Durarara stands up against non-anime just as well as it stands against anime. Narratively ambiguous and ambitious, the story combines what is kind of an adaptation of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms with the technology and internet-enabled present, mixed with a classic gang war story with a slight hint of real-world folk-tale inspired fantasy, all while keep the genre flowing. At times, its got hand to hand action, at others its got meditative drama, others use interesting methods to subvert typical action and favor social manipulation.
Mikado Ryuugamine moves from the countryside to the Ikebukuro district of Tokyo to be in high school with his childhood bestfriend, Masaomi Kida and meets Anri Sohonara, a classmate, as well as a cast of oddball characters including the pacifistic Russian hawker for a Russian owned sushi parlor, frighteningly strong Shizuo Heiwajima, reliable young adult Kiyohei Kadota and his manga or Idol obsessed friends, Walker, Erika, and Saburo, and the one person Kida told Mikado to avoid at all costs, Izaya Orihara. Eventually, Mikado also meets the mysterious and mythical Celty Sturleson, better known as the Black Rider and her partner, blackmarket doctor Shinra.
Mikado is essentially the dominant point of view in what is a third person omniscient ensemble story. Various episodes or post-credit scenes elucidate on other characters in deeper ways to show their depth and/or machinations towards the climax of the story.
What follows is a slow drip of revelations about each character and their motives. Two main factions are present (The Yellow Scarves and the Blue Squares), with a third shadow faction (The Dollars), a shady pharmaceutical company is kidnapping immigrants for study, and one character manipulating all sides to their benefit, and it all comes together in a very interesting way that subverts most modern fiction. Its not too hard to follow, but it IS a web of things for you to piece together and for you to try and predict or solve yourself beforehand.
An interesting motif is a running "anonymous" chatroom between Mikado ("Taro Tanaka"), Izaya ("Kanra"), and Celty ("Setton"). Its clear basically from the beginning that Izaya knows who the other two are, but as the series goes on, the other two begin to suspect whos whom, but instead of outing each other, keep the anonymity alive for potential new members.
The only cons are typical to the anime medium: lengthy (but solid) opening and closing songs, episodes tend to remind you about last episode in the first few minutes, spotty animation quality, spotty localization, no translation for written Japanese, etc.
I do think this series works remarkably well in English and the dub is solid for the time. Notable actors include Yuri Lowenthal (Spider-Man in the PS4 and PS5 games), Steven Blum (Spike Spiegal, TOM, i guarantee you've heard this guy somewhere), various Critical Role VOs including Matt Mercer, Laura Bailey, Sam Riegel, and Liam O' Brien, plus many others. The cast are all talented.
