Izaya Orihara

"I love humans!"

- Izaya Orihara

Izaya Orihara is the main protagonist villain in the light novel and anime series Durarara!! He is introduced as the main antagonist, but later shares the spotlight with Jinnai Yodogiri and Kasane Kujiragi. He is an infamous information broker who claims to love humanity and greatly enjoys messing with the lives of the people in Ikebukuro. He is also the archenemy of Shizuo Heiwajima.

He is voiced by Hiroshi Kamiya in the Japanese dubbed version of the anime, and Johnny Yong Bosch in the English dubbed version.

History and Plot
An information broker and a twisted man who screws with others for his own enjoyment. Lacking powers, Izaya makes up for it with his mind, as he can accurately predict the actions others will make. Izaya has made enemies with almost every character on the show, but sits back and does all his evil from the shadows. His deeds range from trolling the show's heroes online, to refusing to answer Masaomi Kida's calls after tricking Masaomi's girlfriend into getting kidnapped, and even convinced a teenage girl to try to kill herself (which she attempted, but failed because Celty rescued her and the girl lived and moved on). In the manga and light novels, Izaya finds two women online looking to commit suicide and invites them to kill themselves with him. However, he reveals he has no intention of dying and mocks them for their views on death before drugging them and having Celty Sturluson drop them on park benches. Izaya's rival is Shizuo Heiwajima a man with super human strength. Shizuo may be strong, but Izaya's mind equals Shizuo's brute strength.

Personality
Izaya, without a doubt, is an extremely crafty individual. He claims that he loves the whole human race because he finds them very interesting and unpredictable. He enjoys messing with them by manipulating situations in order to observe their reactions for his own pleasure. However, he dislikes Shizuo with a passion and enjoys playing with and has antagonized him since they met in high school. His hatred of Shizuo stems from Izaya seeing him as something 'inhuman' or 'monstrous'. Shizuo is also immune to Izaya's mind games and often disrupts the latter's plots and is highly unpredictable. It is also stated in the anime that Izaya is envious that Shizuo is capable of forming relationships with others and Izaya is not.

He has a very jolly and mocking personality, and is sometimes childish. He can easily read body language very well and he can tell what others are thinking without asking.

Izaya is known to lie very often, though states that he will not lie to paying customers since that would disregard everything he stands for (despite blatantly lying to Shiki about Nakura's identity). He apparently also loves to abuse loopholes, since he told Mikado he would not sell his information to anyone, but gave it to Masaomi for free.

Even if his beloved humans treat him as dirt and with contempt, he claims he will still 'love' them. Izaya considers himself an Atheist. He does not believe in the existence of God nor in the afterlife (though he does hope it exists). The only real friend he has ever had is Shinra. Izaya has been known to go to great lengths to get revenge on anyone who harms Shinra such as destroying Nakura's life for stabbing him, and it is implied he sent Izumii to capture Kisuke after the latter beat Shinra.

He has two sisters who he practically raised himself, he claims unlike the rest of humanity he cannot understand them, though he does show some reluctant affection towards them. He is, in part responsible for their odd personalities.

Overall, Izaya is fairly aloof and cannot and will not make any real connections to people. Most of the cast will either disregard him as unreliable and unstable, or threaten him with violence. The number of people who genuinely like him can be counted on one hand.

One very important part of his personality, is that he does not directly control anyone. He is described as being emotionally fragile, and that if his heart were to be filled with human love or hate, it would shatter. As such, he can accept anything humanity does, and no matter what will look at a situation and smile as though he predicted the entire outcome. Shinra explains that Izaya isn't very assertive as a person and therefore doesn't like meddling with the entirety of people's lives. Izaya himself says he more gives people a 'push' and whatever happens is up to them. For those that do not know him, it can appear that he has total mastery of any situation. Kuon Kotonami attempted to recreate Izaya's 'control', but due to his dislike for humans, was unable to do so.

It has been stated by multiple characters that despite his awful deeds, Izaya is neither good nor evil and will either help or harm people on a whim.

In his spin-off, Izaya has grown slightly. He states that as he only watched from a distance what he did to humans, his love was 'impure'. He vows that, though he will continue to manipulate people, he will confront them face-to-face. He also implies that he does at least somewhat consider Shizuo a human.

Appearance
Izaya is a tall and lean built man. He is very charming in appearance. He has short, glossy black hair in a somewhat spiky style. He has auburn eyes- occasionally colored as red or brown- that are described as remarkably sharp. He wears a black, V-neck shirt with long sleeves and black pants and shoes. In the manga, his hair has long bangs that frame his face. He wears a short black jacket with thick brown fur trimming in the hood. Occasionally, he would wear an ankle length black jacket with buttons and brown, fur trimming in the hood, cuffs, and hem. He wears a silver colored ring on both index fingers.

In the anime, he's almost always seen wearing his favorite dark brown jacket that goes down to his hips with brown, fur trimming in the hood, cuffs and hem. He always wears plain rings around his index finger on both hands.

In the Izaya Orihara spin-off light novels, his appearances changes. He instead wears a dark cape with a furred hood, and a buckle he keeps undone and dons a light grey version of his shirt. He is currently restricted to using a wheelchair due to injuries sustained from his final fight with Shizuo.

Abilities
Izaya is a master of parkour. Ever since he was younger, he battles with Shizuo in the streets every day, and over the years, his parkour skills were achieved naturally.

Izaya uses a switchblade as a weapon to defend himself from other blade attacks. He uses it as an offensive weapon to threatened his opponents or victims. He also uses numberous of flickblades for long range attacks. He can swiftly and easily dodge objects that are thrown in his direction especially objects such as trash cans, soda machines, and streetlights that Shizuo hurls at him during their battles.

