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If the Axis Powers had that kind of cybernetic technology, why didn't they use it to win the war? (The easy answer is "because it was impractical to mass-produce", but that doesn't explain the lack of cyborgs in the postwar world.)
It was probably still experimental and extremely risky, and roughly knowing the German mentality at that time (being German myself and having grandparents that lived at that time), it was probably "Only the elite forces are good enough to become cyborgs, but we can't use it on them since it's too risky". Stroheim is the only known cyborg because it was the only way he could have survived. If there are any others, they're guinea pigs kept away somewhere...
Also, with the next generation being focused on studying the Stands, military cyborgs were most likely deemed an old, risky and useless tech. Word of God claims Stroheim fell because of an unknown Stalingrad Stand User: most likely whoever was researching into making humans stronger than the Pillar Men by technology, by then would have moved into training Stand Users to use their supernatural powers on the battlefield.
In chapter three, Erina and Joseph tell Smokey about the history of their family. They tell him that Erina saved a child from a sinking ship, and that this child and her own son married and had Joseph together. Later on, near the end of the series, Lisa Lisa reveals to Joseph that she was the child that Erina saved from the sinking ship. How come Joseph doesn't realize right away that this means Lisa Lisa is his mother?
Joseph is clever, not smart. And lucky. But foremost he isn't smart. Caesar on the other hand...
Gee, maybe he's a little distracted by FIGHTING WAMUU at the time?
Denial - let's remember that Joseph had't been having the most wholesome of thoughts towards Lisa Lisa up to that point.
How do we even know Jojo didn't connect the dots? The only thing to suggest he didn't was Smokey's assumption which, well was an assumption.
So, where did Stroheim get all those Mexican prisoners? Did his men just kick down the doors of some poor little village and drag people into cells with the intent of slaughtering them for Santana chow?
Considering that they seem to be a bunch of people who know each other and are of varying ages (i.e. they weren't going to various places asking for teenage boys, for example), yes, that was the implication.
Speaking of Stroheim, why does he have a sight on his machine gun embedded in his abs, where it would do no good, and would be redundant when he has one as a monocle?
It's possible the gun used on him wasn't custom-made, but rather repurposed from some other application, and the sight simply wasn't removed because it wasn't doing any harm.
How did Kars manage to kill the other members of his race? They are only weak to sunlight and the ripple, but they can just turn to stone to avoid dying from the former and Kars couldn't use the latter until the end of Part 2.
Because of the stone masks. The original Pillar Men were just extremely tough/strong long-lived humanoids who couldn't survive under sunlight. All the body modification and absorption powers are a result of the use of a stone mask (they could only partially unlock a Pillar Man's potential without the Stone of Aja, however).
Pillar Men probably have their own way of killing each other, like humans have special ways of killing humans. These methods aren't really relevant to fighting humans though, so they don't come into play in the story.
Kars was able to engineer the stone masks, devices designed to pierce a pillarman's skull and stimulate their brain in just such a way that they unlock new abilities. It's not unreasonable to think he was just as capable of designing stone masks or even weapons capable of damaging them through brain trauma instead of empowering them.
Speaking of ways to kill the Pillar Men, how exactly did Esidisi survive the sun? Why was he reduced to a brain and veins? Even when he clings to Joeseph’s back he’s not fully covered by the shade. Shouldn’t he have at least partially burned at that point as well?
Of all the pillarmen, Esidisi had an affinity for heat, and his internal organs such as his brain must have been adapted to withstand extreme temperatures in order to even use his mode. It's possible this offers him some limited resistance to the sun, at least for a short period of time.
Where did Joseph get a dress from in the middle of the desert?
He made it from surrounding plants? He found it on the way? He was carrying around? Who knows.
Considering that he carries around grenades and a Tommy gun with him, a dress isn't out of the question.
Maybe the women working for the Germans were living nearby. Joseph found a dress somewhere in their camp/village/whatever, and "borrowed" it.
What are Kars' arm blades supposed to be made from?
Bone? Trace minerals?
It's mentioned that Kars’ blades are made from bones. The only reason they don't break when cutting through substances harder than bone is because of the tiny blades moving across their edges.
If you're asking why they look like they're made of steel, remember that Kars and his family are capable of manipulating their bodies however they desire. It's not implausible that Kars is just reinforcing his bones with iron to make the blades more sword-like.
