Ever wanted to bang your favorite heads-in-a-jar? Ever desired to get into the pants of your beloved little brother? Or perhaps you’d like your head transplanted bimonthly as well. Whatever you name, the Yagiri siblings will deliver; 100% satisfaction guranteed!
Summary: Compared to other people’s love, Yagiri Namie’s love is different. Not because it’s directed toward his little brother, oh no, but because it is more vast and absolute. Too bad Mika Harima doesn’t approve of this, as she secretly throws Seiji’s phone into the fountain to prevent Namie from contacting Seiji.
The next morning, Namie finds her little brother missing. Frantic, she leaves her office and starts recounting how the head of Mika Harima is nothing but a doll to her. She’d first encountered the head in her uncle’s study, and finding it beautiful and totally not creepy at all, invited Seiji to look at it.
Seiji fell in love at first sight with the head floating in a jar.
Back at the present, Namie enters Izaya’s office and offers him money in return for locating Seiji. Izaya questions the importance of that, seeing as Yagiri Pharmaceuticals is facing absorption by a large foreign company called Nebula. At Namie’s insistence, Izaya agrees to help, though not before trolling her a bit for his own amusement.
As Izaya gets to work, Namie recalls how after Seiji first saw the head, he’d grown more and more in love with it by the day. Worried, Namie had decided to relocate the head into her research center, but Seiji broke into the lab and stole it. Soon later, he phoned Namie saying he might’ve killed someone, and at his room, Namie found the corpse of a stalker named Mika Harima. She decided to perform an operation on the body.
Namie’s flashback gets interrupted by Izaya, who assures her the cops will take Seiji into custody soon. As Namie receives a phone call and hastily leaves, Izaya puts on his signature Evil Smile™.
At a cafe, Mika receives a text message (presumably from Izaya) warning her to run. She pulls Seiji away from the cafe and into the park, where she encounters Celty and Shizuo. Celty recognizes Mika’s head and gives chase, while Seiji holds Shizuo at bay by waving around his extremely dangerous pens. Mika then bumps into Mikado, who, upon noticing the headless rider charging at them, randomly decides to escape with the girl through an underground subway. Meanwhile, Seiji pokes a pen through Shizuo’s hand and receives a headbutt for it, before getting taken by the cops.
That night, Celty recounts the whole mess back to Shinra, adding that she was in the park because Izaya told her to wait there. As Celty wonders why her head is tacked onto a body, Shinra speculates that someone might’ve chopped a corpse’s head off and stuck her’s onto it. Celty is totally creeped out, but she is even more uneasy at the fact that her head no longer wants her anymore and has found a new love partner.
After bringing Seiji back to her lab, Namie promises him that she’ll find Mika. In reality however, Namie has already deemed Mika an interference to her love, and she orders her underlings to capture her dead or alive.
At Mikado’s cruddy apartment, Mika receives a text message from Izaya. Izaya receives a reply, which excites him so much that he spins in his chair. Mikado finishes brewing his tea and offers Mika a cup while asking her some questions. Mika admits that she has amnesia, but refuses to go to a hospital or a police station. She believes she must leave however, before Namie interferes again.
Credits to Kanon of ASuki
I sort of already knew that Durarara!! has merely been building up its settings/characters for the past 8 episodes, but watching this ep is akin to getting slapped 17 times in a rapid succession by a wet octopus: now this is what I call plot movement. Don’t get me wrong though, because the past 8 weeks were still a load of fun in and of themselves as we looked into each character’s quirks and habits, and how they all fit into the grand scheme of things. In fact, without these developments I doubt this episode would’ve been as impactful either, seeing as the situation more or less remains largely unchanged. But now that our Mikado has decided for whatever reason to throw himself onto the stage naked, everything we’ve ever known is finally going to start colliding into one big wild party. It’s like those fancy domino mazes that people with no life spend 10 years to make: the first piece has begun its descent.
By the way, I don’t tend to go around being a hater but damn do I want give Seiji the old one-two. Here is a guy who believes in the power of love and risking his hide saving his girlfriend; that’s all good and dandy if not for that fact that he also has enough of an appetite to eat noodles in front of someone he just killed, and that he is shameless enough to open his palms wide for his sister to throw him cash. When he loses his girlfriend, he whines to his sister and go hides in a corner looking worse than a person who just lost his top 10 in Saimoe all in one round. And that’s an understatement. Although coming from a family who decorates their room with a head-in-a-jar, I guess it was inevitable Seiji would be pretty messed up himself.
Speaking of the head-in-a-jar, various forumers and bloggers have noticed that Namie’s uncle and Shinra’s dad seem to share a few similarities, namely their connection to the head, their tendency to not be shown with a 
face, and of course, their overall demented behavior. Although the fact that the uncle was not shown twirling his pen and the question of why in hell Shinra’s dad would be living in the Yagiri household remain, assuming they’re the same person, the connection between Shinra and Yagiri Pharmaceuticals (as shown in ep08) would be easily resolved, since Namie’s uncle is apparently the company’s head honcho. And in fact, it has been pointed out that one of the dude’s hairdo in Mika’s operation resembles that of Shinra’s, meaning Shinra might’ve even taken 
part in the operation as well. Do take note however that at this point, it’s still up in the air whether the surgery was intended for head transplantation or simple plastic surgery. Here are some counter arguments given by forumers for why the scene might just be a big fat red herring. Naturally, this calls into question Mika Harima’s current behavior and why she would retain her attraction to Seiji even after her own head is no longer here. It may well be that this is her head, only made to resemble Celty’s so much it’s deceiving everyone. Who knows? (Well, besides those cursed light novel readers >_>)
Some other miscellaneous observations/details:
- stuopidget at ASuki did an analysis of Izaya’s cheshogo game (i.e. the abomination formed from a threesome between chess, go, and shogi) and found out that it might be reflecting the current situation in Ikebukuro.
- In the preview for Durarara!! 10, Mikado narrates that the dude who’s in the classroom next to him is in the Dollars. Holy shit.
- Who the hell is this guy? Is he the one in the Dollars that Mikado is referring to? I thought he looked like Togusa at first glance, but his eyes look more feminine than half the girls I’ve seen so I don’t know.
PS:
Suffer with me.
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