Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

The Stand has a bunch of utilities that don't seem like they relate to Toru as a person. I wouldn't refer to those as non-intrusive "little background mechanics."

I was rereading the wiki list to refresh my memory and it seemed like way too many powers on one Stand that don't contribute to a theme, or say anything about Toru. You can take the "little background mechanics" of most of the other final boss Stands and they all fit a theme or symbolize something about the user, or at least they feel like they belong with the Stand more.

Final boss Stands are usually obscenely powerful for the Part, yeah, but Toru's are a hodgepodge of powers some of which contribute to the fight and some of which don't. The fight isn't what I'm pointing at though.

Edited by FOFD on Feb 22nd 2024 at 7:31:04 AM

I mean, Tooru from what little we see of him, is a schemer. One that wants to rise above everyone, but do so with comparatively little risk. The collective abilities of Wonder of U make this possible, as well as fairly easy all things considered. Let's work down the list that's on the wiki:

• identity assumption: this makes it easy for Tooru to have a public face without actually risking people knowing what he really looks like. Wonder of U takes the identity of a person that's already in a position of power and or well respected, allowing Tooru himself to make easy inroads to information, materials, and resources that he wants.
• illusion creation: really good for goading people into pursuit
• calamity manipulation: Wonder of U's bread and butter, we've already been over this one in my previous post, so I don't really feel the need to explain it further
• post-mortem existence: this if anything, is kind of what doesn't fit. Arguably this occurs because calamity works as part of the natural logic of the world, and thus endures past any one individual's death. It takes something that literally goes beyond logic and the rules of the universe to excite it. It's ultimately hard to say that if Tooru had been killed by Josuke and the Go Beyond ability whether Wonder of U would've persisted in the first place, although the way things play out implies that it wouldn't have.

Taken altogether, I wouldn't call this a hodge-podge of powers. I'd call it a power-set that is fairly in line for someone that acts like Tooru acts, and that has his motivations and temperament.

Wonder of U isn't even the only Stand that persists after its original user's death. Notorious B.I.G and Anubis also somehow outlast their creators.

My guess is that outliving the user is something automatic stand can do in the right conditions. Another example would be Milagroman, whose original user is dead and just kept going from person to person. Superfly would probably also keep going for an indefinite amount of time, since it's linked to the tower.

Okay, let's go over the points one-by-one.

By the way, opening that folder counts as pursuing Wonder of U.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Feb 22nd 2024 at 7:29:57 AM

Aww, I'm sure you wrote something very interesting in that folder and I would like to read it, but my deodorant can is looking oddly threatening, so I better not. Thank you for the warning .

Wonder of U feels mostly consistent to me. It's just when you get things like "touching this thing I also touched once before counts as pursuing me", "choosing not to pursue me counts as pursuing me", or "pursuing me will cause convenient delayed death in this case so Josuke can save you" that it starts to feel off.

What counts as "pursuing" does feel pretty inconsistent for the purposes of Wonder of U's power.

Huh, I hadn't looked at it that way. Good summaries.

This actually does seem to be a thing since it’s the reason why the child killer got killed simply by seeing the head doctor while Rai only had things like the lights shatter despite having actively malicious thoughts against the doctor. It would explain why Jobin and Kaato got killed in one shot while the heroes are able to take several to dozens of attacks too.

Kei also got instantly killed, but she's not particularly evil.

I think that the whole "instant death vs. drawn out conflict" just comes down to main characters vs. random people, unfortunately. It's a little weird in that regard, but that's how the story is served.

Posthumous Stands aren't too out of left field when you consider ghosts exists in this universe. And Stands are already spirits of a sort.

There were also Anubis and Cheap Trick, which could just swap Stand Users at will.

And Superfly technically got passed to Josuke temporarily.

