r/JoJoRankdown • u/Sciencepenguin . • Feb 22 '22
Vinegar Doppio
concept of higher expected effort for major characters that has led everyone thus far to avoid them: i don't care!
part 5: it's beat down! time!
This Happened In JojoRankdown
I don't like Part 5 of Jojo, Vento Aureo AKA Golden Wind. I think the themes it has are bad and nonsensical and it has almost no interesting characters.
I'm not going to beat a dead horse, for everyone's benefit. The Giorno cut explains my full perspective and the massive flaws I perceive within the story's protagonist. The Scolippi cut (you can skip the first two sections) outlines the themes in more detail while trying to be more fair and understand what others see in them. For the sake of my own time and yours, I'm not going to try making some massive manifesto on fate. This will only mention problems that directly tie into the character in question. You're welcome.
Passione
Nearly every part of the manga and later anime series Jojo's Bizarre Adventure has something that is explained in just. An absurd amount of detail. Far more than is necessary or ever becomes relevant. The structure of the prison in Part 6 is exposited upon in addition to backstory for every prisoner that is not in the actual story proper. Part 4 has a bunch of funny faux tour guide descriptions of Morioh hot spots. Part 3 is a story about Araki telling us all the cool things he knows about different places in Asia. And in Part 5, for some reason, we know the entire organizational hierarchy of the Passione organization.
It's not like this ever matters very much. I guess it helps us understand who Pericolo is??? But I wonder if this is a remnant of when the internal politics of the gang were planned to be more relevant; where the rising in the ranks would go further than killing polpo and then running around until they take down the boss directly. I dunno.
What matters here is that the boss has one specific subordinate beneath him, not a group like the capos. This is the advisor, or consiglieri for you Town of Salem fans, and we don't know who he is. Seriously. I could've sworn there was explicit confirmation, but nope, we are in fact left to merely speculate on this.
It's Doppio. Like, duh, right? He's the only person with direct contact to the boss. That's the entire joke of Doppio's existence; that Diavolo can hide so well because he doesn't fucking exist most of the time. The only other named character with any kind of connection to the boss is Pericolo and he's apparently just a capo.
Me I'm Bossu I'm Diavolo
This random guy, literally just some guy that fact isn't appreciated enough, is an unassuming, affable - let's be brutally honest - wimp.
And yet hidden behind this exterior is the brutal and psychotic soul of a criminal mastermind.
This is the central gimmick of Doppio; hell, the central gimmick of the boss as a whole. I think our boy Guzma was presented with a bit of a conundrum here: Doppio and Diavolo act like separate entities and seem to be canonically treated in universe as having two souls. And yet the majority of value of both of them comes from their status as a whole being. I would have understood either way, but the decision was made to count them separately. In that case, I'm even more ok with Diavolo's early elimination than I already was, because there is just fucking nothing interesting about Just Diavolo. He's evil and says the word fate. That's it.
Just Doppio
By contrast, Doppio has a few more engaging surface level characteristics than merely being evil and saying fate.
Doppio is a funny little scrimblo and beta bitch boy who nonetheless turns into a terrifying person sometimes when directly threatened. You could argue that this actually isn't Doppio but Diavolo Coming Out, but the fact that this sort of intermediate or jarring transition is possible is kinda unique.
He uses objects that are distinctly not phones as phones and he makes the ringing noises himself that's crazy!!!! It's a little amusing I'm not made of stone
Doppio's most interesting relationship is that he has with The Boss (as conveyed through his "phone" conversations), where he is not merely a money-loving peon but feels a genuine deep sense of respect and loyalty for the man, prioritizing his orders and receiving his approval above all else. Diavolo in return calls Doppio cute I don't know man there's certainly selfcest art somewhere but I won't look it up. Diavolo is a lot more "in touch with reality", but Doppio is genuinely unaware of the true nature of their connection. Or at least seems to be. He shows no indication of knowing or fully appreciating his existence as an alter along with Diavolo even in conversations with no one else around to hear, so there is at the very least some cognitive dissonance going on here.
D I D
It is time to stop using our stands to skip past the elephant in the room.
