Characters / A Different Kind of Truth

The Investigative Team

Johnny Joestar

Jonathan "Johnny" Joestar | The Fool

• Better with Non-Human Company: Very much snarky, rude and a thorough jackass when he's interacting with people. However, he genuinely loves horses to the point one of his Social Links is with Slow Dancer, and he reacts to Chie admitting horse meat is consumed in Japan as if she was speaking about eating babies.
• Born in the Wrong Century: Both him and Gyro wonder if they would have been happier living in a Western rather than the 21th century when they have a sleepover.
• But Not Too Foreign: In spite of having a Japanese mother, Johnny is a blue-eyed blond who has been raised in America and consistently displays an American mindset.
• Calling the Old Man Out: Constantly glares or snaps at Dojima for neglecting Nanako.
• Cool Big Bro: What Nanako thinks of him. The very idea of being any kind of sibling after losing his own very much distresses Johnny, but he's positively gentle around her, seething when he believes Dojima neglects her and reassuring her that Heaven is real in spite of being an atheist.
• Daddy Issues: A heaping lot of it. It causes his relationship with Dojima to be extremely tense sometimes, as Johnny is prone to accuse his uncle from being just as much of a neglectful shit as George Joestar.
• Disabled Snarker: Losing his legs didn't make him lose his ability to dish constant burns about his friends.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Introduces himself as Johnny to his classroom and snaps at Dojima for using "Jonathan" when they first meet.
• Expecting Someone Taller: His classmates eagerly pictured him as the traditional musclebound, blond and blue-eyed American Hunk — only to be stuck with a scrawny jerk in a wheelchair. Well, at least he does have blond hair and blue eyes...
• The Fashionista: Tends to shop for expensive brands such as Gucci — when you have to kick Shadowy ass, you will look awesome doing so.
• Find the Cure!: Agreed to explore the TV world further only because he hopes it holds the key to let him walk again. He finds himself dreading the murderer's arrest as he wouldn't have a reason anymore to go there.
• Ineffectual Loner: Does his best to push people away from him, as he reviles everybody as hypocrites who only care about themselves and won't have a qualm using him for their own ends. Unfortunately for Johnny, holding the Wild Card forces him to develop genuine friendships if he wishes to grow.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Deeply rude, cynical and self-interested. He still empathizes with Yosuke's despair over Saki's demise and tries to be kind with his baby cousin.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The Feminine Boy to Chie's Masculine Girl, as he's lacking in muscle, passionate about horses and more interested by clothes and make up than her.
• Nominal Hero: More focused on walking back than actually catching the killer when exploring the TV world. He fully admits that's not exactly nice from him.
• Non-Action Guy: Justified since he's in a wheelchair — as he points to Chie who was unhappy about him not helping her to fight some bullies, he cannot do anything except fall on them.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: For all his snarkiness and misanthropy, Johnny describes himself as useless and is very confused that Yosuke and Chie wouldn't let his Shadow kill him since he doesn't see his life as important.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Has fully internalized his father's conviction that God took the wrong son, deeming his life worthless.

Yosuke Hanamura

Yosuke Hanamura | The Magician

• Armoured Closet Gay: Deeply uneasy in front of the extremely campy Shadow Kanji, and outright suffers a screaming Freak Out when Rise asks him if Johnny with lipstick looks kissable — that raises some questions about his gender preferences.
• Blow You Away: His Persona Jiraiya's ability.
• Butt-Monkey: Unable to have a girlfriend, constantly bugged by his workmates and his paycheck always stolen by Chie and Yukiko to pay for previous offenses against them. However, it gets deconstructed when the girls buy Teddy a heavily priced wardrobe as he outright blows at them and admits he's fed up with everybody abusing his time and money.
• Cartwright Curse: His crush Saki was gruesomely murdered when it looked like she would start reciprocating his affection, he had to learn she secretly found him a pain in the ass, and it's later hinted he might be attracted towards Johnny who's on the asexuality spectrum and more interested in Chie than him.
• Condescending Compassion: His Shadow accuses him from hanging out with Johnny because obviously the crippled teen had no other options for friends, and relishing the tale of his fall.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Rather dopey and clumsy in the real world, but put him in a fight against Shadows and he reveals unexpected depths as a strategist.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Yukiko, Chie and Kanji finally decide they're fed up with his homophobic behaviour after one too many smartass comment when they're on the school trip and warn him to stop doing it.

