Ho? What are these works? I must know...Originally Posted by Skull
Huh, I just found out that "Rohan Kishibe Does Not Shout" and "Rohan Kishibe Does Not Frolic" are both a thing...
I must have them.
ARAKI!!!
Spoiler:
Ho? What are these works? I must know...Huh, I just found out that "Rohan Kishibe Does Not Shout" and "Rohan Kishibe Does Not Frolic" are both a thing...
I must have them.
ARAKI!!!
Spoiler:
Awesome!
So like, you're aware that JJBA is published monthly in the magazine "Ultra Jump" yeah? Well I guess they have to fill up extra space with something sometimes as sporadically they include a Rohan short story as well. These short stories were collected into two anthologies that I mentioned prior.
It's worth pointing out that these stories are not "manga" but but actual text stories. Araki pitches Rohan story concepts to a bunch of guest writers and they then go off and write a story around that.
Seeing as the next "Thus Spoke" episode doesn't seem to be coming any time soon, I am tempted to amuse myself by reading "Shout" and "Frolic" instead.
"Here's a bangin lil' tune about takin' on The Man!"
(Check out my Super Special Awesome Servant Compendium here)
Random question, and it might not be exactly kosher on here now that Gennews was nixed, but how many people who actually admire Funny Valentine are MAGA-heads? Several of his ideas and plans sound disturbingly MAGA-ist...I get some people like him as a villain, but for those who think he was in the right? I don't know.
People have loved Valentine for years before Trump ever hit the scene. Also the story itself sort of implies it.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
That first part is true, but the question is more along the lines of "do the people who love Valentine also have some sympathy towards the rhetoric and maybe policies of Donald Trump", and also, I don't think the story so much implies Valentine is right as it does that Johnny has no real moral objection to Valentine's plans and isn't really fighting for any reason but to avenge Gyro.
That being said, I think Araki portrays Valentine far too sympathetically for a virulent isolationist who is willing to deflect all misfortune from America to the rest of the world.
Well, less "Valentine is right" and more that it's often said that Valentine had "better" motivations than Johnny.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
I'm about as far right as it gets on BL, and always thought of him as a very well written antagonist. He presents himself as a patriot (literal star and stripe scars etc.) but in truth he's a rotten man - using an assassin to silence his enemies, not caring for his wife's death, not caring for property that is not his own, and so on.
Now, if JoJo was an actually nice guy, this would have been simple - he just points out all the evil shit Valentine did. But Johnny wants to believe good exists in this world after this italian weirdo made him realize the world is much more complicated than his one-way horse race track, and he has at this point figured out that in the larger picture he's just some asshole, and he's been pushed to the very bottom at the end of Sugar Mountain. So, Johnny also wants to believe the prez that there is something greater out there than that which Johnny has come to know throughout his life.
Valentine and his superficially moralist rhetoric present a good foil to Johnny who is truly and obviously rotten from the start, feeling nothing but spite towards the world, and whom Gyro has been leading along the path of cleansing himself, so that he can find meaning in life other than victory.
Man, I love Steel Ball Run.
Last edited by Ratman; July 20th, 2021 at 12:46 PM.
It's even more than that. I always thought of him as a good example of real life leadership -- governments do these sort of things all the time IRL and we're fine with it because when it's crunch time everyone knows you have to break the eggs to make the omelette. So in that sense, he's not really evil, he's not doing anything that any other leader wouldn't do in service to their country, just like getting nukes.
If what existed in Part 7 existed in real life you better believe every single country's going to be sending their men after it.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
Araki himself comments in his book Manga In Theory And Practice that Valentine's mentality is probably close to a lot of national leaders in real life, but his willingness to sacrifice powerless people for his ideals is undoubtedly evil and makes him utterly unsuited as a protagonist. So according to the mangaka himself, he is an (arguable) example of RL leadership but that doesn't take away from his evil or make his actions any more excusable. He's a sympathetic villain with understandable motivations, but he's clearly in the wrong and insofar as real leaders act like him it's an indictment of them and nationalism as a concept.