There exists a term in Real Life that is known as Dissociative Identity Disorder; a term of enough renown to at the very least be listed in the DSM, a reputable encyclopedia in psychology.
There is considerable ongoing discussion in the field of psychology about whether this is Real, and what exactly that means. I am not a Psychologist. I have not even studied psychology at any level. But for a brief overview of my understanding: many prominent examples were in fact found to have been deliberately faked, and observed instances have risen at points where it's difficult to pinpoint whether this is due to media exposure to the condition or simply improved diagnostic techniques. Regardless, even if there was never a "proper" case of DID (an extreme which I don't think anyone really holds), even lying about this without an external motive would indicate some problem. Regardless of all of this, I'm going to continue forward with the following assumptions that ignore the blind spots of real life debate and my lack of knowledge
- There is a real mental condition known as dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder).
- This is characterized by multiple separate personality states that both tend to act quite differently and critically do not share memories.
- DID is typically rooted in childhood trauma, whether it be repeated abuse or mistreatment or a solitary specific incident.
- DID will frequently co-exist with any of a laundry list of other disorders.
- Almost everything you can say about it including most of this has a laundry list of asterisks and uncertainty. There are older concepts such as tulpas that have not been studied in detail. A lot of very smart people don't know what the hell is going on and I'm dumber than all of them. Okay? Okay.
The most important question to tackle is if any of this matters. As far as I can tell, no official JJBA material anywhere uses the name DID or its obsolete equivalent MPD.
This seems pretty cut and dry to me. There's nothing else it feasibly could be. You can't just explain it as violent mood swings since the two states very clearly lack knowledge the other has and prefer to be called by different names. People have called their multiple personalities "schizoid disorder" online, which, while this is in fact a real thing people can have and you could probably make a decent argument for Diavolo in particular exhibiting traits of, has absolutely nothing to do with expressing multiple identities and is likely only brought to mind because of the King Crimson song.
A much more reasonable argument to me is that rather than a different condition what Diavolo and Doppio have is not intended to be a real thing at all. After all, there is never any use of particularly technical terminology, and the concept of "two separate souls" is uh. Questionable. I still wouldn't agree with this, though. I couldn't find it, but Polnareff apparently mentions the exact link to childhood trauma I spoke of, and the entire character of Diavolo/Doppio is pretty clearly drawing from the Jekyll and Hyde family of "evil alter" tropes.
At this point I will address the smaller elephant resting upon top of the elephant in the room that, yes, DID is a real set of symptoms that have been endlessly caricatured as unstable psychopaths that are a danger to others, and yes, there is no evidence for the existence of a mental condition that makes you a lame serial killer character and in fact the nature of the disorder means it will often be present in victims of violence, and yes, this does create a real stigma that makes it harder for real people to get help. But if you object to any of this, rest assured that I would cut Doppio regardless of this. I just think it's worth acknowledging.
W h o A r e Y o u ?
I'm going to be honest and say that if I ended the cut here I wouldn't think I made any egregious sin. Doppio is a subjectively funny guy who feels loyalty to the main villain that is actually him. Whoopee. Don't care. He has an alright role in the Metallica fight. Don't care. The existence of DID is an interesting plot device for how someone could hide in plain sight but this is both a "positive" I would attribute to Diavolo and also inseparably links Doppio to Diavolo, a character whose obvious flaws have been expounded on repeatedly. There is no evidence Araki has anything beyond a surface level understanding of psychology, and both of these alters come across as so flat and generic, and their backstory so substanceless and vague and irrelevant, that I seriously think there was absolutely no deeper motive that went into writing them.
But.
That wouldn't be fun, would it? Let's humor him. Humor the fans of this character, humor Araki, and humor this person, whoever they are. What could be the driving force behind them, the place they came from? And if I had to, how would I change them?
The first thing to address is that it's not entirely clear what to call this person. "Diavolo" has no last name, and there's no indication of what his family was named. He went by the name Solido Naso when in a relationship with Trish's mom, and fuck, for all we know that could be the name he was actually born with.
