Previews do not lie, and the preview promised me the backstory of Nakura and that’s what I got this episode. We begin the episode by seeing him talking to a woman claiming to be an insurance agent, she begins probing him about Izaya. Of course, he only claims to have vague connections to him. Remembering him from high school but not having much of a connection otherwise.
Then he called Izaya and was like, “She wasn’t an insurance agent was she?” Izaya doesn’t really say, however, in this exchange. We discover the ‘boss’ of both the gangs that Izaya tackled last episode. Were tied back to Nakura and operations that he was involved in during High School. It’s fine though, they’re taken care of now.
Meanwhile, we see Celty taking care of Shinra who is laid up in bed from his injuries. As she goes to change his bandages, she points out a scar on his stomach that he never explained the full story of too her. All she knew about it was that she’d gotten involved in a scuffle between friends, she’d always assumed he’d gotten pushed down the stairs or something.
No, he was stabbed. He was straight out stabbed with a knife, and Izaya turned himself in and got arrested for it. However, with charges never pressed. The entire situation died down fast enough and….
NO, CELTY, DON’T GO KILL IZAYA. THE STORY WAS TOLD OUT OF ORDER. HE DIDN’T STAB SHINRA! If anything, he was actually rather mad that Shinra was stabbed.
This brings us back to Nakura. When Shinra and Izaya met, Shinra begged him to start a biology club with him. Though, there was no real interest in a biology club from either of them. Shinra just wanted to say he had friends to Celty to make himself look good. Izaya was interested in someone that’s views on life were so much different then his. So they made an off pairing.
So Izaya began using the club as a front for a illegal baseball betting place. Nakura, having lost a bunch of money and demanding a refund before his father discovered that he stole from him. Comes after Izaya with a knife.
Shinra shoves himself between them and gets stabbed in Izaya’s place. After Nakura runs out of the room and Shinra ‘tends’ his wounds with duct tape before calling the hospital.
[pro-tip, duct tape is not effective for long term wound care!]
Izaya picks up the knife and asks Shinra if he can claim that he stabbed him and take the fall for it. In return, he would spend the rest of his life making Nakura pay for what he’d done to Shinra. I’m not sure if it’s out of some twisted sense of friendship, or perhaps just because he wanted a pawn for his game. Either way, he did exactly that. Now Nakura is in debt to him for a good long time.
Meanwhile, to keep Celty from getting involved in other plans. Izaya asks Celty to protect his sisters, even if it was merely to keep her out of the way. His sisters are thankful. They have a very interesting family dynamic.
I adored this episode. As I do most Izaya centralized episodes but what I liked about it the most was the view into the past. Seeing both Izaya and Shinra, seeing what kind of people they were back when they were teenagers. Seeing Shinra’s complete lack of interest in people, the way he spoke of non-rotting zombies. How Izaya could not understand his views.
How even back then, Izaya was gathering information on people. The way he researched Shinra and the more he looked into him, the more interested he became. Their friendship is an interesting one to be sure.
I hope to see more of Nakura in the future, I hope to see them fully animate his face as well. This entire episode, as well as all of his previous appearances at ‘Izaya’ have been half shadowed. We saw the high school him, but the episode clearly says that his face has been changed by Shinra since then.
The last note about this episode is the idea that now Celty is aware that Izaya has her head, for what purpose? What is he trying to achieve, what are his goals. The audiance has some idea, but Celty does not. What we don’t know, is how Celty with react to knowing this. Oh man, everything is coming to a boil and we still have the rest of this cour and the next one. I am so hype!
~Midnight