If anything Valentine's character and plan can be seen as a thought-experiment exploring how the (simple and intuitive) concept that a leader has a special obligation to their own people and should prioritize their wellbeing when the chips are down can be extrapolated to yield horrifying results. Which isn't surprising given how often similar things have happened in real life where the innocent premise we should care for our own above strangers leads to things like America turning away a ship full of Holocaust refugees because "why do we have any obligation to help those people?". Of course, the polar opposite (that we shouldn't have any partiality and be willing to sacrifice everything to perfect strangers who happen to be more deserving) seems absurd too, but that's why ethics is hard. In any case, in his willingness to go from merely looking out for his own country's interests to actively dooming the whole rest of the world into hell just as long as America prospers Valentine easily crosses the line into "evil" IMO.
For what it's worth I don't think the analogy with nukes is really a good one. Countries that get nukes (hopefully) don't have any plans to actually use them, they just don't want other countries to nuke them and in a system where cooperation isn't ensured the easiest way to do that is through a deterrent of mutual destruction. What Valentine is doing would be more like proactively nuking other countries because they might threaten the US if they still exist. Conversely, a Valentine who treated the Holy Corpse like actual nuclear weapons might procure it just to make sure other countries don't but then recognize it's too dangerous to ever actually use.
Last edited by RoydGolden; July 20th, 2021 at 06:17 PM.
That "we" seems to completely exclude leftist ideas and modes of analysis, and the fact remains, run of the mill nationalism ain't good either, so perhaps in a sense, Valentine's whole plan, and him being the antagonist, is a sort of indictment of nationalism, especially of the fascist kind.
As you can probably gather, my problem has almost nothing to do with Johnny not confronting Valentine about the sheer evil of his plan. Johnny is a self-interested asshole with a dark will to survive and who wants nothing more than to avenge Gyro by the end, and that's fine. He won't actively hurt people otherwise. Valentine, on the other hand, is trying to outright deflect all misfortune away from the US to other places in the world because of his insane belief that there is a limited supply of good fortune and that America must take it all.
That sort of ideology is fundamentally fascist in nature, and perhaps SBR could have used that to launch an absolutely scathing critique of far-right nationalism and maybe even the banal liberal nationalism we've come to accept as the way things are. However, Araki misses the mark on this, and I honestly don't think he understands the true toxicity of Funny Valentine's ideology and morality by framing him as a noble antagonist. He seems to frame the general idea of nationalism and prioritizing your own people above others as okay, it's just that Valentine took it too far. I think the entire premise is fundamentally flawed, and Valentine as an embodiment of its evils.
That thought occurred to me, but on a fundamental level, every leader has to put their people first. If an internationalist (well, really, anyone who isn't going to go all the way to the extreme other end) who wanted to put non-country folk first for whatever reason, he would be criticized for eroding their position in the world and the lives of his citizens, especially if it involved any sort of real trouble. I'd like you to elaborate then on what you mean by how leftist modes of thought would be different here.
At the base level, every country competes for resources, influence, etc., against other nations and this indirectly does the same thing Valentine seeks out. Just like the Holy Grail War is put by Kotomine as a metaphor for life in general, where you achieve your dreams by trampling over others' dreams, Valentine's good fortune that he seeks out is just the same process we already live by put explicitly.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
Life isn't exclusively a competition for finite resources though. It's also possible for people and countries to cooperate in a way where one's greater good fuels another's, and actively ameliorate suffering rather than merely ensuring it falls on someone you don't care about as opposed to one you do. That's what Valentine critically overlooks.
And on a more practical level it's not at all as uncontroversial as you're implying that a leader should always put the lives of their own countrymen above all. In fact this kind of thing is debated all the time IRL and different people express varying viewpoints on the matter. For instance immigration, should a country allow in foreign workers who can potentially compete with native ones for jobs or shut them out to protect their own country's interests? Many people would say a country has philanthropic duties to allow in those desperate for aid if they can afford to, while of course others like you said would argue even the slightest risk to one's own people is too great and there's no obligation to help non-citizens. To give the implication that some shadowy "everyone" tacitly agrees countries should always and without exception only care about their own citizens is really wrong and misleading, when this is really a wide politico-philosophical issue that cleaves many people along different axis.
