Difference between revisions of "Daisuke Itami/Personality"

Daisuke Itami is a great helper. Sometimes, he helps people by exposing their inner faults to the world. Sometimes, he helps people by taking away their dreams. Sometimes, he helps people just by tearing down the very structure of order that they have come to rely on.

Don't ask what happens to these people after Daisuke helps them. He couldn't care less. All he wants to see - all he longs to see - is the deep, twisted nature of people come out to the forefront. After that, they might as well not even exist. But they're better off for having those inner demons exposed, twisted, spread like wildfire.

Because Daisuke Itami is a great helper.

Daisuke might be best considered all the bad things of their mother amplified. Daisuke's mother, much like himself, has a mischievous streak in her, though she largely kept it under wraps when her husband was alive.

Daisuke takes this mischievous streak and strips away anything that could be 'good' or 'pleasant' about it until it is nothing more than a malicious child smashing toys together to see which one breaks first.

It isn't an inaccurate statement. Daisuke views life much like a game -- or, perhaps more accurately, a gamble. In every encounter he makes, in every twisted scheme he concocts, he goes in with the knowledge that he is placing a wager. Making a bet on the unpredictable nature of human beings, on a match that ultimately boils down to, in his mind, "his reality vs. theirs."

This is an accurate assessment of Daisuke's general worldview but ultimately oversimplifies it. What Daisuke is, is rampant indulgence and antagonism given form. If we were to go with a Freudian model, Daisuke's psyche could be described as entirely "Id" and "Ego"; Daisuke's Superego, or conscience, is far too small - to the point of being practically vestigial - to moderate the two, and thus Daisuke is a mass of desire with no restraint beyond 'basic common sense.'

It isn't that Daisuke can't understand what it means to be good, though.

It isn't that Daisuke can't do virtuous things.

It's that he actively chooses /not/ to.

The wrong choice excites Daisuke. The wrong choice delights Daisuke. And ultimately, everything is about Daisuke's desire. His desire is to explore and experience the human mind and the captivating drama that is the human emotional spectrum. He adores his fellow man exactly because they are all inherently unpredictable and - though he can often fairly accurately predict human behavior - it is like predicting the weather. Every now and again, that typhoon swerves, and rather than harmlessly piddling out over some nameless islands, it crushes your backyard under the weight of raw fury and flying pylons.

THAT is what Daisuke loves.

This isn't to say all of Daisuke's tricks are the height of sadism -- in fact, sometimes he'll settle for simple harassment to get a rise out of someone, or coming to someone's aid just to ruin someone else's good time even for the most mundane of things. Daisuke's "mischief" runs the gamut from "childish pranks" to "twisting someone's moral fabric for the hell of it," all dependent on how he's feeling on a given day.

Daisuke is chaos. This is not a philosophical statement so much as an observation: Daisuke's basic behavior is disjointed and eclectic to the point where "mercurial" doesn't even begin to do him justice. The binding theme is ultimately "Daisuke's enjoyment" with encompasses such a broad spectrum that it is patently impossible to define and just as obscure and almost irrational as you might think. Daisuke is just as likely to help the "good guys" as he is the "bad guys"; it is really, ultimately, just a question of what he believes would be in his best interests... which could be just about anything.

As eclectic as his tastes are, though, Daisuke knows himself. More importantly than that, he loves himself. This might be interpreted as narcissism, but it transcends this -- it is more deeply rooted in his love of humans and all their little quirks. Daisuke has a deeper understanding and - more importantly - acceptance of himself than most people ever will have. He accepts all his strengths and adores all his flaws. For a man so infatuated with human nature, why wouldn't he adore and obsessively understand the very things that make him, him?

Daisuke is dangerously intelligent, but that intelligence is tempered by his impulsive behaviorisms. He may occasionally develop a grander scheme than his general "mischief." He could even likely create a plot that spanned years in the making, but -- that just wouldn't derive much net worth in entertainment for him and as such he actively avoids doing it. In this much, Daisuke is far more spontaneous, and only dedicates himself toward long-term planning when he absolutely needs to. Otherwise, he just seizes and rides on one opportunity to the next, like a jackal.

