Manga Review: Durarara!! RE; DOLLARS Arc

Release Year: 2014
Reading Year: WI2023
Currently Reading: Volume 8

Thoughts: There is something off about this arc. There is a different artist (Aogiri instead of Akiyo Satorigi), and that may have been all it takes. The art is gorgeous, modern, and honestly had me just staring at some of these pages. But, the soul of the series isn’t in this arc. It just feels like a regular story with characters that I am being told are powerful or interesting, rather just being all of those things. The charisma is gone. Without my buy-in about how cool these characters are, I lose interest.

I will say for all that critique, if you do stick it out, I think the 3rd volume is when this arc’s story starts picking up and becomes interesting on its own.

Update: Alright, I finished the arc and I think I can pare down why this arc wasn’t for me. First, there is too much writing. With such strong art, there is too much text filling up the pages. The text communications, which were novel and nostalgic, just drag on and use such literal dialogue. It lacks nuance, gets tired, and loses the cool early 2000’s aesthetic. Second, they tried to make the story and characters more conventional. Instead of strange, scary, or impressive children running amuck in a city, this story tries to be more dramatic. To be more intelligent. But, these characters shine when you let them be strange. Put them in a normal gang war and they cease to be intriguing. Lastly, the characters lose their uniqueness. Long gone are the days of feeling fear and awe of Izaya because you didn’t know what he would do next – or genuinely feeling his Joker-like madness.Or Ryuugamine’s duality of innocence and crazy. Celty was really the only consistent character throughout the arcs.

It sucks. I loved this series and this arc really turned to a direction I didn’t love.