Durarara ep04 functions as a background/history lesson episode centering on Celty’s past, dutifully narrated by everyone’s favorite closet pervert and underground physician, Shinra!
Summary: Camcorder-wielding Kishitani Shinra is wandering around Ikebukuro, questioning random folks and compiling a video about the headless rider. He introduces himself as an unlicensed but talented physician who takes up various underground jobs, and also happens to live with the headless rider, Celty Sturluson herself.
Presently, after purposefully accidentally peeking into a showering Celty, Shinra is wondering how the world appears to her as someone without eyes. Apparently, Celty retains the ability to see, hear, and smell even without a head. She replies to Shinra that she doesn’t care about the mechanics, but Shinra states that he’s merely curious how she shapes her values as a Dullahan.
Upon Shinra’s prompting, Celty recounts her day’s events, beginning with the report of an accomplished mission to their partner-in-crime Izaya. After handing her the money, Izaya makes some comments about headless fairies in Ireland known as dullahans and how an old street artist has arrived recently claiming to have lost a dullahan’s head. At this, Celty hastily races off.
Captain Obvious Shinra clarifies that Celty is actually a dullahan, a creature of the Celtic folklore that is said to drive by the houses of people and spraying bathtubs of blood on them for no reason whatsoever. Her story goes back to 20 years ago, when she first awoke without memories yet with full knowledge of her powers. In search of her memories, she embarked on a journey to recover her lost head.
Celty arrives at a shipyard to discover that her head is already getting transported across the sea. She herself can easily stow away in a ship, but her familiar, a spirit possessing a horse’s corpse, cannot. A broken motorcycle laid nearby at the time.
In the present, Celty finds Shizuo, who leads her to the street artist. Upon questioning, the old artist states that he’d seen the female dullahan with his own two eyes long ago, and that he hadn’t so much “lost her head” as he is no longer able to recall it for some reason. He also remarks that a strange man visited him recently proclaiming that the dullahan is better off without the head.
Back in the apartment, Shinra expresses doubt towards the old artist’s words before telling Celty that she should just give up. He then proposes that he’ll be willing to take her anywhere she wishes, but gets instantly and utterly DENIED by an angry Celty.
Shinra had first met Celty on a ship when he was still 4 years old. She had complied to his whacko father’s request for him to dissect her, revealing her fully disabled organs and inhuman HP regen. From then on and 20 years after, Shinra has always been with Celty.
An old street artist had been working on his dullahan drawing one morning when a passerby Shinra complimented his artwork, and expressed that the dullahan looks more charming without the head.
Not a bad episode; definitely gave much appreciated insight into Shinra and Celty’s past and character. The former actually turned out to be every bit as weird as I imagined him to be, though I almost shat bricks when I saw him dissecting a headless dullahan when he was still just a 4-year-old kid. And man was I surprised to see Brains Base employ Miyuki Sawashiro to voice over Celty’s text messages of all things! Still, the voice does fit her to a ‘T’, and actually serves to give Celty some nice personality backup too, so I’m not complaining.
It’s also interesting to note just how much Shinra wants Celty to abandon her past to pursue a future as her current self. Being with her for 20 years has probably made him attached to the point where he’s afraid that once Celty recovers her memories, she’ll leave him forever. I certainly can’t call his fears BS, as Celty must be the most softhearted undead creature ever to throw around random bathtubs of blood onto half-dead people anyone has ever seen, which means that her current personality may just be a result of her loss of memory. Of course, this is mere speculation on my part, but Shinra is no doubt in for a tough ride if he prefers his ladies headless, as the OP’s head-in-a-jar doesn’t seem very happy without a body!
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