He is unnervingly skilled at discerning a person's inner motivations and emotional drives -- largely because it is, simply put, his greatest passion. Because of this love of peeling away the layers of a human being to get to the chocolaty nougat that is their 'darker tendencies,' Daisuke has a tendency towards verbally analyzing the people he meets while interacting with them. This is true in casual conversations or even in business deals; Daisuke enjoys rapidly breaking down the motivations of a person in any given situation and addresses it all as he enjoys a nice iced latte. It's an incredibly irritating personality trait, and Daisuke knows it.

That's part of what makes it so much fun.

Daisuke takes great joys in exposing the inner workings of a person, finding the raw nerves, and then needling away at them relentlessly in order to trigger a response. In essence, he likes to be the grand master pianist of pushing people's buttons and savoring in their reactions for good or for bad. The benefits, for Daisuke, are two-fold; it both elicits a response and shows Daisuke their deeper emotional sides, which he always takes great delight in, and unbalances them, making them a bit easier to ply and guide if he needs to. Oftentimes he doesn't. He just likes getting a rise out of people.

Hand-in-hand with this is Daisuke's ability to manipulate. Manipulate things, manipulate information, manipulate emotions, manipulate people. He has a keen mind that is honed like a predator and, like the Devil he represents, has a good instinct for discerning the things that people value over the course of interacting with them, and exploiting those things. Oftentimes not for any particular reason, but just because he can and at the time he felt like it would entertain him. He can weave words together expertly and though he has no conscience to speak of (for the most part) he is capable of seeing the emotional workings of a person and plying them from just the right angle. For however irritating Daisuke may be and frequently is, his silver tongue is undeniable.

Daisuke also has a particular fondness for deceit. He believes lying to be the "purest" form of human behavior and the one he is most enamored with, because in his mind, it represents the cornerstone of human nature. Thanks to this, Daisuke has a definite trend towards employing deceit in his everyday life. One could call it a 'habit'; they could also call it 'compulsive.' His duplicity runs deep enough that he will often obfuscate events from his past whenever he is prompted to bring them up, not particularly because he has anything he feels like hiding, but simply because that is his basic urge: to weave webs of lies and ensnare people in the ensuing confusion.

The unpredictable is what excites Daisuke the most. Give him somebody he can anticipate and he'll go through the motions like a good sport, but it's the people who do things he /doesn't/ expect - the people that defy even /his/ expectations - that truly enamor Itami. He will oftentimes focus himself on these people, not particularly because of any fondness, but because of the challenge they represent -- and, in his mind, the treasure of "true thoughts" they must have buried deep inside, to be able to defy his conjectures on their behavior.

If the unpredictable excites Daisuke, then the so-called "world beyond" and "other side" intoxicates and inspires him. This, however, stems from a different source than most: Daisuke loves Persona because of the very fact that they are produced by people and he loves things such as Shadows because they seem to be derived from the psyche's darker nature -- he loves how these things relate to people, not how they relate to the supernatural. In his mind, these things like kotodama, the Midnight Channel, Persona and Shadows -- just go to show how remarkable humans can be and become. He'd probably die of a joy-derived heart attack if he learned the true, true nature of things like the TV World. Everything about the world of the fantastic enamors him, and not in a good way.

Though Daisuke is undeniably sociopathic, it expresses itself in different ways. He's not a particularly violent person - at least not unprovoked. He simply has no knowledge or care of boundaries. He knows there are potentially detrimental consequences of every action he takes -- as mentioned before, his games are more like a "gambit" with his life or worse on the line. The thing about this, though, is that it excites him. The very idea that he could evoke such responses from people, that he could put his life in jeopardy by peering into these deepest, darkest things -- it's an exhilarating feeling.

And he's addicted to it.

Daisuke loves his freedom, but ultimately he is defined by how tied down he is to his obsession over people and his games with them. His trickery isn't just a passion -- it is a full blown addiction. It is why he doesn't stop, not even when his life is on the line, not even when he mixes himself up with extremely dangerous people. Because it's all part of the rush. It's all part of the feeling that has become so indescribable for him, and like any good junkie, he needs his fix, more and more, in more and more extreme ways. It undoubtedly has put him in dangerous situations he can't quite deal with on his own. And it'll undoubtedly do so again. And he will undoubtedly keep pursuing it even after that. To higher and grander points because ultimately, when one becomes addicted, eventually even the fantastic becomes "normal" after a while.

He might be a cruel young man who has zero empathy, who views life as a game and people as toys to play with until they no longer interest him, but Daisuke is still a human being. He can still associate and even socialize with others in realms outside his "business." But there will always be that lingering need to use them. To deceive them. To manipulate them. To trick them. And the last thing Daisuke will ever do is deny those urges.

