In Which a Poker Game Drives a Man Insane
Oct. 26th, 2012 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailySo, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
With the new TV anime they're currently airing, I figured, "Hey, why notshill my fandom share one of my favorite stories from this series?"
For those not in the know, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is an ongoing shonen (well, now seinen) fighting series. However, something that sets JoJo's from all other shonen action series like Dragonball, One Piece or Bleach is the nature of these fights, which are rarely straightforward fights, but rather bizarre battles of wits.
This is best exemplified by the story I bring today: "D'arby the Gambler", volume 23 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Now first some setup of the fight and Part III in general: Jotaro Kujo, a biracial high-schooler who is allegedly seventeen but looks twenty-five, is on a quest with a ragtag bunch of superpowered misfits to kill a dude named Dio Brando. Dio Brando is a very powerful vampire that's running around with the body of Jotaro's great-great-grandfather, Jonathan Joestar (the hero of Part I), from the neck down. He is also the baddest dude in the JoJo universe. You may recognize him from all those youtube videos wherein he drops steamrollers on people.
He also wears parachute pants, pointy elf-boots, and heart-shaped knee-pads, because there's an unwritten rule in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure where your badassery is directly proportionate to the ridiculousness of your attire.
Anyways, Jotaro and his gang find themselves bereft of Dio Brando's current location, which is bad, because they only have around five days to kill him if they want to save Jotaro's mother. Luckily, some dude named D'arby knows exactly where Dio is, and is happy to give them the info if they win a bet. Polnareff, being the dim and impulsive one of the group, takes him up on his offer.
Unfortunately, D'arby wasn't clear on the fact that, when he said Polnareff could bet his soul, he was being completely serious. You see, D'arby is a Stand user.
Stands are basically the series's take on psychic powers, which started in part III. Hirohiko Araki decided that merely moving things by thinking would be kind of visually unimpressive, so instead people with psychic powers can manifest an entity called a Stand which only other Stand users can see. The full mechanics behind Stands are pretty complicated, so I'll be brief: All Stands have a special power, which range from standard (Abdul's Stand breathes fire), to weird (Jolyne's Stand lets her unravel up to 70% of her body into a thin but strong string) to really fucking bizarre (Mista's stand is a set of six tiny little dudes who ride on bullets and change their trajectories on the fly). Jotaro's Stand is pretty basic - it's super fast, super strong, and has incredibly keen senses. Dio's Stand is something he wants to keep secret from the heroes but can easily be found by anyone with access to Youtube. D'arby's Stand can steal souls, but only if he wins them in a bet.
Also, he cheats like a motherfucker.
So now they're stuck gambling with this guy if they want Polnareff's soul back, since beating the shit out of him will not work. Next up is Joseph Joestar, Jotaro's Indiana Jones-esque grandfather as well as the series's previous protagonist.
Joseph does a bit of cheating himself by adding some water to the glass on his own turn, but ultimately still loses thanks to a complicated trick involving angles and melted chocolate (don't ask). This leaves only two of the heroes left: Abdul and Jotaro.
Naturally, this calls for a game of poker, since Jotaro has one hell of a poker face. Each soul is split into six chips, and D'arby starts dealing cards. However, Jotaro warns him not to cheat this time around.
And by that I mean he breaks D'arby's fingers the moment the man starts second dealing. Remember, kids: don't screw with the guy with psychic powers.
Anyways, Jotaro decides that they need to bring in a third party to deal the cards, so Abdul finds a kid playing nearby and gets him to deal. Little does he know that D'arby owns the soul of just about every individual in the area, and Jotaro quickly loses the first match, leaving him with only three chips. That's okay, though, because Jotaro has a plan to go with his stellar poker face.
It first starts with Jotaro adamantly refusing to even look at his cards.
Next, he goes all in - not just with his own soul, but with Abdul's as well
Despite this initial oddity, D'Arby immediately regains confidence when switches out a card and gets four kings. So confident that he goes all in.
D'arby thinks that the wager will cause Jotaro to crack and fold. After all, there are only three hands that could beat his own (straight flush, four aces, or five of a kind with a joker), and D'Arby has the dealer in his pocket, meaning Jotaro almost certainly has a losing hand.
So naturally, Jotaro sees the raise, because that's how fictional poker games work. However, that's not all he does.
As said before, Jotaro has a Stand that can move at incredible speeds. Normally, Jotaro usually uses it to punch the crap out of people hundreds of times in the span of a second, but it's hardly its only application. Switching out cards undetected, for example, is another use for it.
And so, D'arby begins to nervously ponder the implications of this cigarette trick: If he can take out and light a cigarette so fast that it looks like it appeared out of thin air, could he switch out his cards to get an amazing hand? Perhaps not. After all, with the shit hand D'Arby commanded the dealer to give him, he'd have to secretly switch out all of his cards. Surely even that is too much for-
Well, fuck.
