#such is the curse of outgrowing a series but not letting go of your ult fave character..

[queen-of-bel]

It's okay if you don't remember but remember when Shizuo and Izaya had their final battle and Izaya actually tried to kill Shizuo? What do you think would've happened if Izaya somehow actually succeeded or Shizuo was the one who killed Izaya instead?

Oh I fucking love this question.

I think if Shizuo had actually killed Izaya, not much would change. Izaya is already pretty much dead to Ikebukuro after their fight. Shizuo's life motto has always been "punch it until it goes away". Now, what "goes away" actually means doensn't matter to him. Did they die? Avoid him out of fear? Paralyzed from the waist down? Doesn't matter, don't care. The annoyance is gone now and that's all that's important.

Izaya on the other hand...

There are few things that Izaya has a genuine emotional investment in, but god damn is he invested hard. The first is his friendship with Shinra, the second is his fear of death and his mission to learn if an afterlife exists or not, and finally, his pure hatred of Shizuo.

By the time we reach vol 13, those first two things have absolutely gone to shit. Shinra has completely abandoned him and he's grappling with this idea that Shinra, who Izaya had considered to be his best friend for over a decade, isn't really his best friend after all. To say nothing of the reality that Shinra cannot be considered a friend in any capacity; that's a thought Izaya can't begin to entertain yet.

He also really fucked up by forgetting to ask Celty if an afterlife exists. All of his suicide meetups, trying to awaken Celty's head-- every hoop he's gone through just to ease his anxieties about death were for nothing. He had the opportunity to ask and was so dumbfounded at her appearance that he said nothing. Way to go, idiot.

So given that he's failed miserably twice in a row, the stakes are extremely high going into this fight with Shizuo. I think this is why Izaya views it as a fight to the death. He's become increasingly more erratic and unhinged as the story goes on, suffering blow after blow from reality that keeps forcing him to see that he is not the man he's built himself up to be. He wants to be so badly the mastermind and the one in charge, and the universe just smacks him and tells him to sit down and shut up instead. By the time we hit vol 13, we're seeing the accumulation of all of Izaya's self-destructive tendencies, as well as the horrible influences that others had on him his entire life. It's an extremely volatile storm that has more than just Shizuo's life on the line. It's also about maintaing his pride, ego, and just holding onto any semblance of the self he has carefully curated and presented to the world for the past 20+ years.

And that's why I think if he did succeed in killing Shizuo, that may be the tipping point for him to go from "morally gray asshole" to "genuinely evil". The man is so desperate from all of his failures that if he gets a taste of success, especially considering how long and deep his hatred for Shizuo runs, that's going to be a high he'll keep chasing no matter the cost.