Edited by TerraCondor on Feb 23rd 2024 at 8:26:15 AM

I guess Born This Way had hurt innocent people as collateral damage during the initial arc. Although I’d say her getting such a lethal hit would be explained by her being the first to actually damage Wo U before Wo U was wounded (a recurring theory I’ve seen and one that makes sense to me too is that the reason Kaato was able to finish off Tooru and get a delayed calamity death after the act instead of the calamity simply happening earlier to prevent her from acting at all is because Wo U and “the flow” was already heavily wounded and disrupted by Go Beyond)

I just realized during that Johnny vs DIO rematch in Steel Ball Run, Johnny ended up racing through the sewer to confront Dio.

Similar to how DIO ran from Jotaro and tried to make it to the sewer, but Jotaro spontaneously appeared inside of the sewer grate to cut him off. I was just rewatching that bit and went "wait a minute, didn't Johnny... oh SHIIIIIIII-."

Edited by FOFD on Feb 26th 2024 at 11:30:52 AM

Chapter 13. angst ahoy.

We go back to a time in highschool when Dragona had a more masculine appearance. He's playing volleyball with a female classmate who starts picking on him. Things take a turn when she starts sexually harassing then assualting Dragona in public, and the other kids and staff don't do anything since this girl's parents donate a lot to the school. She threatens to undress Dragona and starts pinching his nipples with eyelash curlers? Dragona screams and Jodio appears, tells Dragona to leave with him, and a drop of water rips through the girl's cheek. The next day, having witnessed Dragona's distress, Jodio makes a raincloud tear the schoolbus apart. Dragona confronts Jodio about it later and thanks him. The incident held no evidence of Jodio's involvement.

This incident occurred when Dragona was 14 years old and Jodio was 12. As a consequence of the incident the school bus company had to pay out a large sum due to the rich girl being involved. Jodio and Dragona's dad, working at the insurance company that had to pay out an extra amount, ended up losing his job and leaving the household. The family went into poverty after this. This led to a meeting with Meryl May Qi the least likely to abduct children school principal ever, definitely not a career criminal.

Back in the present Charmingman meets Meryl and is brought into the group. Any efdort to find his missing sibling results in "some aspect of society" blocking him. There is a company named Howler that owns the area where the lava rocks can be found. Meryl estimates the immense profit to be made and offers them all a cut.

Edited by FOFD on Mar 18th 2024 at 1:28:38 PM

So, Dragona at the very least seems to be non-binary? Hard to say whether they're trans at the moment or not. It's not something to dwell upon at this time anyways.

Interesting to see karma come back into the story, and this relatively early on. Looks like 'absurdity' is going to be an ongoing watchword. Potential that whoever is in charge of the Howler company already is aware of what's going on and is looking to get to the source of luck, or just keep other people from doing so in general.

Edited by Grahf on Mar 18th 2024 at 3:32:37 PM

From Meryl Mei's wording, it sounds like after this little robbery intro, the whole rest of the part is going to be a long-term infiltration. As for the gender aspects, I'll try to find the chapter untranslated to check if there's any difference in the way younger Dragona talks about it.

"Makes a raincloud tear the school bus apart" isn't quite accurate. It's more "starts a gas fire in the bus while everyone is locked inside".

Looked like Jodio was going to straight up murder that entire bus and only changed his mind and used rain to put out the fire when he saw that bird was also inside.

Edited by Moth13 on Mar 18th 2024 at 3:58:13 PM

Ah boy, there are already people calling Araki an evil transmisogynist bastard for daring to depict sexual assault. I love when pointless discourse like this happens.

Edited by Makir on Mar 18th 2024 at 3:09:37 PM

Discourse is dumb, but I could understand being tired of SA in general after Lucy Steel and Yasuho Hirose.

I wasn't expecting a flashback right now, but I think we're getting some interesting insight into the characters.

Edited by Jokubas on Mar 19th 2024 at 12:44:42 PM

SA is one of those things you need to write really carefully, and you need to think about whether you really need it in the story at all.

And tbf, JJBA has had this crap since the very start. Remember when Dio forced a kiss on Erina? I'm pretty sure that counts as sexual harassment. Then there was the orangutan who tried to rape a girl in Stardust Crusaders. And the Big Bad of Diamond is Unbreakable was a Serial Killer with a fetish for hands.

Edited by M84 on Mar 18th 2024 at 10:50:35 PM