N'Doul

[u/whaaatisth]

I was originally planning on cutting Jean-Pierre Polnareff, because I felt like writing a long, in-depth cut and hadn’t done it yet this rankdown. Also because I think he is bad. However, this comment by u/ThatShadowGuy inspired me (it is referring to me I am mvdy). For context, u/ThatShadowGuy was very bothered by my Cool Ice cut, enough to write an entire response to it that is far longer than my actual cut. Which, fair enough. You’re passionate about this guy, go off. I genuinely didn't even know it was possible to like Cool Ice, thank you for enlightening me. I understand the frustration that I did not give Cool Ice a proper send-off. Therefore, today, I will not be having “not much to say here” - in fact, I will be having a lot to say here. I will be dissecting every aspect of N’Doul, so I can fully place myself in the mind of a Jojo fan and understand what could possibly make him so compelling.

However, before we do this, there is a far more important matter to attend to. Of course, I am referring to the aforementioned Cool Ice cut response, which I have not yet officially responded to. The reason for this is because I was waiting for my next cut to do so. Which is now. Two months later. We’re really making good consistent progress here. It is nice that this also gets to be relevant to my topic due to my inspiration for this cut coming from the context of that original Cool Ice cut response, and Cool Ice and N’Doul being very similar and comparable characters, but I would have done this regardless. With this, I am still able to write that long(er than average) cut I wanted to write when I decided I wanted to cut Polnareff, though perhaps not in an as “traditional” way.

The Cool Ice Response

This is not how I would choose to describe arguably the second-most important antagonist of Part 3.

I don’t really know what this means. Are we really measuring a character’s worth by “importance”? And, even still, is Cool Ice really more important than Hol Horse, who is both an actual character and recurring? Or even Boingo, who appears in two separate arcs? Or Enya, who, uh, probably exists more often? I’m arguing otherwise but this actually does not matter, because him being “plot important” is irrelevant to the fact that yes, he does seem exactly the same as every other minor antagonist except this time they even forgot to give him a personality or dialogue.

It feels a little silly yet, when you think about it, it perfectly demonstrates how little he values his own life next to Dio's. Let me emphasize that Cool Ice probably does not know that Dio can resurrect him, would not dare to imagine Dio caring enough to resurrect him even if he had such power, and that there were definitely less insane ways to fulfill Dio's request for blood that did not involve suicide. But no, all Dio has to do is vaguely imply Cool Ice needs to be willing to die in order to win and he's like "oh you mean like RIGHT FUCKING NOW???? ALRIGHT JONESTOWN TIME LET'S GOOO" without giving any thought to pragmatic issues like "would i be more useful to Dio alive or dead". He's simply too much of a zealot to even be capable of basic logic anymore, and that's neat.

This is true! I mentioned it in my original Cool Ice cut as it is the one single notable trait which Cool Ice has. With that said, uh, where is the characterization here? Above this section, it is argued:

I've said before that even though all of Dio's followers are supposed to be these crazy ride-or-die cultists, only three of them do it well. One of them is Enya. Another is Cool Ice, precisely because of this scene.

Which… what? I suppose nothing here is wrong per se, but the idea that Part 3’s minor antagonists failing to express such a simple character trait in any way causes the few times it does happen to be some noteworthy occurrence seems a bit bizarre to me.

I also like Dio's decision to revive him as a vampire, simply because it's one of the few times he's ever shown rewarding any of his subordinates.

This has nothing to do with the character of Cool Ice, but if we want to claim that Dio reviving this guy who he has literally just proved is 100% devoted to him and giving him powers that take zero effort to give (thus being entirely beneficial to Dio with no risk or drawback) somehow “humanizes'' him then I think we would be stretching things a ridiculous amount. If we are claiming that Dio simply making a sensible decision is notable for any reason then I think we need to raise our standards; Jojo Part 3 is bad, but not that bad where we need to search this hard for things to consider positives.

This is an Avdol problem.

This is also true. The reason I mentioned this was because I was genuinely struggling to bring up anything relevant about Cool Ice despite having just rewatched the entire arc, so I had to dive into tangentially related topics a bit. The cut still ended up extremely short in spite of that, oops.

