Character Profile

[loveshead]

Seiji Yagiri
From Durarara!!

[Age] 15
[Birthday] June 13
[Point in time taken from canon] During episode 12, before Mika Harima stops Celty from offing Seiji and makes her big revelation.

[Background] For a young man obsessed with love, Seiji Yagiri didn’t experience much of it from his parents growing up. They stayed away from home most of the time to work, leaving his older sister by nine years, Namie, to take care of him. Not long after his birth, their father made a mistake that cost him and his wife their inheritance and positions at Yagiri Pharmaceuticals. Seiji and Namie’s parents grew more estranged from them than they already were out of shame. Despite their parents’ fall from grace, their uncle kept tabs on his niece and nephew and allowed them to continue to visit his home occasionally. During one of these visits, Namie discovered he possessed a faerie’s head, which he obtained from Shingen Kishitani years ago.

Seiji was ten when Namie showed the head to him. Right away, he was fascinated by it, stealing away to sneak into their uncle’s office and talk to it. Three years later, he admitted to her that he was in love with the head. However, just as their parents’ neglect made him try to find love in the head, it made Namie begin searching for it in her younger brother long ago. She tried to get rid of the head out of jealousy, but instead kept it in Yagiri Pharmaceuticals’s sixth facility, which she now headed, for experimental purposes.

Three more years down the line, Seiji was seated beside Mika Harima during Raira Academy’s entrance exam. An ordinary event for him became a life-changing one for her. She was convinced he was the love of her life, evidenced further when he saved her and Anri Sonohara from bullies. He had only done so because Mika resembled his beloved head. Regardless of reason, the action earned Seiji a stalker in her. Around the same time, he stole Namie’s key card and broke into the facility to rescue the head. On his way home, he was followed by Mika, who at first seemed deterred by his declaration to call the police on her. He would find instead, on his way back from a quick trip to the convenience store, she came back with a lock picking kit and broke into his house. Realizing she had seen the head, Seiji smashed her head against the wall and left her for dead. Namie and some of her underlings arrived on the scene to take away the body, and Namie promised her brother she would take care of the situation for him. Fine with him. He could care less about Mika. As long as “she” was okay, that’s all that mattered. He didn’t want to part with the head, but he had been discovered as the thief, and well... Sis said she’d take care of everything, right?

After classes start at Raira, Anri asked Seiji if he knew of Mika’s whereabouts. He adamantly denied having such knowledge, and after a brief, impassioned chat about remaining faithful to his love with Mikado Ryuugamine and Masaomi Kida, he leaves school. The next day, he found a girl with his beloved’s head and pursued her. During one of their outings, the girl suddenly became nervous and insisted she and Seiji continue to another location. The girl ran into Shizuo Heiwajima and Celty, the headless biker who realized this girl might have her missing head. Just as they were about to ask the girl questions, Seiji distracted Shizuo by stabbing him with ballpoint pens. This allowed her to escape, but not without Celty on her tail. He started after them, only to be intercepted by Shizuo, thrown against a truck, and headbutted into unconsciousness. Before he passed out, however, he saw his beloved running off with Mikado.

Kid was going to pay. Seiji would make sure of it.

The night after, Namie met Mikado, who made it known to her he figured out that Seiji had killed Mika and Namie replaced her head with another one. All he wanted was for her to turn herself and Seiji to the police for their criminal actions. She laughed it off, thinking the kid was playing with things he was too naive to understand. Mikado then messaged all the Dollars members on the street to stare at Namie and her underlings, which overwhelmed her and forced her to run off. As Mikado tried to disappear within the crowd of his gang members, Seiji found and tried to attack him, but Celty blocked his way and took the stab instead. No harm done -- she’s an immortal dullahan. As Seiji made another attempt at Mikado, he saw Celty swing her scythe at him, but before it could make contact his beloved came to the scene to stop her. That was when she proceeded to tell her side of the story:

She didn’t have Celty’s head, but was, in fact, Mika Harima. She survived Seiji’s killer intent and agreed to Namie’s plan to reconstruct her face to resemble the head Seiji so loved. Namie also administered her memory-erasing drugs to make her forget about her love for Seiji. Mika managed to escape from the facility, and soon ended up with Seiji. And well, the rest of the story proceeded as above.

Only Seiji wouldn’t find out the truth, because he was pulled into Somarium just before Mika could save him from Celty’s blow. Was this the afterlife? Whatever it was, it was away from his beloved, and he wouldn’t be all too happy to be there.