Of course, you're not wrong that a leader who totally neglected their people's own interests in favor of pursuing a utilitarian greater good (like devoting all their resources to help the poorest people in a foreign country rather than only somewhat poor people in their own) would be considered wrong and pathetic (I mean, they certainly wouldn't get voted in again). But as far as that goes it can only demonstrate you're entitled to care about your own people somewhat more than the rest of the world, not that there's no obligation to care about other people at all. The latter would lead to obviously absurd results since if literally your only consideration when making decisions is the wellbeing of people in your own country you wouldn't have any qualms invading other countries or setting up torture-camps if it could provide even the slightest benefit to them. In other words, it'd amount to fascism which people nowadays can hopefully recognize isn't an example to follow.
Even phrasing the issue as "putting your own people first" isn't really accurate when the question isn't necessarily so much whether it's justified to be partial to your own people (which I'd find hard to reject under certain circumstances, though I might argue whether a nation is an appropriate group to be partial towards as opposed to something more personal like friends or family) but whether you're obligated to show any concern at all for those who aren't "your people". Rejecting that leads pretty much unavoidably to fascism as far as I can see, and that's squarely the camp Valentine falls into.
Last edited by RoydGolden; July 21st, 2021 at 12:27 AM.
All that tells me is that the nation-state model that most of us take for granted is an inherently violent, exclusionary model in which different states have a monopoly on violence within their borders and in which borders, enforced by violence, determine who has access to which resources. From a leftist point of view, no state apparatus should have the right to determine who has the right to what resources, and it would be better if we lived in a world without states struggling for a monopoly on resources. In a leftist model, there would be no state to hoard resources and no competition between different state entities for said resources. Furthermore, the idea that you obtain what you desire by preventing others from getting it and maximize your own wealth at the expense of others is an inherently capitalist way of thinking. In capitalism, only some people have control of the means of production, and wealth inequality is a fact of the system. Most ways in which one gains wealth in such a system are fundamentally exploitative, hence your point. Leftists don't believe in such an exploitative model of society, where there exist opposing owner and worker classes where the former have more freedom and more resources than the latter. In an ideal anarchist/communist society, power is something that is shared between all stakeholders, there is no private ownership (separate from personal ownership), and there is no profit motive like there is in our current capitalist paradigm. In this world, there would be no competition amongst any state entities for resources, since their accessibility and use wouldn't be unilaterally determined by any one stakeholder, but rather through consensus of free people.
I may not have worded it the most elegantly, but this is the general idea.
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Valentine is absolutely a proto-fascist, and the fact that Araki leaves it up to reader interpretation if he's wrong or not is not great.
As for your point on immigration, that's a fundamentally liberal POV that seems to take the idea of enforced borders and state monopoly on the movement of people for granted. In a leftist framework, immigration should not be limited by any one entity, and borders are inherently violent, and thus illegitimate.
As the quote I referenced shows, I think it's pretty clear Araki views Valentine as a clear villain (albeit one with some understandable motives). That a particular reader doesn't get that is more on them than him as a writer. If anything the fact that he can depict such extreme nationalism in a way that seems persuasive and even sympathetic while still clearly acknowledging the immense evil that springs from it is a more effective portrayal of what makes those twisted ideals inspirational (and dangerous) then if he'd just had Valentine as a blatant card-carrying villain with no humane traits. And in general Araki is a Japanese author so it'd be pretty weird to think he'd actually endorse an unironic "America fuck yeah, to hell with the rest of the world" mentality. That's mostly just memes and/or certain American readers willfully misinterpreting the story.
And I'm not quite sure what you mean by "my point on immigration" since I mainly just gestured to the debates over the issue without taking an overt stance (though you can probably guess what I sympathize with more). If you just mean acknowledging that borders/nations exist I wasn't saying anything about whether they're just or not, just that they in fact do and given that do we have any obligation to take in people rendered disadvantaged/less fortunate under such a system? (I would argue yes.)
This is some evageeks shit.
Valentine's character has nothing at all to do with politics, he is entirely a framing device for Johnny's character development. He enters the story saying a bunch of stuff, but like with Johnny, it gets shaved down to the essentials over time.