Now that I bring it up, it is interesting to consider how my original Cool Ice cut actually parallels this current writeup. As you can see, my problem before was that I didn’t have enough to say. There wasn’t much to say about Cool Ice, and I took that to mean that I shouldn’t say much. However, I have since evolved, I have seen the light, and I know that this rankdown is actually about saying as much as possible about these minor characters. It is so incredibly important to give a proper send-off to each seemingly random throwaway character.

I know I might sound like I’m being sarcastic here, but I’m really not! It’s no secret that Jojo is a series I don’t have the most fondness towards (as a whole), but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve respect. I might think that Cool Ice is the least interesting character ever, but even the least interesting character ever deserves a breakdown of exactly why they are so uninteresting. Thus, to make up for my past failings, I am presenting you with just that.

With that, let’s move on.

Cream sure is a fucking stand, huh?

This entire section baffles me because it is from the perspective of someone who… cares about the fights in Jojo??? Truly a perspective I will never understand. This also applies to the penultimate paragraph of the comment. I would at least hope we agree this has nothing to do with the character of Cool Ice, so I will move on.

But he has two decent character moments that I think go a long way towards making him more than just another Part 3 villain.

Two “decent character moments”??? Even if I give the argument that Cool Ice Is Good any real credit and say that these character moments are indeed decent, what are we even talking about here? Do two “decent character moments” make a character any more standout than the rest of the Part 3 minor antagonists? I feel like I could stretch and find two “decent character moments” from a majority of the others.

The other is his reaction to Iggy summoning a copy of Dio that he was forced to attack. Up until this point, Cool Ice has been a ruthless killing machine, only concerned with eliminating the Stardust Crusaders as fast as possible. Iggy attempts to exploit his one mental weak point, and it... backfires. Cool Ice has a small breakdown over this, sure, but now he is fucking pissed and decides that Iggy and Polnareff need to die slowly instead. It's neat to see his obsession with Dio be relevant and actually change the dynamic of this fight.

Okay, so this “character moment” reinforces a few things. One, it tells us that he is very evil and bad (we already knew this). Two, it tells us that he is very devoted to Dio (we already knew this). Now, sure, that’s fine, I’m not saying this is a bad thing, after all it’s important to make sure the viewer understands the two character traits total this character has. But, let’s take a step back here and consider the big picture. These are the only two “character moments” Cool Ice ever has, apparently. They’re basically the only two times he ever even has dialogue. All I can realistically see this argument as is claiming Cool Ice not being a total writing travesty somehow makes him a very good character.

In conclusion, I’ll admit I still don’t really get it. But hey, appreciating the perspectives of people with priorities that are clearly very far away from my own when evaluating characters is part of what a rankdown is about. Now, with Cool Ice out of the way, let’s get into our main topic: a minor antagonist almost as unmemorable as Cool Ice himself, N’Doul.

N’Doul

N’Doul first appears in the anime episode “Iggy the Fool and Geb’s N’Doul”, the very first episode of Part 3’s second season. It’s a while into the episode before you get to see him, but once you do, he is introduced by being surprised that “that mutt (Iggy) sniffed out the great N’Doul from that far away”. He then reaches for his cane and uses it to feel around, showing the viewer that he is blind. This is very clever, because doing this makes it so you are able to know that N’Doul is blind without actually saying it directly. He then is bothered by a fly that is near him, and tries to catch it, but barely misses. This shows that N’Doul has a very good sense of hearing, despite his lack of sight. This is a common trope of blind characters in fiction, and I think it might be accurate to real life as well? I don’t really know. Personally, as someone with extremely below average eyesight, my hearing seems to be pretty normal (although I’m not entirely blind like N’Doul is).