Chie Satonaka

Chie Satonaka | The Chariot

• Because You Were Nice to Me: Subverted — when Johnny rejects her friendly overtures, she blows her top at him for being an asshole and it actually persuades the American to give her a chance, since Chie wasn't afraid to call the obviously disabled foreigner out instead of pitying him.
• Black-and-White Morality: Yukiko admits Chie is very much a "right and wrong" person who struggles to accept the fact good people can have bad days sometimes. It causes her personality to clash with Johnny more than once.
• Condescending Compassion: Her Shadow gleefully admits that she secretly enjoys for Yukiko to need her as a saviour, and wanted to make friends with Johnny as he was disabled and obviously needed someone reliable to support him.
• Foreign Queasine: Admits she ate horse meat and enjoyed it. Johnny reacts as if she confessed murder, something she cannot help finding sweet as it showcases his love for horses.
• Incompatible Orientation: Feels more than a smidge awkward when Yukiko confesses she used to have a crush on her, mainly because Chie is staunchly heterosexual.
• Masculine Girl, Feminine Boy: The Masculine Girl to Johnny's Feminine Boy, she's obsessed by martial arts and physical training, consumes a lot of meat and is rather awkward about cleaning up.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Consequence of watching The Fly when she was a preteen, Chie is terrified by bugs, leading her to scream as a maniac when a grasshopper jumps on her arm while she's training with Johnny and physically freezing when facing a Burning Beetle in Yukiko's Palace, endangering her life.

Yukiko Amagi

Yukiko Amagi | The High Priestess

• Adaptational Sexuality: Although she and Chie are close friends to the point of Ship Tease in canon, they're both treated as being straight, with each having the potential to be Yu's love interest. In A Different Kind of Truth, Yukiko eventually comes out as gay and with a crush on Chie.
• The Hyena: Unfortunately for the Team, she thinks Gyro's lame puns are hilarious and breaks down into giggling fits every time he drops one.
• Lipstick Lesbian: The very picture of Japanese womanhood. She also nursed a crush on her female best friend Chie for a long time before she realized it wouldn't go anywhere.
• Nightmare Fetishist: She loved watching The Fly when she was a preteen.

Gyro Zeppeli

Gyro Zeppeli | The Moon

• Affectionate Nickname: Teddie calls him Junkyoin, the Japanese name for an assistant teacher, to go with Johnny being Sensei.
• Berserk Button: He has opinions about food. Learning Japan has two hundreds Kit-Kat flavours drives him to a furious rant, he gives a Death Glare to Yukiko when the younger teen considers mixing meatballs and spaghettis, deems beer "piss water" and gets offended by Chie claiming wine is the same as grape juice.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Genuinely smart and athletic, but Gyro's major flaw is his easygoing personality — he will follow the flow as he's not actually driven.
• Fish out of Water: Gets traumatized by the Amagi Inn's toilet and complains about Japan having far too many Kit-Kat flavours.
• Foreign Cuss Word: Tends to slip back into his native tongue when under stress.
• Idiot Ball: Opened his door to a stranger in spite of having been warned about a murderer on the loose. He's rather unsettled when he partially remembers the circumstances of his abduction and wonders why he would do that.
• Jerkass to One: Gyro is constantly upbeat and cheery around people, but he won't stop being nasty to Naoto. He claims that's because the other teen's hat is too ugly for him to stand.
• Pungeon Master: He just won't stop dropping bad jokes that dismay the Investigation Team — except for Yukiko and Teddie.
• Rambunctious Italian: Wears his heart on his sleeve and is startingly at ease with the prospect of inflicting violence on humans.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Loves teddy bears and is very much The Fashionista. When Kanji shyly asks if he's not bothered by people judging him for this, Gyro cheerfully asserts it's their problem.
• Religious Bruiser: Attends Catholic mass on Sunday morning.
• Sarcasm-Blind: None of Johnny's snark manages to pierce his illusion that he's a comic genius.
• Ship Tease: Mild but persistent hints of this with Rise, as both of them commiserate over the pains of celebrity. It's a bit ironic since Gyro very much wanted to avoid her when she came to Inaba, as tabloids would immediately assume they were dating if they were seen together.
• Supreme Chef: Lives up to the Italian reputation for delicious cooking.
• The Medic: Since he has genuine medical training, he naturally slots into the role.

Kanji Tatsumi

Kanji Tatsumi | The Emperor

• Ambiguously Gay: Extremely distressed by his Shadow acting as campy as possible, with Gyro noting said Shadow isn't actually claiming to be queer.
• Big Brother Worship: As he struggles with being perceived as weak and girly for his interests, Kanji is in awe of Gyro openly flaunting his love for teddie bears and fashionable clothes without caring a whit about other people's opinions.
• The Tooth Hurts: His Shadow's magnetic power winds up ripping a lead filling in his mouth. After his rescue, he needs to book a dentist to replace it.

