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I think I’ve figured out why only the first season of Durarara really works. It’s a matter of philosophical & thematic consistency.
Durarara is actually a meditation on how morality is affected by intent, agency, and information. In the first season, literally every character arc and plot point comes back to exploring this problem. We are presented with an array of monsters — people with absurd configurations of intent-agency-information-action.
Our series antagonist’s motivation is literally one of the standard christian solutions to the problem of evil: he loves humans (and the entire range of human behavior made possible by free will) so much that he arranges elaborate tests that force them to grow and surprise him with their flexibility. This character is the only one in the series who really knows what’s going on most of the time, and he is a monumental asshole, but he is also charismatic & lovable because he’s driven by love.
The series’ three main protagonists are each the head of a group. Each group has a different level of internal control that can be employed, and a different level of informational feedback: a voluntary collective, a traditional hierarchical gang, and a remote control hive mind. At the beginning of the series, each of them has abandoned the group they lead, and in their absence the group has taken on a character they dislike & performed actions they disagree with — so they end up taking control and responsibility again, which pins them against each other. We see the kind of…