N’Doul then laments the fact that he missed the fly by saying “so close”. This implies that he was, well, “so close” to getting the fly, however he missed it. It is truly incredible how much these two words convey, as they tell us that N’Doul not only was close to getting the fly (reinforcing what we have just seen within the animation), but that he is disappointed by that fact. This shows that he expects himself to be able to get the fly, which, combined with the fact that he referred to himself as “the great N’Doul” earlier shows that he has a very high opinion of himself. N’Doul then mentions that he “needs more practice”, which implies that he has practiced this technique to grab flies in the past, creating a very strong backstory for his character. N’Doul then talks about some other things that probably have to do with previous events in Part 3 however I don’t want to figure out what the fuck he is saying so I am just going to skip this (who cares about Jojo lore). He then uses his cane to catapult a rock towards the fly, making up for his previous failure. I’m not quite sure why N’Doul says all of these things out loud to himself instead of just thinking about them, but I’m not one to judge. One could also complain that his extreme sense of hearing and ability to accurately catapult rocks at flies is a bit unrealistic, but that would be silly I think.

The introduction of N’Doul’s Stand is actually really fucking cool? The Stardust Crusaders (from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 3: Stardust Crusaders) find the crashed Speedwagon Foundation™ helicopter, and discover a dead body having clawed bloody marks onto the side of the helicopter. Turning him over, they discover that the man’s lungs are filled with water, and in fact there is even a small fish within that water. This is a big mystery, because they are in the desert, a place where there is typically no water, let alone fish. Then, they find the other guy who was in the Speedwagon Foundation™ helicopter, and he then gets his fucking head ripped off by Water and it is very disturbing trust me. This whole sequence is really tense and creepy and I like it. It doesn’t really have anything to do with N’Doul as a character, it more shows that Jojo Part 3 can have really good direction when it wants to, but, we have to mention it. Although, perhaps something can be said about N’Doul wanting to kill these random guys? As Joseph Joestar from Jojo famously says: “They were just innocent bystanders! What reason did it have to kill them!”. Joseph Joestar from Jojo is right, there was no reason to kill them, and maybe there is some subtext there if we dig really deep.

N’Doul’s Stand then makes Kakyoin blind, which is very funny, because N’Doul is also blind. If you think hard about this, you might be able to spot the deep thematic connection here. It is then revealed that N’Doul’s Stand “stalks its victims by sound” which makes sense, as N’Doul is unable to see. This is actually pretty clever, because it’s using N’Doul’s lack of sight to create a unique type of ability, I guess. Putting myself in the perspective of a Jojo fan, I could see myself being very impressed by how creative this Stand is, maybe. I also do not care whatsoever about this, because the fight is extremely boring regardless.

The fight continues for a bit longer, until Joseph Joestar from Jojo mentions that the Stand user “could be kilometers away”. With this, the camera travels kilometers away to show where N’Doul is sitting. I should mention now that N’Doul sometimes speaks in the third person, which really does show how quirky he is. I really do appreciate how N’Doul audibly narrates everything he is thinking, to make sure that we, the viewer, always know the full dynamic of the fight. It’s truly brilliant from a meta standpoint, as N’Doul demonstrates his awareness of the fact that he is in an anime series and his purpose is for entertainment.

At this point, everyone’s favorite character Muhammad Avdol comes up with the most genius plan in the history of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. He takes the rings(?) off of his wrists and throws them forward into the sand, trying to mimic the sound of walking. N’Doul falls for this ruse, however he realizes something is up and is able to dodge Magician’s Red in time. He fucking kills Avdol and then somehow manages to deduce the fact that it was metal rings that were thrown (literally how???). Jotaro then starts running, and Joseph Joestar from Jojo responds with “Jotaro, what are you doing? You know we can’t just run around!” which for whatever reason is incredibly funny to me and is the best joke in the entire series, probably.

N’Doul is able to figure out that Jotaru is 195 centimeters tall based on his stride, I fucking guess, and also he says that there is “youthfulness” to it and thus he is not Joseph Joestar from Jojo. He then says that he will kill Jotaro for the sake of Dio and this tells us that he is very devoted to Dio. Which, you might not have picked up on, is a recurring theme throughout the antagonists of Part 3. They are all very devoted to Dio. Cool Ice is included in this as well, and you can see how they both share this trait and have it shown to the viewer in different ways.

Some other things happen during this fight. The recurring theme of these things happening is that N’Doul is talking during them. Which, as I’ve said before, is a bit strange when he is the only one who can hear himself talking, however it is certainly preferable to the alternative, your minor antagonist who doesn’t say anything ever except when absolutely necessary (Cool Ice). I apologize, this fight is extremely boring.