Rise Kujikawa

Rise "Risette" Kujikawa | The Lovers

• An Arm and a Leg: The Investigation Team is forced to stop in their tracks when solving the first puzzle in Mitsuo's dungeon ends up with her left arm ripped and almost killing her from blood loss. Even if Teddie's Persona grows her a new limb, she's understandly freaked out by the whole deal.
• Celebrity Is Overrated: Mentions having an ungodly packed schedule, having to constantly uphold Contractual Purity, and having to evade stalkers and paparazzis. She actually bonds with Gyro over it.
• Must Have Caffeine: Her schedule was so horrendously packed and stressing that she couldn't function without her morning coffee.
• Not So Similar: As Gyro attempts to comfort her regarding her decision to take a hiatus, she rants he cannot genuinely relate to her since he actually left his native country for his own break, and horce-racing is a very different industry from the idol business.
• Stress Vomit: Her reaction after getting her left arm ripped off, almost dying of blood loss and getting healed by Teddie. It's hard to blame her.
• Supreme Chef: Zigzagged — she's pretty competent when she's serving tofu at her grandmother's shop, but when she's given the opportunity to indulge her tastes, she tends to favour spices to excess.

Teddie

Teddie | The Star

• Big "NO!": Tends to let one loose when he panics. Which happens often when battling Shadows.
• Groin Attack: Played for Laughs when he finally obtains a human body and decides this dangling flesh between his legs is far too cumbersome, so it's better to discard it! His male friends are left traumatized when he proudly shows them the result.
• Mr. Exposition: Not only he's the one who knows the TV world's rules, he also gushes over the Investigative Team and Shadows' strategies and tactics as they unfold.
• The Medic: His Persona grows a brand-new arm for Rise after the original gets ripped off.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: After fighting his Shadow, Teddie reassures Johnny that the American is far from being a minus.

Social Links

Ryotaro Dojima

• Evil Uncle: Johnny's initial opinion of him, courtesy of his Parental Neglect and the teen's own issues with fatherly figures. He later grows out of it, even if their relationship stays mostly tense.
• Parental Neglect: Johnny is much more sensitive to the fact that he cannot stop prioritizing his work over his daughter, and views him as a borderline villain for it.
• Parents as People: Not only he unwittingly causes Nanako to feel abandoned due to his workaholic tendences, Dojima is realistically awkward around his handicapped, traumatized nephew who's bent on antagonizing him merely for being an authority figure.
• Properly Paranoid: As a trained policeman, he notices his nephew getting injured and lying about how he spends his free time. However, he borrows his suspicions and chooses to believe it's a trivial matter.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Lets his panicking nephew care for his sick daughter in order to follow a potential lead on his wife's killer. When he comes home, Johnny explodes at him for being left to handle Nanako on his own, pointing he didn't know if her gut pain was life-threatening and was scared out of his mind.

Nanako Dojima

• Children Are Innocent: Johnny doesn't blow a gasket when she asks him why he's sitting in a weird chair on their first meeting because she's too young to understand he might not want to talk about it. That's also the reason why he accepts her help after falling in the stairs — she's not acting out of pity, she just saw him in pain and wanted to make it better.
• Delicate and Sickly: Suffers recurrent gut pain. Gyro suggests it might be genetic, and it caused Johnny to worry about her potentially dying when she had a fit in front of him.
• Lies to Children: The atheist Johnny claims Heaven is real in order to reassure her that her mother and his brother are happy and watching over their family.
• Morality Pet: Moreso than in the source material — she's just so adorable that Johnny cannot bring himself to be a jackass to her.
• Secret-Keeper: After the fight against Mitsuo's Shadow, Johnny partially explains her his adventures in TV world by way of a bedtime story, since she's a child and is more open-minded to fantastical happenings.

Marie

• Bratty Teenage Daughter: Margaret was not impressed with her listening rock and new wave music loud enough for the Velvet Room's windows to shake.

Noriyuki Kakyoin

• Broken Ace: All of Yasogami High worships him as the perfect guy — handsome, popular with girls, nice with everybody and acing all his exams. Then it's revealed his parents are micromanaging his life to such an extent that he tried to seek release into alcohol, and only dates girls because it's an acceptable way to spend his free time.
• Descent into Addiction: The pressure of being the perfect student ultimately got so much that he started stealing his father's beer and turned in an alcoholic to seek relief.
• Education Papa: His parents won't stop pushing him to study and ace his classes, to the point it drove him to alcoholism. They only accept him bonding with Johnny because he's helping the American with his exams.
• Tarot Motifs: His Arcana is The Devil, a card for addiction — he used to be The Alcoholic.

