What's the meaning and motivation of Izaya's behavior in Episode 2: "Highly Unpredictable"?

Question

Durarara!! Episode 2 tells us about a girl named Kamichika. Near the end of the episode, after...

...Celty brings her to the roof to meet Izaya, he lets Kamichika to the roof edge. He tells her that a lot of people have jumped there, trying to persuade her that she's not a special case. After that he leaves, and Kimichika, after some hesitation, decides to jump. However, Celty saves her.

Izaya's motivations here are a little confusing. Even if we forget that he has...

...ordered the kidnapping and rescue of a girl just for the fun of it,

he is being somewhat inconsistent by telling her about all the people who jumped from the roof. At first, it seems like he's helping Kimichika by showing her that her case is neither special nor too bad, and it is not worth jumping. It even seems to work at first, when the girl hesitates. However, when Izaya leaves,

she still decides to jump off the roof!

When Izaya sees Celty helping her, he doesn't act surprised at all, much as if he were expecting this scenario. However, he could neither be sure that

Kimichika would jump nor that Celty would save her (I think he didn't even know that Celty hadn't left).

So does this portray him as a person who knew that Celty would save her, and because of that the girl would once again understand that life's worth living?

Because otherwise he's portrayed as a man who encourages another person to commit suicide just for the fun of observing it!

Answer 1

I think you're over-thinking this.

Izaya, for lack of a better word, is a troll. Period.

One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument. (taken from Urban Dictionary)

But for real-life personal interaction instead of on the internet.

In fact, he is an amazing troll - as evidenced by his ability to read people's minds and predict their actions. Which in turn gives him a great ability to "toy" with people how ever he pleases.

For pretty much the entire show his actions are always to provoke responses in other people without regard to their well-being (or rather to intentionally hurt them in specific ways).

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he is being somewhat inconsistent when telling her about all the people who jumped from the roof. At first, it seems that his actions are directed toward helping Kimichika by showing her that her case is neither special nor too bad, and it is not worth to jump.

Since he admits to trying with people to see their responses, this type of inconsistency could very well be intentional to provoke a reaction from Kamichika.

When Izaya sees Celty helping the girl, he doesn't act surprised at all, much as if he was expecting this scenario.

That's most likely because he knows Celty pretty well and it's common for her stick around and save people.

Kimichika will jump nor that Celty will save her (I think he didn't even know that Celty didn't leave)

As a troll, it probably doesn't matter to him. But it's very possible that he knew Celty will save her and he wanted to see Kimichika's reaction after thinking she would die only to be saved.

Answer 2

What was brought up above is part of it. However, Izaya is a really complex character to fully understand, especially in the anime and manga, so if you're really wanting to understand it as best as possible, you ought to read the light novels. The only two people I think you could say he actually 'hates' are Heiwajima Shizuo, and a boy by the name of Nakura (or well, rather, he does in fact for that guy) who went to the same middle school as him. Izaya's observation of humans eventually became an obsession over time, and it's not as though he has any actual dislike or need to hurt any person (other than those two), but he never got too close or stayed too far, because he was content with seeing people in every situation possible.

Whether it be students casually horse-playing or joking around, fighting, playing card games, fondling over animals, obsessing over fandoms, people committing suicide, or anything, even someone killing another person. He views every human being, and every situation they could possibly be in of equal value to him. What he said was true, though after you read more into the light novels especially volume 9, he's not some evil villain or anything, but he's also not really the type of guy to save someone who wants to die, because he doesn't want to build any kind of relationship, even though he and Shinra are actually friends by a "human's standard", rather than Izaya's standard.

The problem in my opinion with both the anime and manga is that they don't really explain much of Izaya's point of view ('personal' thoughts and feelings) at all on the matters, and cut out quite a bit of important details about the characters and storyline, and more than you might think. At first he may sound like a jerk, but he's really only being brutally honest in regards to how he's observed countless people to act judge stuff.

Again, it's more of an obsession and even out of an extreme habit which became a part of him. It's not like he himself would go out of his way to actually physically harm someone (except for most assuredly Shizuo, until volume 13 or above I think), nor would he actually pay or order someone to hurt another person, as he just sells the information that they want to them. They do with it what they please.

Whenever he said he set up her kidnapping, I believe he was speaking in a more figurative way of speak. In other words he was saying the pieces on the chess would have led to it, because he knows how humans work. He does probably have some serious underlying issues regarding identity and acceptance of his own humanity, whether he wants to except it or not. Anyway... I hope I cleared this question up...? By the way, Izaya is one of my favorite characters in the Narita!verse and anime/manga/fandom world. He may be a troll, but he can really be interesting (and so cute to me x3) at times.