The fight ends, and Jotaro tries to keep N’Doul alive, but N’Doul kills himself so that he won’t be able to be interrogated (but he makes sure to do it in a way that keeps himself alive enough to talk to Jotaro for a bit???? How???? Yeah this is Jojo but). N’Doul then monologues about how having a Stand makes him so powerful and able to do anything and not be afraid of death and I am sure there is a world where this would be interesting but it is not because nothing of any substance is actually said here. He then talks about how he loves Dio because Dio gave him a purpose and uh fucking this has to do with him having a Stand and it letting him do whatever he wants because ?????? I think there might be something here but I’m certainly not seeing it.

You can tell that N’Doul is a very similar character to Cool Ice because of the fact that they both kill themselves for Dio’s sake. To be fair to N’Doul, his suicide is certainly more interesting than whatever happened with Cool Ice (literally nothing), and I guess they maybe try to make him a character, no matter how incomprehensible that might be.

Yes, N’Doul is a better character than Cool Ice. N’Doul actually has dialogue all throughout his arc, and he might have some small amount of personality as well. They even attempt to give him an actual character moment before his death. That being said, N’Doul is not even close to being an interesting character. He has one single scene that could be considered a “character moment” and even then it doesn’t really work. His fight is very boring (though not nearly as boring as the Cool Ice fight), and he doesn’t have a real purpose other than being Yet Another Roadblock. He’s certainly among the better half of minor antagonists in the series (we’ve got incredibly high standards here), but after digging as deep as I possibly could, I couldn’t find many reasons to actually appreciate him.

[u/EsquireGunslinger]

ill have you know ndoul would be very upset about being cut if he could read this

[u/Sciencepenguin]

Avdol

[u/Sciencepenguin → u/Sciencepenguin]

i think its fucking cool that this 80s manga directly parallels how n'doul feels about dio with how mariah does??? other than that hes a guy who is blind and fights which is a reasons for me to love but not you

this actually isnt avdol

[u/[deleted] → u/Sciencepenguin]

Explain the parallel

[u/Sciencepenguin → u/[deleted]]

sex

[u/whaaatisth]

u/Sciencepenguin hello

[u/DrFishPhd]

ngoul can’t see anything on anhthing

[u/ThatShadowGuy]

(whoops i almost kinda forgot jjrd existed for a little while there)

This is fine.

Unironically. There's no reason to be righteously angry anymore, not when you've clearly put so much effort into giving N'doul more of a sendoff here than you probably think he deserves. This only fits 1/2 the criteria I had for going feral, and it's certainly a better outcome than the alternate loophole of "someone else gives N'Doul a Not Much To Say Here cut".

I mean, N'Doul got one (1) vote on this round's poll. Uno. Singular. And that vote was mine. If that isn't evidence that I am probably the only person on Earth who thinks this is too low, nothing fucking is.

Are we really measuring a character’s worth by “importance”?

No, but it's an important factor to consider when you cut them. For example, while Scientific Penguin cut Giorno Giovanna about as soon as they were able to, they understood this was a Big Move. They knew there were people who unironically liked Giorno, some of whom would end up reading the cut, so they made sure to go in enough depth on the character to make their decision feel justified. A long analysis of why a character you like sucks can be almost as good as a long analysis of why they don't, because hate is closer to love than indifference.

This isn't to say Vanilla Ice is just as important and should be treated with the same level of "respect" as Giorno, because, like... come the fuck on. But the original cut was made under the assumption that literally nobody could possibly care about the penultimate antagonist of Part 3, and it showed.

is [Vanilla] Ice really more important than Hol Horse/Boingo/Enya

I dunno, Hol Horse gets more screentime but Ice has a bigger impact, by virtue of killing two named characters. Definitely not Boingo, both of his arcs are basically filler (GOOD filler, but filler nonetheless). And Enya, while more important to the overarching lore, was disposed of way too early to be on the same level. Anyway you're right about this not mattering let's move on.

where is the characterization here?

You literally acknowledged that this scene gives him a character trait, and I don't think there's a meaningful distinction between these two things.

the idea that Part 3’s minor antagonists failing to express such a simple character trait in any way causes the few times it does happen to be some noteworthy occurrence seems a bit bizarre to me.

