Durarara!! x2 Shou

デュラララ!!×２承 (Durarara!!x2 Shou)

7.5(1)

Otaku Den

8.0(264,862)

MAL Score

Ranked #810

Popularity #517

Action
Mystery
Supernatural
Delinquents
Organized Crime
Urban Fantasy

Episodes: 12
Duration: 24 min per ep
Aired: Jan 10, 2015 to Mar 28, 2015
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Peace may have settled over Ikebukuro, but the city’s strangest sights have started to feel almost routine. Celty Sturluson—the headless “Black Rider”—remains a constant target of police attention, and a hefty bounty on her head draws gangs and opportunists into a citywide hunt. At the same time, Mikado Ryuugamine is confronted by Aoba Kuronuma, an enigmatic underclassman who claims to know Mikado’s true identity.

The calm doesn’t last. A masked killer calling themselves “Hollywood” emerges, changing masks with each crime, and the scattered incidents around Ikebukuro begin to link together once more. As old tensions flare and new dangers surface, the district is pulled back toward a conflict that threatens to plunge the entire city into chaos.

Otaku Consensus

Durarara!! x2 Shou is best read as the re-entry cour for a larger second-season project: its ensemble direction, fractured perspective editing, and opening four-episode puzzle arc preserve the series’ cult appeal after a five-year gap. The common criticism is not the premise but the construction: as a 12-episode installment, it spends so much time arranging future conflicts that its pacing feels uneven and its payoffs too deferred to satisfy as a standalone season.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Durarara!! x2 Shou if you want urban fantasy that behaves like a crime-board wall: names, grudges, gangs, rumors, and supernatural oddities pinned together until the pattern starts to show. It is for viewers who like Baccano!’s ensemble chaos or the city-as-character feeling of Ikebukuro-set delinquent stories, but do not need a single heroic lead steering every scene. This cour especially rewards returning fans who enjoy tracking power shifts and social networks more than clean arc closure. Shuka’s version of the series keeps the appeal in the handoffs: a conversation, a street rumor, or a side character’s move can matter as much as a fight. If you want tidy resolution without setup, this is the wrong entry point; if you want momentum toward a bigger collision, it delivers.

Key Characters

S
Shizuo Heiwajima(VA: Daisuke Ono)
Fans respond to Shizuo as the series’ walking pressure point: a character whose presence turns ordinary street tension into a public safety problem.
S
Shinra Kishitani(VA: Jun Fukuyama)
Shinra stands out because his calm, chatty eccentricity makes him feel less like a moral center than a private observer who understands how strange Ikebukuro really is.
I
Izaya Orihara(VA: Hiroshi Kamiya)
Izaya remains the franchise’s great irritant, beloved for turning information itself into a weapon and disliked by characters for the same reason.
M
Mikado Ryuugamine(VA: Toshiyuki Toyonaga)
Mikado is compelling in x2 Shou because the season pushes harder on the gap between his mild surface and the influence fans know he carries.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Shuka handles this 2015 continuation rather than simply presenting it as a nostalgic rerun, giving x2 Shou the role of a relaunch after roughly five years off television.
2
The season’s structure is deliberately mosaic-like: reviewers repeatedly singled out the disjointed, multi-perspective storytelling as both its signature pleasure and its biggest barrier.
3
Its early four-episode stretch was noted by viewers as a compact perspective puzzle, while the broader cour functions as the first movement of the three-part x2 continuation rather than a self-contained climax.
4
The genre mix is unusually specific: it combines Action, Mystery, and Supernatural material with delinquent and organized-crime themes, keeping Ikebukuro’s street-level politics as important as its occult elements.
5
The reception profile is unusually split for a popular sequel: it holds a strong MAL score of 7.97 from 264,409 votes, yet user reviews in the supplied sample range from recommended 8/10 praise to 4/10 rejection over the same storytelling approach.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Durarara!! x2 Shou aired from January 10 to March 28, 2015, with 12 TV episodes, marking the franchise’s return after a gap fans repeatedly described as five years or more than 1,800 days.
Fun fact 2: It is the first installment of the broader Durarara!! x2 anime project, which is why many reviews judge it less as a complete season and more as setup for later arcs.
Fun fact 3: The show ranks #798 on MAL by score and #517 by popularity in the provided data, a combination that reflects both durable name recognition and a more contested critical reputation than the score alone suggests.
Fun fact 4: Several user reviews frame the season as hit-or-miss specifically because its ensemble style had become less novel by 2015, even for viewers who admired the original 2010 season.
Fun fact 5: The main cast list pairs several high-profile Japanese voice actors with central roles, including Daisuke Ono as Shizuo Heiwajima, Hiroshi Kamiya as Izaya Orihara, and Kana Hanazawa as Anri Sonohara.