But Jotaro isn't done yet. After all, why bet only three souls on a mystery hand when you can throw your mother's into the mix? With another cigarette trick for emphasis, of course.
And so D'arby's descent into gibbering madness begins!
With D'arby's mind broken, every soul he's collected is released. Victory! The crew, with some effort, also manages to pry Dio's location out of him. The secret to Dio's own stand, however, is a bit too much for D'arby's fractured mind to reveal, and our heroes don't have access to the numerous "ZA WARUDO" youtube videos that showcase it, so that will simply have to remain a mystery for now. That just leaves one question: What was Jotaro's hand, anyways?
Dammit, Jotaro. You're not allowed to play poker anymore.
And so ends the story in which our hero drives a man mad with poker and parlor tricks. Perhaps, if anyone is interested, I'll post on Dio Brando and his hilariously over-the-top villainous antics.
With the new TV anime they're currently airing, I figured, "Hey, why not
For those not in the know, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is an ongoing shonen (well, now seinen) fighting series. However, something that sets JoJo's from all other shonen action series like Dragonball, One Piece or Bleach is the nature of these fights, which are rarely straightforward fights, but rather bizarre battles of wits.
This is best exemplified by the story I bring today: "D'arby the Gambler", volume 23 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Now first some setup of the fight and Part III in general: Jotaro Kujo, a biracial high-schooler who is allegedly seventeen but looks twenty-five, is on a quest with a ragtag bunch of superpowered misfits to kill a dude named Dio Brando. Dio Brando is a very powerful vampire that's running around with the body of Jotaro's great-great-grandfather, Jonathan Joestar (the hero of Part I), from the neck down. He is also the baddest dude in the JoJo universe. You may recognize him from all those youtube videos wherein he drops steamrollers on people.
He also wears parachute pants, pointy elf-boots, and heart-shaped knee-pads, because there's an unwritten rule in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure where your badassery is directly proportionate to the ridiculousness of your attire.
Anyways, Jotaro and his gang find themselves bereft of Dio Brando's current location, which is bad, because they only have around five days to kill him if they want to save Jotaro's mother. Luckily, some dude named D'arby knows exactly where Dio is, and is happy to give them the info if they win a bet. Polnareff, being the dim and impulsive one of the group, takes him up on his offer.
Unfortunately, D'arby wasn't clear on the fact that, when he said Polnareff could bet his soul, he was being completely serious. You see, D'arby is a Stand user.
Stands are basically the series's take on psychic powers, which started in part III. Hirohiko Araki decided that merely moving things by thinking would be kind of visually unimpressive, so instead people with psychic powers can manifest an entity called a Stand which only other Stand users can see. The full mechanics behind Stands are pretty complicated, so I'll be brief: All Stands have a special power, which range from standard (Abdul's Stand breathes fire), to weird (Jolyne's Stand lets her unravel up to 70% of her body into a thin but strong string) to really fucking bizarre (Mista's stand is a set of six tiny little dudes who ride on bullets and change their trajectories on the fly). Jotaro's Stand is pretty basic - it's super fast, super strong, and has incredibly keen senses. Dio's Stand is something he wants to keep secret from the heroes but can easily be found by anyone with access to Youtube. D'arby's Stand can steal souls, but only if he wins them in a bet.
Also, he cheats like a motherfucker.
So now they're stuck gambling with this guy if they want Polnareff's soul back, since beating the shit out of him will not work. Next up is Joseph Joestar, Jotaro's Indiana Jones-esque grandfather as well as the series's previous protagonist.
Joseph does a bit of cheating himself by adding some water to the glass on his own turn, but ultimately still loses thanks to a complicated trick involving angles and melted chocolate (don't ask). This leaves only two of the heroes left: Abdul and Jotaro.
Naturally, this calls for a game of poker, since Jotaro has one hell of a poker face. Each soul is split into six chips, and D'arby starts dealing cards. However, Jotaro warns him not to cheat this time around.
And by that I mean he breaks D'arby's fingers the moment the man starts second dealing. Remember, kids: don't screw with the guy with psychic powers.
Anyways, Jotaro decides that they need to bring in a third party to deal the cards, so Abdul finds a kid playing nearby and gets him to deal. Little does he know that D'arby owns the soul of just about every individual in the area, and Jotaro quickly loses the first match, leaving him with only three chips. That's okay, though, because Jotaro has a plan to go with his stellar poker face.
It first starts with Jotaro adamantly refusing to even look at his cards.
Next, he goes all in - not just with his own soul, but with Abdul's as well
Despite this initial oddity, D'Arby immediately regains confidence when switches out a card and gets four kings. So confident that he goes all in.
D'arby thinks that the wager will cause Jotaro to crack and fold. After all, there are only three hands that could beat his own (straight flush, four aces, or five of a kind with a joker), and D'Arby has the dealer in his pocket, meaning Jotaro almost certainly has a losing hand.
