Dear god. What do I say about this……mess? I really did think Ladies Vs Butlers was going to take the crown for most horrendous 1st episode, but I do think Omamori Himari has clinched it. I cringed my way through this episode with so much eye-rolling I’m surprised my eyeballs havent gotten stuck! It was just awful, awful, awful. It’s like they took elements from every romcom ever made, stuck it all together and expected it to work! There is nothing original here, absolutely nothing – not the concept, not the character designs, not the music and certainly not the voice acting (Himari is Horo!). Dreadful……..and the sad thing is that I know this will be a popular show 
The animation is pretty awful, the character designs are an endless parade of bad hair, massive shiny boobs and teeny-weeny skirts. In terms of voice acting….well, I have no notion what Daisuke Hirakawa is doing with his voice but its bloody irritating and I want him to stop. Ami Koshimizu is not even trying and just going with ‘Horo-mode’ for this role…….not that I can blame her, the script is terrible! No OP this week, ED was tragic, didn’t notice the BGM much.
Yeah – this was unbelievably crap. Dropped.
Ah now this is more like it, finally a show I can get stuck into. This first episode mainly served as set up, lots and lots of name dropping not a lot of actual action; but I can already see the potential. It’s a simple setting – country boy moving to the city and reunited with his (extremely chatty) childhood friend who shows him about town, introducing him to people and places and warning him about certain individuals and urban legends. This would have been easy to make incredibly dull, but thankfully this was not the case here – this 1st episode of Durarara was extremely well scripted and directed. From Mikado’s inner monologue, to Masaomi’s running narration and a conversation in a phone chat room – all the dialogue was well written and well acted. I guess this is going to be another show where minor elements of the première episode will keep cropping up throughout the series – I love things like that
The animation is simple and clean, but very well done – I really liked the backgrounds, the city really feels alive. The character designs are nice and simple too – not overly fussy which is refreshing. The OP animation is reminiscent of Baccano! with all the character name cards and subtle relationships. I also really like the music in this show – both the OP and ED are excellent and the BGM is a great mishmash of styles.
In terms of voice acting, Mamaru Miyano by far had the most dialogue in this episode as the incessantly chatty Masaomi – I do love his voice 
Yeah, definitely have high hopes for this show – can’t wait to see how it pans out
A pretty decent start to this series – nothing mind-blowing, but solid. As introductory episodes go it’s fairly ordinary – new transfer student moving into rural town and slowly discovering everything is not as it seems. The majority of the episode was slice of life stuff, with just enough elements of supernatural creepiness to piqué my curiosity. Hiroshi is a pretty bland character, his instant girlfriend is a bit creepy and something is definitely up with his classmates and that Nemuru girl. The sequence before the titles feels like it should take place later in the series – classic baiting of the audience going on there. Actually there is quite lot of that going on with the quick snippets of that white-haired girl with the scythe and her masked minions scattered throughout the episode. Yeap the mystery elements are well set up in this 1st episode.
Animation is very nice – I do like Peach-Pits character designs; they may be really moe, but they’re pretty! There is a nice fluidity in the movement of the characters and some nice direction choices too – such a relief to not have all the camera angles directed at characters cleavage or up their skirts! The OP animation is quite nicely done, as was the ED.
Music is excellent – fictionJunction OP, not one of their best but pretty good regardless – ED was decent too and the soundtrack throughout the episode itself was nice and atmospheric. Good music is a must for mystery series like these. Voice acting is pretty standard – another Kobayashi Yuu show, this time she’s the lead male.
Will be keeping this on for another few episodes to see if it goes anywhere interesting, but a pretty promising start.
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