In the climatic scene, Johnny is trying to gauge what kind of person Valentine really is, because he doesn't really understand what is going on and why Valentine went to such lengths to obtain this result. He is thinking, hey, maybe this guy is like Gyro - an idealist. That would explain it. Gyro was an idealist, he was the kind of guy who did weird and stupid shit because he thought it was the right thing to do. Valentine's offer of a pardon sounds good, but Valentine would need to be an idealist in order for Johnny to be able to walk away, so Johnny hopes that the prez is just messed up in the head like Gyro was, and lets him talk.
In this situation, any kind of other ideological grandstanding would have produced the same result:
- If Jeff Bezos explained to Johnny that America having the corpse will make the dollar eternally stable, and that this will have a tremendously good influence on world economy which translates to the sum of happiness in the world increasing as living conditions improve, he'd get shot if he had a gun.
- If Bill Nye the Science Guy claimed that he needs to study the thing in order to understand its anomalous influence on quantum waves and expand the field of science so that people can go to space, he'd still get shot if he had a gun in his lab coat.
- If Harrier Du Bois got a thought from Rhetoric that he should totally explain to this fool that the body belongs to all the people of the world and the only reason it works the way it does are the national borders being a thing and therefore if humanity came together as one the Love Train would make everyone happier, he'd still get shot as long as he found and brought his gun.
At the end of the day, Funny was the kind of guy who would bring a gun to peace talks. Because he was a killer before being a politician. Because he was a realist before being an idealist. What specific kind of idealist he was can be written off, but the important thing is that Johnny understands the latter, and what it means that it outweighs the ideal. Johnny is a realist as well. Johnny, as you may recall, brought a gun into a horse race himself, because he presumed everybody was going to cheat and try to kill each other.
Gyro might have, but Johnny would never let Johnny walk away, so Valentine dies, and that's that.
Fair point, but I'm also not saying that Valentine should have been a card-carrying villain, but I'm instead saying that more work should have been done to show that however affable he is and no matter how sincere he is in his beliefs, his ideology is fundamentally evil. The fact that Jesus Himself, a figure considered a paragon of morality among Christians, acknowledges Valentine does not help things, nor does the fact that so many of Valentine's minions are portrayed as immensely loyal to this great man.
Also, I'm pointing out the fact that the very immigration debate you gesture to is very much predicated on the idea that nations and their borders are legitimate and that there aren't other options, and that's pretty damn liberal. Also, I'd say no state should have the right to control who comes in and leaves or deny resources based on that.
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Johnny and Valentine's struggle doesn't have much to do with politics, but only a fascist would try and claim that Valentine's character or the source of his evil has nothing to do with politics. It's absolutely steeped in his ideas that America is the promised land and deserves to come out on top no matter the cost, and the idea that Valentine "brought a gun to peace talks" because he was some sort of realist is pretty weak, considering that his goals combine a near religious faith in the potential of America as well as a sincere belief that nothing is off the table when it comes to ensuring American greatness. He's not all too different from real American political figures like Wilson or Sherman, who sincerely believed in the potential of America and allowed for any amount of force to make it happen.
It's been a while since I read it, but iirc doesn't Johnny let Valentine start to draw his gun first? Or at least it's clear it's not going to go the peaceful way it could have.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
There's the previous Valentine's empty gun on the ground. Johnny asks him to pick it up, which shouldn't be a problem.
Valentine tries to do it, but when he gets close it starts moving towards him, and he realizes that the empty gun is going to get merged with his own parallel version of the gun, which will make his gun useless. He can't do that, because he brought the gun full to shoot Johnny in the first place, as Johnny suspected. So, he tries to go for hip shooting Johnny's brains out.
Oh, so you're saying Valentine would always shoot Johnny, not Johnny would have always shot Valentine. I misinterpreted it.
Well, I don't know if I'd say that means it's realism. It's more like Kiritsugu where the ideal means so much to them they're willing to do anything to get it.
He never sleeps. He never dies.
Battle doesn't need a purpose; the battle is its own purpose. You don't ask why a plague spreads or a field burns. Don't ask why I fight.
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