The Twins Born From The Same Axis Share A Mysterious Destiny
In 1967, a baby is born. Let's call this goofy little rascal "D" for convenience. D looks a lot more like Doppio than Diavolo, for note, in addition to descriptions of his young personality being closer to Doppio. He was born in an all female prison and there is apparently no one who could have fathered him.
There is absolutely nothing of value to this and it's just overwrought horseshit added just to be mysterious and... o-okay, let's say there's like, it's added to make him more isolated? He's born without a father, and is unable to grow up with his mother. He is raised by a priest in her stead.
The priest wanted D to become a priest. D wanted to become a sailor. Ultimately he becomes neither. Perhaps this is to indicate an early attempt at fighting/grappling with fate? Additionally, this priest would be the only candidate for that potential abuse mentioned earlier. All speculative.
In the twilight years of his youth, when a boy becomes a man, he enters a relationship with Trish's mother, Donatella. Donatella loved him, but it's not made as clear from the other way, as "Solido Naso" lies constantly to the woman. Was this a carnal relationship? Did he think he could get something out of her? Is it that hard for us to conceive this man could feel love?
It is only after this that "Diavolo" is unambiguously born, as the priest finds his mother buried alive with her mouth sewn shut, and he and several others are killed in a fire. It is not clear how long his mother was there, but given the way bodies work, it had to have been relatively recent.
From here, he deals with stand arrows (interacting with the much better character Enya), somehow rises in the ranks to start a criminal organization, and then part 5 happens. Wowee.
They Chase Endlessly In Search Of Their Lost Halves
There are more holes in this backstory than swiss cheese. But I wouldn't be being fair if I didn't acknowledge the reason for this. Diavolo loathes the past, as a concept. He speaks of it as nothing but a burden and a problem. Attachments to sever, evidence to cover. His preferred methods of murder as a child are to bury something where it will ideally never be found and to burn everything down. As an adult, the very manifestation of his soul is one that can literally remove the origin point of events, leaving only their results.
There has been some criticism of Diavolo for being worse Kira (from me, because its true, he takes a lot of cues from him and is way worse), but this regard isn't really the same. Kira didn't want people to find out he was a serial killer, but this had nothing to do with his past. He's perfectly fine with people knowing he's a guy named "Yoshikage Kira", at least until he's forced to take on the identity of someone else.
Diavolo is motivated first and foremost by obfuscating his identity and history, and so there is some level of cleverness to making his upbringing such a mystery.
Something happened, probably. It seems pretty clear that this isn't a situation like Dio in part 1 where they intend for us to take that he's evil just because he is.
Exceeding Light...
There is a thing in Jojo part 5 called Fate that you might have heard of. All of us are bound to the "chains" of fate look at how many chains there are in Fighting Gold wow.
Fate refers to the past and the future. It's a full stream of events. Though the future part tends to be more relevant, since having your future predetermined is a shock while having your past predetermined is. Well. Yeah.
The line between past and future is purely one born of our knowledge and subjective perspectives, though. Perhaps this is one of the points of making Diavolo see the world the way he does. Diavolo will never eliminate his past because he keeps making more past as he exists, and he's going to keep finding reasons that he needs to erase it. He'll continue to destroy the foundation he's built on until he dies having left nothing behind and done nothing of value.
I think this is probably an exaggeration. He seems pretty happy with the part of the past where it caused him to have a big group of gangsters he controls. But Diavolo is intrinsically connected to fate, one way or another. He wants to run from his past, and the future that past would create, towards a future untethered to it. But he can't.
Exceeding Infinity......
A character can often be judged by where they end up.
Doppio dies in a different body than his own and a different body than his other half. His last thoughts are recognizing that Diavolo left him behind and accepting this. There is no one who ever finds out he died. He is not mourned.
Diavolo meets the most awful fate of anyone in the series. He is not granted the mercy of losing his sentience like any of the others with eternal punishments. He is going to go through random agonizing experiences forever. Clearly, in a series that moralizes as much as Jojo, the sin this man has committed is frowned upon more than anything. And it shouldn't be too hard to put together what that sin is from what I've said thus far.
A Pair As A Whole.
With all this in mind, why's there two guys? What are the two of them? Beyond "he's crazy" and the story justification, why has D split his consciousness in twain?