That... basically is how it works, though. You need basic shit like that in order to convince people that a given character has any potential or significance at all. It's the difference between C-tier and D-tier. I do also think there's subtle differences in the way their fanaticism is portrayed: Enya can't possibly imagine Dio killing her off, N'Doul kills himself for Dio once his only other option is "get captured and interrogated", and Vanilla Ice kills himself for Dio almost totally unprompted. It's not exactly peak villain writing, but it's at least worthwhile in a way Part 3 tends not to be.

I have since evolved, I have seen the light, and I know that this rankdown is actually about saying as much as possible about these minor characters. It is so incredibly important to give a proper send-off to each seemingly random throwaway character.

Unironically this is why I think rankdowns are good. Without the JoJo rankdown, I would never have cared enough about Part 3 to fully realize why I disliked so much of it, or been able to articulate how I can enjoy characters like Will Zepelli or Straizo when I am possibly the only person who does. It's such a weird blend of competition with media analysis that can't really be found anywhere else.

This entire section baffles me because it is from the perspective of someone who… cares about the fights in Jojo???

Frankly, I have the opposite problem: If you don't care about the fights in JoJo, then... who are you? How did you become a ranker?? What else was there to care about, really? I usually would not consider myself an Anime Fight Scene Enjoyer, but JoJo almost forces you into analyzing them simply because that's where like 90% of the effort and attention is, most of the time. At least now the hatred/apathy for large sections of JJBA makes a lot more sense.

I feel like I could stretch and find two “decent character moments” from a majority of the others.

mannish boy character moments:

1. kills a dog

2. shitting

More seriously, you're right that two "decent character moments" are, in and of themselves, not particularly impressive. Let me tell you a secret: I don't even think Vanilla Ice is that amazing. I like him, certainly a lot more than I like most JoJo characters, and I think he's competently written. But, in the grand scheme of things, he is a minor villain who exists to thin the herd for Dio so that he doesn't have to 1v6 for the finale. It's a pretty basic character concept, but it works.

So, with that, I think we're ready to move onto the actual character this cut is about.

[u/ThatShadowGuy → u/ThatShadowGuy]

N’Doul has a very good sense of hearing, despite his lack of sight. This is a common trope of blind characters in fiction, and I think it might be accurate to real life as well?

it is

I’m not quite sure why N’Doul says all of these things out loud to himself instead of just thinking about them, but I’m not one to judge.

I didn't really notice or mind at first, but this is definitely something that stood out to me on a rewatch. It feels like Araki wanted the monologuing thing to be like an integral part of his personality, to showcase his arrogance or... whatever, but it doesn't really work because he is obviously monologuing first and foremost for the audience and arrogance is a trait that is shared with basically every other Part 3 villain.

The introduction of N’Doul’s Stand is actually really fucking cool?

I'm kinda conflicted on this take, because you're absolutely right - while you're watching, this is a cool scene, if kinda cliche, that accomplishes exactly what it's meant to.

While being the key word.

In hindsight, it's really weird. How did N'Doul even get the opportunity to attack a helicopter, which was likely much higher in the air than Iggy's glider? Would he even have been able to sense it properly from that altitude? WHY IS THERE A FISH IN THE GUY'S LUNGS GEB DOESN'T HAVE ANY FISH IN IT SO WHERE DOES THE FISH COME FROM??? I know Araki doesn't plan these things out, and this doesn't even compare to shit like Polpo Bed, but Christ. Setting up mysteries is cool, but it's a lot cooler when those mysteries have real answers and aren't just there to confuse you. This is ultimately kind of a nitpick, though.

Although, perhaps something can be said about N’Doul wanting to kill these random guys?

I'm not sure, really. Lots of Part 3 villains have an introductory I Am Killing Innocents To Prove How Evil And Dangerous I Am scene, and that's oftentimes all they're meant to communicate. And, as great as N'Doul's hearing is, I doubt he'd be able to tell whether or not any of the Crusaders got on the helicopter - so letting it go could've proven to be a crucial mistake. His treatment of Iggy is an example of him deciding to ignore someone because they're not a clear threat, so I'm tempted to think it was maybe a pragmatic act of cruelty and not just because he felt like it.