Personal Information

 * Race: Human
 * Gender: Male
 * Birth: May 4, 1986 (1987 in the Anime)
 * Star Sign: Taurus
 * Age: 23 (first appearance, claims to be 21 forever), 27 (currently)
 * Blood type: O
 * Height: 5 ft 9in
 * Weight: 128 lbs
 * Hair: Black
 * Eyes: Auburn
 * Family:
 * Shirou - father
 * Kyouko - mother
 * Mairu & Kururi - younger twin sisters

Trivia

 * His last name "Orihara" in Japanese may mean "ori" (fold) and "hara" (field) which translates "folding field" which can refer to the folding field knife, his signature weapon.
 * His name comes from a combination of the biblical Isaiah and Japanese for "the one who looks over the crowd".
 * Izaya shares his birthday with Daisuke Ono who is the Japanese voice actor of Izaya's rival Shizuo Heiwajima. Coincidentally, Shizuo shares a birthday with Hiroshi Kamiya.
 * He can speak Russian fluently with Simon, usually proverbs, along with English.
 * He prefers foods that taste bitter, and dislikes sweets and conserved food. Although unshown yet, his fervor of humanity observation is stated to be reflected in attempt of analyzing people through their prefers and preparation of food.
 * His favourite food is fatty tuna.
 * He is a light sleeper.
 * Izaya is known to be one of the strongest men in Ikebukuro, although the title of strongest man belongs to Shizuo Heiwajima.
 * Izaya's nickname for Shizuo, "Shizu-Chan", wasn't actually made by Izaya himself. He heard about Shizuo from a girl who used to be in Shizuo's elementary school who refered to him as "Shizuo-Chan". Izaya initially suspected Shizuo to be a girl until someone explained who he was.
 * Izaya shows little interest in drinking or partaking in vulgar events.
 * He has a life insurance policy.
 * In the novel, from Mikado's perspective, it is stated that he found Izaya's appearance rather odd for a man of his age, regarding style. And that he seemed different from the rest, since Izaya didn't seem to find an interest in appealing to the culture's fashion.
 * It has been stated that Izaya views Namie as a housewife, not a friend and holds no romantic interest in her, calling her an awful person.
 * He is an atheist, stating that there is no proof that God exists. Regardless, due to following events and his plans, he takes a primarily agnostic view of afterlife later.
 * Izaya's hair style is similar to that of Mikado's.
 * In the anime, Izaya always wear his trademark jacket, whereas in the manga and novels, sometimes he wears a long trench jacket. In the anime's special episode 12.5, he wears a normal, casual t-shirt and jacket.
 * His eyes are stated as reddish-brown, however, sometimes in the anime, his eye color is just brown as seen as in episode 3. In some artwork, his eyes are coloured bright red.
 * Baccano!: In one of the baccano light novels, Boss Bride mentions exchanging information with "Orihara of Shinjuku" who is obviously Izaya.
 * Izaya's seiyuu, Hiroshi Kamiya, also did the voice acting of Hiroomi Souma from the anime Working!!, mostly known for his ability to find people's secrets and makes them to do his job by threathening them using the secret, similar to Izaya's ability to gather informations and his ability to make people do as he planned, respectively. Also, Hiroomi likes to observe people ever since he was a kid, similar to how Izaya really likes human observation. In addition, Hiroomi's blackmail doesn't work on Jun Satou, his blonde-hair colleague chef, who is voiced by Daisuke Ono, who also voiced Shizuo Heiwajima.
 * Izaya is known as a troll, the series taking a strong hold of realism when it comes to societal behavior. Fans of the series comically call him Trollzaya. The Japanese fandom called him Uzaya, coming from uzai which means annoying.
 * In the Durarara!! fanbase, it is common to hear Izaya called a sociopath. This is evidenced in the way he behaves, with rare exceptions primarily refusing to establish sympathy in purpose to preventing prejudice and sees people, loving humanity only because he takes an obsessive interest on them, as if they were subjects to his game, only to end him of his boredom. He usually thinks along the line that he is their God, watching over them, and they are his playthings.
 * He has a habit of controlling his weight immediately after his daily bath.
 * His favorite fruits are red apples.
 * In one of the novel volumes, it is stated that Izaya is "ticklish".
 * He and Shizuo both have shared an undeniable hate for one another ever since their school years.
 * Izaya has stated in the novels that he does not hold an attraction for any individual, dubbing himself Asexual, which means that he doesn't hold an interest for a male or female. Though, it is hinted in the novel that he may or may not have had something with Mikage in high school.
 * In high school, Izaya created a video game with sole purpose of testing one's patience, which was enough to have Celty seething with rage after only a few minutes.
 * His reasons for moving to Shinjuku were that too may people knew him in Ikebukuro and since Shinjuku is Tokyo's financial district and mostly populated by older adults, he is not seen as a threat.
 * Izaya shares the same dub voice actor, Johnny Yong Bosch with Tohru Adachi from Persona 4. Many of his lines and characteristics are similar as well.
 * Both have a tendency to act childishly.
 * Adachi refers to giving people a little 'push', which is also the same wording Izaya uses to describe his manipulation.
 * During the showdown with Adachi, he speaks at length about what 'humanity' wants. Izaya very often talks about humans in this manner.
 * Neither of the two really have motives to justify their immoral actions. When asked, their only reasoning was that their acts were for entertainment purposes.
 * Izaya prefers to watch events unfold from a distance after putting people in certain positions, Adachi similarly sets up Kubo and Namatame to commit murders and watches.
 * Both have relatively good relations with their respective series' protagonists.
 * As a detective, Adachi has access to much more info than the rest of the cast does. Inaya himself is an info broker.
 * Both are behind a good portion of the strife in their series, either directly or indirectly.