Russian assassins and HILARIOUS misunderstandings. However, it does still feel a bit redundant.

The ending, however, single-handedly justifies the entire season. The final episode begins with several minutes of Shizuo at his best. It then follows it up with three shocking and dramatic twists that promise great things for the upcoming season. While I won't go into too much detail on said twists for spoiler reasons, the best of the three makes use of everything that has happened to Mikado in the last eight episodes, and results in his characterization finally taking a brilliant new direction.

All three twists leave the series ending on a fantastic cliffhanger, which I think says it all about this season: it's transitionary. Its main purpose is to introduce new elements to build onto thefirst season, and prepare them for the excellent third season it promises.

(EDIT: The third season was most definitely not excellent.)

As such, we're just lucky that three new installments have all been confirmed, as x2 Shou would have been a bit of a waste otherwise. This series has been on a very low budget - the first series occasionally had some awkward or cheap animation, but it was only sporadic. x2 Shou has constant off-model shots and horribly animated fight scenes, along with a case of Noodle People the like of which is rarely seen outside of Clamp series. Hopefully, the BD sales from this season will result in an increased budget for x2 Ten and x2 Ketsu.

Final Words: Even on a bad day, Durarara is still a very