[Personality] The first word anyone would use to describe Seiji Yagiri is that he’s obsessive. His entire outlook on life centers around his unyielding love for Celty’s head and has since he was ten years old. He will happily rearrange his life to accommodate his bizarre love, whether it be by dropping out of school to search for her or unflinchingly taking any blows dealt to him while protecting it -- it, being his love, rather than “her” as Celty’s head. He proclaims that if he wanted to, he could betray his “girlfriend,” but never the love he has for her. Perhaps you could go as far as to say he’s in love with being in love more than with a person or thing. Seiji would tell you it doesn’t matter if whether or not that makes sense. Love is a phenomenon you can’t, nor need to comprehend. He believes love is destiny. You don’t need to know why you’re in love with who you are, or even know your beloved’s name. All you need to do is pursue and cherish that love wholeheartedly.

Because he is so fiercely devoted to his love, Seiji can be self-involved, perhaps teetering towards an unaware selfishness. He knows his sister, Namie, is just as love with him as he is with Celty’s head, and he uses her love to support his own efforts to show his “beloved” how much he loves her. He knows that Namie chooses to make sacrifices to give him all the money he needs for romantic getaways with his “girlfriend” and shield him from the authorities if he trespasses the law. Why shouldn’t he take advantage of her help? Namie draws happiness from being able to help him. Accepting it would only make her more so, and doing it bolsters his own obsessive love. He also has little regard to public displays of emotion, hugging and admiring his lover out in the open despite everyone else's discomfort. If he and she are happy, who cares what anyone else thinks?

Speaking about being self-involved, Seiji doesn’t seem to socialize with other kids his age or other people much at all. One might suggest the lack of a solid parental presence might be to blame, but it’s also possible he simply chooses to keep to himself and his “lover.” He can carry a conversation, though he may not be the friendliest individual to talk to, and depending on the topic -- usually love, yet again -- he can get riled up and go on and on about it. He might even bump fists with you if the occasion calls for it. When it comes to idle chat, he rarely initiates. He internalizes his thoughts and feelings more than he speaks, which might make him come across as aloof. If anyone manages to get a word out of him, they’ll usually get a response that clearly conveys his sentiments. He might lie about what he's talking about, but they'll definitely know how he feels about talking to them.

Seiji’s love has warped his sense of morality. He “kills” his stalker, Mika Harima, without hesitation after she breaks into his home and sees him with Celty’s head. His reaction to the ordeal? Not guilt or horror, but almost none at all. He calls Namie simply at a loss as to how to deal with the body, and when she arrives he’s eating bland cup noodles as if he never committed the crime. Similarly, he attacks Shizuo Heiwajima for letting his “girlfriend” run away and threatens to attack Mikado for harboring her away from him. He’s not above resorting to violence to protect his lover, yet he fears working for his sister at Yagiri Pharmaceuticals will involve him in underground affairs and turn him into a bad person. Why does Seiji worry so much about that? Because he thinks it will turn him to a life of crime, which poses the potential to be arrested and jailed, which means he would be leaving his “girlfriend” all alone. Basically, he has the ability to tell from right and wrong. He just bases those judgment calls on his obsessive affection rather than his conscience. Surprisingly, he can handle situations unrelated to his love rationally enough. He's quite docile, even unremarkable otherwise.

[Abilities] Seiji is a normal teenager with no superhuman abilities. He wields small, hand-held weapons decently, though, and he’s known to hide stun guns, scalpels, and ballpoint pens in his pockets. He even managed to stab Shizuo, one of the strongest men in Ikebukuro, a couple of times with those otherwise harmless writing utensils. He can also plot and strategize when he puts his mind into it, as evidenced in the way he memorized the layout of the Yagiri Pharmaceuticals building, took care of any guards that got in his way by tasing them, and snuck Celty’s head off the premises with the key card he stole from his older sister, Namie. However, he seems to reserve such effort for his own pursuits rather than for any greater good. Considering his family’s background in medical research and his appointed role as class welfare representative, Seiji probably has a better understanding of health and wellness than most kids his age, as well.

[Other important stuff] Seiji is described as being the second tallest person in his class with a face and demeanor that could pass as those of an adult if he were to lie about his age.

Oh, and if Mikado’s hand-stabbing incident with Aoba later down the road is any indication, he and Seiji need to have a ballpoint pen fight. That would be epic, man.