Izaya's Personality 

A place to express all your otaku thoughts about anime and manga

Izaya Orihara is one of those evil mastermind type characters who plans out schemes and terrifies his victims. He\'s cool, smart, and also really attractive (>_<)

In my opinion, Izaya is portrayed best in the manga and light novel (the manga was based off the light novel and follows it really closely, so I\'ll be referring to them like they\'re the same thing). That\'s not to say the anime didn\'t do a good job showing Izaya\'s personality. In my opinion, they\'re both accurate. I simply liked the manga\'s portrayal more.

One important scene that changes between the manga and anime is the scene that reveals Izaya\'s true personality. Although the scenes are different, they provide a similar feel to him.

In the anime, you are shown how Izaya really is when he messes with a girl who wants to commit suicide. Izaya has the girl kidnapped, has Celty save the girl and bring her to him, and then they talk on the roof about dying.

Somehow the girl feels like Izaya had won and jumps to spite him. However, Celty saves the girl once again and catches her. Celty tells the girl life isn\'t as bad as she thinks it is and she goes home appreciating her life more.

Izaya\'s messed up for making the girl jump, but wasn\'t she planning to die anyways? He made her realize she was scared and that she really didn\'t want to die. In the end, she walked off a little traumatized but feeling better. Overall, it was her choice on whether to jump or not to jump. Izaya just wanted to see what would happen if he told her she couldn\'t jump.

In the manga/light novel, it\'s a little different. Izaya uses the same "suicide chat" idea, but he meets the two female victims in person first instead of staging something else beforehand.

Sorry but it\'s the only way to avoid the pic limit. Click the pic and zoom in if you can\'t read it

So Izaya kidnaps them and leaves the place with two now-full suitcases. Then he calls Celty to help him take the bodies away. They\'re dropped off at a park bench, supposedly with a new understanding of life.

So Izaya\'s not as much of a jerk as he seems. Izaya plays around with the girls psychologically, but the manipulation was helpful in the end. I think that it helped everyone he manipulated. Kida, Anri, and Mikado learned each other\'s secrets and were able to fully trust each other. Kida and Saki finally got back together. Celty came to accept herself without he head and Shinra was able to tell her how he felt (that\'s right, you can thank Izaya for making those two get together). Even minor characters like Seiji Yagiri and Mika Harima found Izaya\'s manipulation helpful in the end.

This is why I think people like Saki still trusted him while knowing they were being used.

One of my favorite scenes in the first season of Durarara is the cell phone smashing scene. I\'m sure you guys remember that scene. If you didn\'t like him already, this scene might have turned your opinion around.

In the anime, when Anri is getting bullied, Izaya stomps on a girl\'s cell phone.

The girl yells at her boyfriend to beat Izaya up and the guy fails horribly and gets most of his hair cut off (Sadly I couldn\'t find a gif for that part).

This was a defining scene for Izaya. It showed he liked messing with people and that he was incredibly good with a knife. Most of us found this scene really funny because Izaya was cool and the girl got what she deserved, but at the same time found it a little messed up. Just a little.

It didn\'t seem like Izaya had actually hurt the girl that much. She had stared at the phone, didn\'t try to stop Izaya, didn\'t even say anything until he stopped, and then called her boyfriend to beat up Izaya. She didn\'t really seem to be scared of Izaya. In fact, she seemed more scared of her now-bald boyfriend.

In the light novel, Izaya still stomps on the phone, but the girl seems more upset about it.

Instead of standing there and watching him crush the phone, she tries to grab it and almost gets her fingers smashed.

There is no boyfriend there to help her and so she and her friends run in terror.

Izaya is more brutal in the manga, so brutal that I started to feel sorry for the girl. He definitely went overboard trying to see how the girl would react to him "beating up" something she cared about. He was teaching her that it really doesn\'t feel good to be bullied. (Although it didn\'t seem like they learned anything, since they bully Anri later on.)

Basically, Izaya has fairly normal morals. It doesn\'t seem like it, but disliking bullying is actually a common thing and beating up the bullies is used a lot as a form of justice. He was a little harsh, but in the end it wasn\'t much worse than physically hitting them. Izaya\'s not exactly a hero of justice, but he isn\'t really a villain either.

Izaya is self centered and doesn\'t do anything without ulterior motives. He really does love humans. More specifically, he loves to see what people will do in certain situations. Almost nothing in the entire anime would have been possible without Izaya\'s interference.

Some people don\'t like Izaya because of how he acts. I can see why they thinks he\'s a bad person, but I don\'t think he is. No matter how he acts, Izaya is ultimately helpful. Sometimes it\'s hard to see, but it\'s usually there somewhere. And no matter how much I hate Izaya, I like him.

Long edit (don\'t worry it\'s completely related to the subject): I feel like I wasn\'t clear enough. With that last paragraph.

I don\'t hate Izaya. In fact, Izaya is one of my favorite characters in any anime/manga. I like how blunt and manipulative he is. He doesn\'t sugarcoat anything. Ever. Instead of saying things like "bullying is wrong. How would you feel" he goes and smashes someone\'s phone. He did things the simplest most direct way possible and got his point across fairly clear to the girl. Maybe she didn\'t understand why he did what he did, and maybe people judged him without understanding his motive, but he still got his point across. Whether they understood him or not was up to them.