So naturally, Jotaro sees the raise, because that's how fictional poker games work. However, that's not all he does.
As said before, Jotaro has a Stand that can move at incredible speeds. Normally, Jotaro usually uses it to punch the crap out of people hundreds of times in the span of a second, but it's hardly its only application. Switching out cards undetected, for example, is another use for it.
And so, D'arby begins to nervously ponder the implications of this cigarette trick: If he can take out and light a cigarette so fast that it looks like it appeared out of thin air, could he switch out his cards to get an amazing hand? Perhaps not. After all, with the shit hand D'Arby commanded the dealer to give him, he'd have to secretly switch out all of his cards. Surely even that is too much for-
Well, fuck.
But Jotaro isn't done yet. After all, why bet only three souls on a mystery hand when you can throw your mother's into the mix? With another cigarette trick for emphasis, of course.
And so D'arby's descent into gibbering madness begins!
With D'arby's mind broken, every soul he's collected is released. Victory! The crew, with some effort, also manages to pry Dio's location out of him. The secret to Dio's own stand, however, is a bit too much for D'arby's fractured mind to reveal, and our heroes don't have access to the numerous "ZA WARUDO" youtube videos that showcase it, so that will simply have to remain a mystery for now. That just leaves one question: What was Jotaro's hand, anyways?
Dammit, Jotaro. You're not allowed to play poker anymore.
And so ends the story in which our hero drives a man mad with poker and parlor tricks. Perhaps, if anyone is interested, I'll post on Dio Brando and his hilariously over-the-top villainous antics.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 04:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 05:22 am (UTC)Its funny cause the next opponent, D'arby's kid brother, is even more dangerous, and he does basically the same thing only with video games.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 06:25 pm (UTC)So of course, Jojo and elder Jojo beat him by cheating.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 05:52 am (UTC)And I love that this moment's actually had the inevitable accompaniment set..
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 07:30 am (UTC)Me: "Sis?"
Sister: "Yes?"
Me: "Are we watching a show featuring a man crossplaying as Janet Jackson circa Rhythm Nation beating information out of a small french bulldog?"
Sister: "Yes. Yes we are."
Me: "Oh good. I was afraid I was hallucinating."
Me: "...Are they flying around on Aztec Batman?"
Sis: "Still not hallucinating."
Me: "Right. Right. Just checking."
(It turned out we were wrong. He was not beating information out of a french bulldog.)
(He was beating information out of a boston terrier.)
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 11:45 am (UTC)You'll probably want to start with Part III, since that's when the series switched from "X with vampires" to "X with bizarre psychic powers," and it's relatively standalone.
Personally, I'm fond of Part VI, on account of Hermes and Jolyne, the really crazy Stands (ie. summoning invisible zombies or turning people into snails), and these sorts of scenes.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 02:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 06:15 pm (UTC)Battle Tendency is awesome too, because you get to see where Jotaro gets his Crazy Awesomeness from - his grandpa Joseph "Depending on your answer I may have to kick your ass" Joestar.
Haven't gone into the rest of the series yet. Maybe it's because I think it starts jumping the shark around that point.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 07:08 pm (UTC)Or tweaks Aztec vampire gods' noses.
Or weaponizes clackers.
Basically, everything he does is awesome,
except for that whole illegitimate child thing.no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 01:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 07:12 pm (UTC)I just hope to God that Rohan is not an accurate depiction of his psyche. Araki's brain is already terrifying enough as it is.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 07:17 pm (UTC)Many have tried to find out. None have returned.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 07:11 pm (UTC)Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is a Gothic horror kung-fu action-adventure slice-of-life globe-trotting-epic high-adventure murder mystery prison break gangster western racing treasure-hunting amnesia story, all written and drawn by an immortal Highlander with a nearly perfectly symmetrical face. It invented half the tropes associated with Shonen, and continues on today, each time with a different setting, in a different time, with a different main character (who always has the nickname Jojo), in a different genre.
Part nine, once it comes, will take place in the future. It will be a survivor-horror with elements of romantic comedy. It will be set on the moon. Jojo's stand will be named Lady Gaga. It will have the power to turn blood vessels into screaming gerbils. And it will be awesome.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 01:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 04:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 08:32 pm (UTC)It may be great, but... I'm really not digging the art here.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-27 09:45 pm (UTC)As each story arc is more or less stand-alone, you can easily get on board at any time. Part seven finished not long ago, and part eight is ongoing.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-28 01:01 am (UTC)For some reason it's always made me think of a cross between One Piece and Fist of the North Star.
no subject
Date: 2012-10-29 02:11 am (UTC)At first, I saw gambling and thought this was going to be a Kaiji or Akagi post (or anything FKMT, just about). I was disappointed and then very pleased~.
I really want to get to this part of the series now. ♥