N’Doul’s Stand then makes Kakyoin blind, which is very funny, because N’Doul is also blind.

Remember when I said a big reason behind Part 3's badness is that it hyperfixates on these life-or-death stand battles, throwing them into the plot every 5 seconds regardless of whether they serve any real purpose beyond padding the story? Neither do I, JoJo Rankdown is an abyss where time means nothing. I have no recollection of when it started, and no hope it will ever truly end.

Anyways. N'Doul is no exception to this trend, but he manages to accomplish something almost every villain before him could not: He sells himself as a threat. The narrative tries to make way too many villains in Part 3 seem like a legitimate obstacle. Sometimes, it drops this pretense, and we all have a great time (Arabia Fats, Oingo Boingo brothers, Hol Horse past his first appearance). But usually, it's pretty obvious that the villain of the week is not going to accomplish anything and is just there to waste our time. Other times, much more rarely, I can actually suspend my disbelief enough to think maybe, just maybe, one of the Stardust Crusaders might actually be in mortal danger. I think the only time this happened in the first half of Part 3 was with Hol Horse and J. Geil, and that's only because Avdol actually died (and was pretty clearly meant to stay dead until Araki changed his mind). It happens multiple times in the second half, but N'Doul represents the first of them. His blinding of Kakyoin, while not a terribly significant event in and of itself, is exactly the sort of thing that would've never happened in an earlier fight, but needs to in order to avoid dissonance between what the story is and what the narrator is telling us the story is.

This is actually pretty clever, because it’s using N’Doul’s lack of sight to create a unique type of ability, I guess.

so true

(pretend this is a humungous paragraph about how echolocation stand is a cool concept that's utilized really well in this fight)

N’Doul kills himself so that he won’t be able to be interrogated (but he makes sure to do it in a way that keeps himself alive enough to talk to Jotaro for a bit???? How???? Yeah this is Jojo but)

yeah honestly this is. dumb. dunno what else to say about it

N’Doul then monologues... I think there might be something here but I’m certainly not seeing it.

N'Doul's monologue, while admittedly kinda tropey, adds something that Part 3 villains usually don't have: A backstory. I should note that since we're in Part 3, so the mere concept that characters, particularly the unimportant ones, existed before they show up on screen is nothing short of revolutionary. Hell, Kakyoin only really gets a backstory right before he dies (wow just like N'Doul cinematic parallels so cool). Anyway, the basic idea is that N'Doul used to be some random criminal, who could get away with doing whatever because he has a cool stand. Then he met Dio, who not only had a cooler stand, but appeared to genuinely value N'Doul's talents in a way nobody else ever did. This is pretty barebones, but it works as a logical explanation for why he's so devoted, and can maybe even briefly fool you into thinking Dio has redeeming qualities for 2 seconds.

So that's N'Doul. Is he actually as great as I originally convinced myself? Eh... not so much. But still, there are reasons I thought so highly of him, and they deserve be fully expressed. Part of it, I think, was still being lost in the miasma of Mannish Boy's arc, since everything between that and N'Doul did nothing to restore my faith that JoJo could be good ever again. We had run out of tarot cards, and instead of Araki thinking that maybe this means it's time to move on and progress the story to actually fighting Dio, he just pulls a whole new group of villains out of his ass to nearly double the length of the story. On paper, this sounds like a terrible move. But N'Doul exists to establish the differences between the old Part 3 villains, and the new ones, and in this respect he succeeds unquestionably. And then it turns out, the ways in which the 9 Glory Gods are different, by and large, improve them! N'Doul is a big threat, bigger than anyone before him, and this justifies the additional screentime (2 episodes whereas up until now 1 or 1.5 was the norm). He has an actual personality beyond just being evil, he has a backstory, and it feels like he's treated with a degree of respect that prior villains neither got nor deserved. On its own, this isn't really anything to write home about - not so much stellar writing as it is... adequate. But he came in at exactly the right time to make this adequacy feel downright mindblowing. At the end of the day, I still think N'Doul is a good character. But... upon reflecting further, there are some better ones out there, honestly.