It\'s like how that girl jumped off the roof. He never told her to do it, but he never specifically said she shouldn\'t. He talked about her feelings, and told her that she was scared, but left the ultimate decision to her.

Sometimes words can\'t get your point across. Feelings work better, and he knows that. Feelings of fear, loss, pain, love, and hate can motivate people do do or not do certain things. Izaya has the strange ability to bring all of these emotions out from someone in a single conversation (usually he brings out negative emotions...) perfect example:

Izaya is one of those people who—to quote the light novel—is "all in all, very difficult to grasp or classify...indistinct based on appearance alone."

Do we know why Izaya "forced" the girl to jump? No. We are never given a reason for how he acts or why he does things unless he says so. But even when he says something that sounds valid, chances are that it\'s probably not. So we are forced to come up with our own conclusions and forced to form our personal opinions on what happened and why.

It\'s as simple as "people who like Izaya see him one way and people who dislike him see him another way." In fact, that view is shown with Saki and Kida.

Kida used to like Izaya but now hates him. He doesn\'t know why he ever trusted him and he doesn\'t know why Saki likes him. He sees the bad in everything Izaya does. Finally he was able to accept what happened in the past and was able to love Saki again (which was not Izaya\'s doing, for once) He respected Izaya a little but he ultimately still dislikes Izaya.

Saki is his polar opposite. She loves Izaya and trusts him no matter what he does. I think it\'s mostly because she can see through his manipulation and understand it, but some might see it as obsession. She kept saying she knew Kida would come back to her and that he couldn\'t run forever. No matter how crazy she sounded, she was right. Kida went right back to her, apologized and then ran off with her.

And they never came back for season 2 of Durarara. Saki, why?! (°A°)

Anyways, what I\'m trying to say is that Izaya is a hard character to understand. Even I don\'t understand him. I like parts of him and dislike others. My favorite character (Izaya) can be my favorite even if I don\'t like him entirely. I like to think I\'m neutral when it comes to him. I definitely trash talk about him (because he really is trash. Were is the lie?) but I also say I love him a lot and that he\'s my fave character (because he really is). He\'s like the Tsukiyama Shuu of Durarara.

So that\'s the end of my blog, thanks for reading. I hope you didn\'t have too much trouble with the manga screenshots I took. (Even I find it hard to read.) I\'m sure most people probably skimmed everything and just looked at the pics for 2 or 3 seconds. (they need to add more to the pic limit because 25 is not enough for me)

I procrastinated writing an essay to write this, so I should probably go and write that essay now.

Izaya is my favourite type of character~. I always fall his type in series (my friends find it amusing).

Imagine Izaya Orihara as a psychologist!! I can really imagine that.

Interesting though I have seen the show and ultimately did not think he was bad I did really think about the reason to his actions sometimes I just thought he was just being a jerk. Oh and the manga were easy enough to read

Izaya is definitely one of my favorite characters as well, I love the way he acts. I believe he tries to let people understand and grow by themselves instead of forcing things on them and doing that is entertaining to him as he gets to see how they develop as people. Like how he doesn\'t explicitly tell the girl to jump, He lets her realize and decide. That\'s probably why he always says he loves humans.

You could probably say he fits into the anti-villain archetype but then again like you say he\'s neither a proper hero nor a villain.

You should also talk about the conplex he has with shizuo and the fact that he can\'t predict the reactions of only two people in the anime: Simon and her secretary (the girl who loves her little brother... I forgot her name). He also never do his "human experimentations" on Shinza because he consideres him as a true friend (on season two, Shinza protected Izaya)

YEEESSSSS!!!!!! Izaya is my favourite character!!!! My brother really hates him and I hope that this blog might change his opinion even if it\'s only a little. You sure did Izaya justice!^.^

You did my husbando justice with this blog post.

✨ He\'s such a correct jerk haha. And dat meme with reasons to like Izaya: None but you do anyway. So true (at first sight.)

😂 For me there are plenty reasons to love him.

🌝 I\'m glad that I read the manga first.

Thank you very much for this blog, i agree with you & btw it was a very good idea to put the manga pages in it bc I didn\'t read it and just watched the anime and it was rlly cool to see how he is shown in the manga :)

This is a good in-depth analysis of Izaya\'s character. Really opened my eyes a little bit.

I think they have scans on Mangapanda and Mangahere

I\'d like to see this guy brought down a notch he always seems to be smiling

I don\'t really understand why either, but there is something very attractive and interesting about him. He has a very deep personality. He\'s the kind of character that only exists once.

There are reasons I like Izaya o3o. It\'s \'cause I relate to him, and he kinda reminds me of myself.

Yeah!! Well, I will wholeheartedly say, "when I grow up, I want to be Izaya!!"

haha izaya is just such an interesting character- he never fails to entertain hah

I love your point of view on hating what he does but, understanding why he does it. I had began to think I was the only one who understood his motives. Everyone I talk to, about him, doesn\'t seem to understand.

I try to understand people before I judge them too much by how they act. I think that whether you like or dislike someone doesn\'t make them a good or bad person.

Damn, why\'d you stopped you should have kept posting the whole manga. :-[

Haha I would have posted more but the pic limit stopped me

Lol you forgot to mention that shizuo beats him to near death by the end of next season

u forgot to mention that he is a loner and has no friends to appreciate him but u know the fandom appreciates him even though he doesn\'t need any appreciation from anyone since he\'s a sick bastard XD

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