And there's the rub. Daisuke may love what he does and may love to "help" people by his own twisted logic, but he is still a human being with a dangerous addiction. He still yearns for that contact -- that social experience, and even though he might seem content to be alone, a tiny sliver of him still desires, deep down, to share and experience those things that people call "camaraderie" and "friendship."

He never will, though, largely because his "loves" far outweigh this basic human need by leaps and bounds and his addiction is hardly a guilty pleasure at all -- in fact, he takes great pride in all his actions. And so he has to settle for proxies. One could view the games he plays on others right down to simple taunting to be exactly that -- if he can't receive that attention or express his passion 'normally' then he'll get it the other way. The negative way. They'd probably be at least partially right. While the majority of the reasons Daisuke does the things that he does is because he just loves it that much, there is a part of him that does use the attention as a substitute for affection and "connection."

Someone's "misery" is a lot like someone's "love,' isn't it? Well -- to Daisuke it is, at least.

Daisuke is smart - one might even call him a genius, of a kind - but he often overestimates that intelligence. He loves the unpredictable but his hubris is that he believes he can still deal with it, or even if he couldn't, that it's exactly the thing he wanted and thusly there is no way it could ultimately end poorly for him. Daisuke is the type of man who views 'nearly being stabbed to death and hospitalized for over a month' as something that is impossibly exhilarating. As mentioned before, this attitude - both his addiction and his overestimation of himself - can get him into some very poor situations. But at least he'll probably enjoy them.

The things that Daisuke loves most are double-edged deals. Deals that have benefits that obscure the downsides just long enough for his targets to tie the noose to hang themselves with. He takes a particular sense of joy in people's own pure desires destroying them. One boy's dream, one girl's love -- even the gentlest of pushes can twist and distort those people just enough to let everything that gives them structure come tumbling down like jenga blocks. It's a very Serpent of the Garden quality. "It's your own sin that put you in this position." Ironic outcomes are the ideal outcomes for a truly great helper.

Of course, while Daisuke may be able to derive enjoyment from most things, there are other ones that he absolutely despises. Straightforward people - truly, truly, /truly/ straightforward people - are Daisuke's bane. He has a hard time understanding and predicting them just because they are so unthinkingly honest. Working on your surface thoughts is a trait that Daisuke has a hard time wrapping his head around because it is simply the /opposite/ of everything that Daisuke is. They are unpredictable. And while normally Daisuke would like that, this unpredictability is also coupled with a general lack of seediness and thus Daisuke can derive very little entertainment from it. "Virtuous" (not quite the same virtuous as other people might perceive it, mind you) people are, in his mind, the biggest assholes there could ever be.

What Daisuke fears most is being unable to express his passions freely. This most readily equates to "being left alone." Not in the traditional sense, but when focus begins to fall off him, when he begins to fade into obscurity, Daisuke begins to get antsy. This is because all his greatest loves revolve around human beings, even - especially - his greatest love of all, Persona and all those aspects that revolve around it. To be denied the things you love is like being dead; for Daisuke, it is even worse than that. It is like not having even existed at all. This isn't to say he cares about making himself known or carving out a "legacy," though -- he's just deathly afraid of the fact that his passions might one day not be as passionate about him.

Relatively speaking.

On the surface of all this is an affable young man who tends to be almost irritatingly light-hearted; which isn't to say he acts nice, just that he generally seems enthused about whatever it is he's doing. He has a tendency to wax philosophical and go off on strange, seemingly random tangents. He is filled to the brim with eccentricities; his sense of fashion seems to vary from "hoodies and do-rags" to "three-piece tweed suits" and everything in between, and his taste in music isn't much better. He makes a habit of dyeing his hair to the point that one can expect him to have a different hair color at least every month; he doesn't really have a strict schedule of "hair color rotation" or anything of the sort, but the odds of seeing him going over two months with the same color of hair is absurdly unlikely.

Daisuke Itami is a liar. He is a manipulator, a backstabber. He offers two-faced gifts just damn someone with them. He shows little qualms with ruining the lives of others. He creates "art" off the misery of his fellow man and looks to the world beyond to spread his "love" to further and higher heights. You could call him a troll, and he'd probably take it as a compliment.

Truly, Daisuke Itami is a great helper.