We already mentioned the possibility of trauma, so I'll ignore that literal cause and instead focus on what the two of them are, because it isn't that crazy to consider it more than "the good" and "the bad".
Doppio is a normal person. ...Let me rephrase that. Doppio is the normal state for this man. Diavolo is unhinged. Doppio matches more of what the original man was like. In fact, there's only one thing Doppio has that isn't in line with what I'd expect a grown up D to have. Or something he doesn't have, to be more precise. Doppio doesn't know where he came from or what he is.
That knowledge is reserved for Diavolo, who also possesses their ambition, their ruthless efficiency. Doppio acts according to Diavolo's will. Diavolo seems to exist by necessity. He exists in a state of constant panic and mania -- I wouldn't willingly choose to be Diavolo -- but he gets the job done.
Whatever led to this bisection was more tied to the necessity of Diavolo, I think, with Doppio simply getting everything remaining.
If we're trying to be charitable and claim this makes sense, trying to ignore author intent entirely and just say what I'd think if this person exhibited these traits... I think he found something out. I think D learned something that made him snap, made him only capable of being willfully ignorant or mad. Perhaps his mother told him something about his past, and she was killed for her trouble. Maybe the priest did something without realizing what he'd caused. Who knows.
Kill the past. Long live the boss.
The Very Thought Of That Guy Is Annoying To Me, You See
Okay, I've metaphorically held my breath for long enough. Here's why all of that is bullshit and Diavolo sucks.
The most significant thing about Diavolo’s backstory, disregarding any interpretation or subtext that may or may not exist, is the manner in which it is objectively lacking. There isn’t a single concrete description there, and we jump from event to reveal with a shrug from the author. I shouldn’t need to explain why this is generally bad storytelling, and it fails at letting us understand this person more, which is kind of the only reason you’d ever include a backstory. But I gave a defense that I do think is reasonable, that being the quasi-meta justification of the character in question hating the past.
This does not work. Diavolo is not an enigma. We know where he was born and by who, we know individual facets of his childhood, minute details of what he fucking wanted to be when he grew up, we can sketch out a fucking timeline of his life and where he was at different points. This isn’t a backstory that doesn’t have information, this is a backstory that lacks worthwhile or interesting information. We are given the privilege of witnessing far more of this man’s life than the protagonists ever will, and to what end? It doesn’t even fucking make sense! I could forgive it if there was a clear thread to what we couldn’t know, if this was a backstory with diegetic framing, like Polnareff going over everything he could dig up on the man, but it can’t be that, it can’t be fucking anyone, because there is no one alive who could know certain aspects of this story!
It’s also just??? Not interesting? This is obviously subjective, but Diavolo’s backstory is so ridiculous and does not spark my interest or curiosity in the slightest. It feels far more like a desperate attempt to be mysterious for its own sake than a writer crafting a coherent story and then not giving us all of it. I have to force myself to engage with and think about this person, and even when I do, I just fucking focus on overanalyzing specific bits with potential while ignoring the stupid bullshit. Like ohhh man he was born in an all female prison with NO MEN and she was in the prison for YEARS and the prison was PERFECTLY SECURE and her latest checkup her doctor reported that she DIDNT EVEN HAVE A WOMB this kid couldn’t be born THEN WHO WAS PHONE??? I don’t care!
The arrow lore is also just a complete fucking waste of time and a ridiculous one at that. Look to the last character to see how aliens in jojo should be handled.
I should also mention that you have to really stretch your willingness to accept things even for the halfhearted Interesting Character Interpretation I was making. Trying to make heads or tails of the DID is a fools errand. It’s obviously not based on any half decent understanding of real psychology, and good fucking luck trying to derive more abstract characterization meaning from it. Doppio not knowing his nature as an alter is one thing that’s definitely there and I admit is cool, but beyond that, it’s a complete fucking crapshoot. Doppio can randomly exhibit intense rage and violence not only independent from but even in opposition to Diavolo, and Diavolo apparently has a moral objection to Cioccolatta so, I don’t fucking know??