How, exactly does Joseph know word-for-word what his opponents are going to say when he trolls them? They're people he doesn't know well, so it's not like he can make assumptions about what they might say in a given situation, and he doesn't even mess up the words they're going to say. He does this before stands are introduced, so it's not some secret power of his stand. Is he just straight up clairvoyant?
One guess is that Joseph riles up his opponent so that they're preoccupied with one particular thought, so he's not predicting them as much as leading them. Figuring out their choice of words seems like Awesomeness by Analysis of whatever banter they provided earlier.
He uses his Stand to read the next manga page.
He’s British. He knows what is going to be said because he read the manga backwards, from left to right.
Didn't Araki say that if the Crusaders went back in time and met young Joseph, they would see Hermit Purple wrapped around him? Kinda like an innate ability that later became part of Hermit Purple (Since Stands are just a manifestation of the soul)
Well, we've seen Hamon is able to predict the future before (Tonpetty seeing Zeppelli's future). Maybe Joseph was unconsciously using that ability.
For all we know, Tonpetty used a Stand to see the future, as Hamon hasn't really been shown to be able to do that. Stands weren't introduced in the series as of Phantom Blood, but that doesn't mean they didn't exist, and it's entirely possible that Tonpetty was a Stand user.
For OP, yup. After all, Hermit Purple can read the future.
How did a bunch of Nazi's manage to get into Switzerland with a war plane during 1939? I know appeasement was a thing back then, but letting a veritable platoon of soldiers just waltz into your lands seems really unlikely. It would almost make more sense if it took place during the war, since Switzerland did let troops from both sides move through their lands (for an extraordinary fee), but prewar Switzerland would absolutely not let a foreign army in without some kind of explanation, and I doubt they'd believe any ramblings about pillarmen and vampires.
They show the Swiss officials some video recordings and photographs of Santana and Whammu slaughtering their troops and point out their leader, the most dangerous amongst them, is still at large. Pretty sure the Nazis managed to salvage some data from the facilities in Mexico and Italy. The Pillar Men didn’t seem interested in wiping traces of their existence.
Air bubbles?!? Supposedly Kars' armor is made from air bubbles, which creates a protective barrier against lava. Except, ummmm oxygen burns. Now, what they might mean is silica tetrahedra but this isn't how it was described.
And the volcano explodes because of Hamon... oh, nevermind.
Speaking of air bubbles, why does Kars even bother making a shell at all? It's shown that he can survive the extreme cold of space, so why would extreme heat suddenly be an issue?
Easy, Kars is still a vampire and therefore takes +3d8 worth of damage on contact with fire and +5 Armor Class against cold damage; lava would probably cap it out to a solid 24. In all seriousness, intense heat has far more destructive potential compared to intense cold, and lava is insanely destructive. Kars is also still vampiric, and while he became the Ultimate Being and immune to sunlight, fire might still be a sore spot for him, if only psychologically; Esidisi seems to have been the only Pillar Man who has complete immunity to intense heat, and he was almost as old as Kars, with a lot of time to experiment and develop that power set. Kars may also have been concerned that, if he didn’t escape soon, the weight of the lava plus a cycle of rapid damage/healing would keep him pinned in the Earth forever.
In Phantom Blood it's said by Straizo that steel despite being good for conducting Hamon is bad at storing it, yet Joseph's clackers got infused with Hamon energy, and later a steel ball he launches out of a crossbow did as well. Shouldn't the Hamon have dissipated quite shortly after Joseph stopped touching them?
I haven’t read the manga or seen the show in a while, but didn’t Joseph say that the clackers were coated in vegetable oil?
What I'd like to know is, who the hell gave Joseph his first mechanical hand in the end? It wasn't Stroheim, because he clearly believed Joseph was dead after being blasted to the stratosphere along with Kars, and it's narrated at the epilogue that Stroheim never saw him again. It also couldn't have been the Speedwagon Foundation, they should have informed Speedwagon who the hand was for, but Speedwagon didn't know Joseph was alive before he showed up at his own funeral. So who did it?
I think it’s mentioned that Joseph got his first hand from Stroheim’s associates; probably the scientists responsible for Stroheim’s own cybernetic operation. Perhaps, while Joseph was making his way back to New York, he happened to come into contact with them, and they gifted him the hand as thanks for stopping Kars and the Pillar Men. They simply never told Stroheim because they assumed Stroheim already knew, and didn’t tell Erina, Speedwagon or the others because they didn’t have their phone number. Or, maybe Joseph’s mechanical hand was originally Stroheim’s? A backup in case Stroheim’s hand(s) got damaged. It may have been salvaged along with Joseph after the battle with Kars, and the rescuers saw a heroic young man missing a hand, and a mechanical hand that could be attached to a human, and put two and two together. Would certainly explain why it’s...clicky while Joseph’s in America.
