikado continues to look for her shoes and finds them down on the school grounds.  He goes out of his way to return them, and all she does is offer a soft thank you before shutting the door in his face.  She trusts Mikado to some extent, but she doesn’t want to let anyone get too close to her.  As for Mikado, I don’t know if there’s any grander purpose beyond simply liking her, but with his passively enigmatic exterior, we’ll have to wait and see.

That's Mikado for you, always looking after Anri...

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