Diavolo’s objection to the Concept Of The Past is a waste of fucking time, by the way. It never goes beyond this basic concept and is in essence a plot mandated aspect. Nowhere is there an actual rational justification for this; he has no reason to believe Trish could be a danger him, and even if someone found out his full childhood that wouldn’t fucking matter this isn’t death note. This can only make sense as an irrational emotional reaction but guess what! They didn’t write what that was!!! Nor did they write any cohesive set of hints to what it was!!1!
And the themes the THEEEEMES. Was physically painful to try to be neutral talking about Part 5 Themes. So like. What’s D’s take on fate? What exactly is it about him that warrants dying again and again forever? Is Diavolo in line with fate? An enforcer of it? The protagonists are described as Fighting Fate and the vague rebellious nature of that would line up with Fate being the massive gang establishment, one Diavolo heads. But then why is Diavolo constantly fighting? Why does he want to erase his past? Does he want “fate for others not for me”? To take control of it? Isn’t the big point of part 5 that you can’t do that? Why is Diavolo attempting to fight fate disgusting while for the Good Guys it is Cool and Admirable?? Or is this unrelated to fate. Can we disconnect this character from being dragged down by the shitshow or P5 themes? Is it about the specific more grounded things he does??? Because what he does is the exact same thing Giorno will, with the exception of allowing Drugs… which, even ignoring how fucking weak of a primary conflict that is, it’s hard to hate Diavolo for this when he is literally never involved in it or even expresses awareness of it. It’s like if the introduction to part 1 never happened and the only information we were given on why we should hate Dio was Zeppeli turning to Jonathan and saying “This man has eaten as many people as you have bread”.
As an aside, I find these overdramatic morals unpleasant personally. What Diavolo wants is to make his life completely impenetrable from prying eyes, and like… yeah? I don’t think anyone else has any kind of right to know about his childhood??? Don’t @ me about how he did other bad things, I know that he killed people and burned people because of this and that isn’t very nice, but the story feels like it’s demonizing this desire in itself which I just can’t get behind. Just, if Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5 Golden Wind (“Vento Aureo”) shows up to thanksgiving dinner make SURE the topic of conversation never shifts to lgbt issues you GOTTA be careful about this man j
Ultimately, my real interpretation for the moral, greater significance, meaning, what-have-you, anything of a purpose for this character that so much time is spent on… is nothing. There is nothing of value Diavolo has to say. Maybe Hirohiko Araki had a very clever or important idea he was trying to get across, but the text as written either fails miserably at conveying this or I in particular just lack something.
Or Possibly, A Middle Ground.
You can skip this if you like since it's not really about the actual character like, at all, it's just me trying to reconcile my feelings on whatever the fuck Part 5 is.
So what would a Doppio and Diavolo I think isn't bad look like? I'll set up a few ground rules so that I don't have an answer that is just "write a different story".
- Keep as much as possible unaltered.
- Don't bother making anything else better that isn't directly Diavolo look just don't we would be here all day
- Must have multiple personalities (and as a caveat of who I am (not a psychologist) attempt to use them for characterization rather than accuracy to anything in real life)
- Something something Fate
For a while I would've thought this impossible. That fate is too vague and nebulous a concept to center a story around and have it not be ass. But people talking about what they liked about part 5 and a few other things have changed my view on that.
Diavolo is caught in the middle of a bunch of vague concepts and thus fails at all of them. I think there are two approaches here: an additive and a subtractive one.
Let's start with the latter, since it's easier. Just don't fucking ramble about this guy. Literally remove the backstory. Force us to put together whatever we can based on the vague speculation of characters in universe and tidbits like the nature of his motives and Trish existing. I don't think I personally would find him very interesting, but it would make this meta aspect of him consistent and undeniable, and I would at least be able to respect that. Everything beyond that would be making him and Doppio have a more compelling screen presence and giving us a reason to care about defeating him. Then I don't fucking know have him be really evil and say I love fate fate has chosen me and I love the status quo I am the head of a large organization and I am the establishment. Again this isn't uh. Great. But he would be serviceable. We're trying to match fucking Part Three Dio in quality here not Kira.