It seemed to be implied it was workable but somewhat flawed. Joseph wanted to get Stroheim himself to improve it but by then the US was about to enter WW2 so it was nigh impossible for an American meet up with a German officer in a friendly manner. And obviously they never met again as a result of the war.
The Speedwagon foundation retrofitted Stroheim with UV Floodlights and took part to his second restoration (with Stroheim claiming his leg felt more stiff). That means that a. Nazi scientists and Speedwagon's foundation ones, under duress, cooperated to help Stroheim reach and save Joseph, b. The Speedwagon foundation is able to effortlessly build and maintain copies of Stroheim's body parts, albeit of lesser quality (Stroheim's stiff leg, Joseph's clicky, creaky hand) and c. both parties kept in touch during the Pillar Men Crisis, but had to go separate ways when the World War II hit with full gale. Hence after Joseph was recovered by Speedwagon's men, they asked the German scientists for help, they sent the blueprints for a fully working hand because Joseph was a an American/British man, potentially an enemy soldier but was still a heroic young man risking his life for all mankind but they couldn't finetune it. Joseph wanted to meet again with Stroheim, tell him about his life and get the hand finetuned (like the German scientists did with Stroheim's new legs), but then the USA went to war and Stroheim went to die in Stalingrad and Joseph was stuck with the inferior grade, less tuned prosthetic for life.
It's been a while since I read this, but something just occurred to me; if Kars’ whole schtick is that his body can adapt to anything, shouldn't it be able to adapt to the cold of space? Like growing an internal heat generator or something?
He can adapt to anything that earthly life can adapt to. No earthly life can simply generate the heat and have tough enough skin to survive in space. In fact, the only things that can remain alive in space without protection like tardigrades and certain bacterium do so by entering a state of suspended animation, cryptobiosis. That's more or less what Kars did, but his Pillar Man powers kept his mind active so he experienced And I Must Scream before completely losing his mind.
Here's a funky one I've been wondering for some time now. The entire final showdown takes place in a desert, right? With saaand, and ruins, and stuff you can find in deserts, with nothing else in sight. Except it was clearly stated to have been some fifteen or so kilometers southest from the abandoned hotel in Switzerland. Which means, why in the goddamn are there Swiss deserts?
The specific location of the final battle is Isola di Volgano, or Vulcano, an island off the coast of Sicily. If you were to google pictures of it, you'll see that the terrain is similar to where they were.
It took Caesar 61 hours to climb the Hell Climb Pillar, and Joseph a little longer than that. Since they don't seem to have any chance to rest or drink (especially since Jojo still has the mask on), wouldn't they start to suffer from sleep deprivation and dehydration, even if they don't die from either?
Hamon users could possibly sustain themselves on just their breathing. It wouldn't be out of line with some of their other feats like making dead branches sprout leaves.
That's the point of the Hell Climb Pillar: you need absolute mastery of Hamon to beat it. Hence you're supposed to learn how to sustain yourself with it, or fail.
It's explained that the Pillar Men learned modern languages by listening to their human captors speak. This explanation works until you squint at it and realize that the Pillar Men were being held by the Nazis, who're German. So where'd they learn all the English they're presumably speaking?
If they’re smart enough to figure out how to speak an entire language just by listening to a few conversations, then it’s not much of a stretch to think they can intuit how another language at least partially descended from Latin works after hearing it.
Why didn't Kars think to use Hamon to thaw himself when his body froze in space? Sure it would hurt like all fuck given how strong his Hamon is, but he was functionally deathless at that point so he could've healed and then tried to fly back to Earth the old-fashioned way.
You need breath to use Hamon. Not a lot to breath in space.
This is something I just realized, but how is Joseph so surprised that Lisa Lisa is a better fighter than him when she literally coached him in the ways of Hamon?
I think there's a clear difference between teaching something and demonstrating it. While Joseph undoubtedly knew that Lisa Lisa was more knowledgeable than him when it came to Hamon, I don't think he'd ever seen her use it in a fight until the fight with Wired Beck. Also his shock wasn't just that she was a better fighter than him, it was that her skill in battling zombies and vampires was better than anything he'd ever seen before.
but this isn't how it was described.