Slow Dancer

• Tarot Motifs: Its Arcana is Strength.

Emilio Pucci

• Crisis of Faith: Seeing his flock growing bored with Sunday mass has rather depressed him.
• Odd Friendship: Courtesy of his Crisis of Faith, the Catholic priest has engrossing discussions with the young American atheist.
• Tarot Motifs: His Arcana is the Hanged Man.

Aika Nakamura

• Ascended Extra: She was a somewhat memorable character in the anime, but she becomes a full-blown Social Link there.
• Not So Stoic: For all her Emotionless Girl demeanour, she smirks a bit as she's watching Johnny choking on spicy curry.
• Tarot Motifs: Her Arcana is Temperance, a card for moderation and balance or the lack of — being a Workaholic, Aika struggles with that.
• Unstoppable Mailman: That gal will trek up and down the mountain laden with several commands of food in order to make a delivery.
• Workaholic: When she's not at school, she's working at her family's dinner. She outright declines going on a camping trip with other students in order to work and outright boasts she never took a day off.

Rohan Kishibe

• Adaptational Nice Guy: Slightly less abrasive than he was in canon. Losing everybody he ever considered a friend might have left an impact on him.
• No Social Skills: Accidentally destroys a preteen fan's aspirations to become a mangaka by wanting to impress upon the boy how Serious Business it is.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Startled when Johnny introduces himself as a Joestar, and later quizzes the American on being a potential relation of Joseph Joestar or Jotaro Kujo. Igor also describes him as "one who slipped through the cracks".
• Serious Business: Never imply manga isn't art when he's around — he lives and breathes his passion. Also deconstructed as the work he puts in creating quality art is taking the fun out of it.
• Sole Survivor: He's implied to be quietly bothered by the fact he's stranded in a timeline he doesn't recognize, to never see anyone he knew again.
• Tarot Motifs: His Arcana is The Hermit, a card for solitude and wisdom — considering the hints he actually remembers the previous timeline, Rohan would be quite isolated by his own knowledge indeed.

Sayaka Kasshoku

• Awesomeness by Analysis: Claims being in a band allows her to hear somebody's "rythm", the kind of music they would favour. She immediately points Johnny towards Yes and Fleetwood Mac albums after he first entered her shop.
• Tarot Motifs: Her Arcana is The Sun.

Rina Higashikata

• Adaptational Relationship Overhaul: In the source material, she wound up marrying Johnny. Here, he's currently interested in Chie and Rina merely is a Social Link.
• Tarot Motifs: Her Arcana is Death, a card associated with deep change — and she's rather upset by her family soon moving from Inaba when they lived there for so long.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: Even more traditional and proper than Yukiko. She also flat-out slaps Johnny when he throws shade at the shrine's customs.

Axel RO

• Tarot Motifs: His Arcana is The Tower.

Margaret

• Not So Stoic: Rather annoyed by Marie being a Bratty Teenage Daughter.
• Tarot Motifs: Her Arcana is The Empress.

Antagonists

The Kidnapper

• Beneath Suspicion: In spite of having been warned about a kidnapper on the loose, Gyro nonetheless opened the door to them and dearly paid for it. Who would peg a deliveryman as a threat, after all?
• Green and Mean: Endangers people by throwing them in the TV. So far, the most meaningful detail recorded about them are their green clothes.

The Suspect

• Attention Whore: To the point he commits murder, in order for everyone to look at him.
• Cassandra Truth: Attempts to unveil himself as a murderer on a chatroom, only for the online gamers to laugh at him and fling accusations of attention-seeking (and yes, he's an Attention Whore, that's exactly why he did it).
• Fame Through Infamy: Not only he killed Morooka and claimed he also was responsible for the two other murders, he crafted himself a whole image as a disturbing Serial Killer to make more people interested in him.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Gyro bluntly reveals that is why the Shadow is trying to break Johnny by putting him in a Lotus-Eater Machine — the American was just as broken and awkward as Mitsuo, only to find friendship and understanding where Mitsuo couldn't be bothered to try and make an effort.
• Moral Event Horizon: In-Universe, Mitsuo and his Shadow have one each.
  • For Mitsuo, this is killing Morooka merely out of boredom and unbridled craving for fame.
  • For his Shadow, this is trapping Johnny in a Lotus-Eater Machine to cause the American to be Driven to Suicide — and when the Shadow realizes Johnny used to be genuinely suicidal, it declares it won't fail this time.