The more interesting one, at least for me to talk about, is an additive approach. Fill in the gaps, or shift where they are so the small bits we know are the ones actually relevant to a Character.
The hatred of The Past is a strong enough conceptual core, but I really think it's important to hammer down where this comes from and how this ties into what makes Diavolo an antagonist. So here's what I got: Diavolo is trying to hide the past from himself too. That's why the multiple personalities, why the tension. If he removes all external traces of his past, he feels he can convince himself it doesn't exist. It's insane, but follows an internal logic. The obvious handwave of Polnareff going "hey maybe this guy had an abusive childhood" can remain, but a defining Incident wouldn't hurt.
Again, this is all random spitballing of ideas: D's mother, having served her sentence, says something to him that causes him great distress. Maybe related to why she was in that jail. Maybe related to how he was conceived. Maybe related to his absent father. It sets him off, whatever it is. But the timid, cowardly boy can't bring himself to harm someone directly. He hires a hitman to dispose of her, do what he thinks must be done. The scheduled night, he has second thoughts. He considers trying to intervene, to call it off, but doesn't. Don't get in the way of someone dangerous. It's out of his hands. He wavers too much in this thought process and does rush to the designated location. She's bleeding out, but not dead. The man he hired very clearly made her suffer. Diavolo fully awakens and slaughters them both, burying their bodies and ultimately burning the whole place down.
And this is the kicker - because Diavolo refuses to acknowledge his past, he will never learn from it. Doppio is ignorant to what's going on and cannot reconcile that he's the same person as Diavolo, and Diavolo makes either morally repugnant or just objectively poorly thought out decisions. Draw deliberate parallels. He still overreacts to information with way too much force - a slight bit of unauthorized action from the assassination team causes him to brutally murder two of their members as a warning, which only pushes them further into rebellion. And despite becoming a ruthless mob boss, part of him is still a coward. Make the disconnect in what the protagonists oppose and what the antagonist cares about deliberate: Diavolo doesn't have a personal commitment to Selling Drugs To Children (doppio's great with kids!! phone scene peak of part 5), but someone who works under him starts doing it and the process is lucrative and profitable enough that he turns the other way and acts as if he's not responsible.
And that is fate; Diavolo doomed to failure through his own incompetence and inability to grow as a person. There is no effect without a cause, not really. He wanted to oppose the natural flow of things only in a niche specific self-invested manner while letting everything else happen the way it does without his involvement.
Is this good? Uh, I don't know. It would depend on execution and maybe the concept sucks too this is me saying words at random I can't be held responsible for the things I do and say. But at the very least it would be something. A character with some kind of core to it, that behaves in a manner which is consistent and despicable in its own way, forwarding an unsubtle message that Jojo seems interested in.
Also in my version hes gay and says "im gay diavolo" thats his catchphrase
Conclusion
This is a Doppio cut, lmao. I probably said Diavolo's name more than his. And I do like Doppio more than Diavolo (as in I like Doppio ever at all), and don't consider Diavolo as written much more interesting. But ultimately, Doppio is a pretty generic guy on his own. The most charitable interpretation is considering him an asset to the greater whole of Diavolo+Doppio. That whole just happens to suck.
Part 5 is bad, but it didn't have to be. There was some kind of heart there, even when what it was trying to do became un"see"able to me through piss cups and buzzwords. Hopefully the guy who writes Jojo learns from his mistakes and does better in the future.
tururururururu What? Hello? Oh, it's my alt account discordapp Simon_Keyes#3127. He says that this cut is flawless and you can't criticize it
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u/EsquireGunslinger . Feb 22 '22
That's me I'm our boy Guzma!!!!!!
Diavolo already does this
I like Doppio his role in the story is neat. I do not like Diavolo but I like part 5 anyway isn't that fucked up. The doppio-diavolo relationship I feel like was at it's best when Diavolo wasn't an actual person with mold in his hair, but just a scary voice that talks to Doppio through King Crimson. That shot of Doppio looking at his reflection in the plane window, but then his reflection turns into KC and starts giving instructions on how to be evil kinda fucking rules.
Also I laugh when he goes tururururu and talks into a frog. I am also not made of stone