#AND THE HORRIFYING WAY MEN OF ERAS PAST AND PRESENT ARE SO SIMILAR TO DEATH

[ilikeyoshi]

another day another annoying modern greek goddess per3phone girlboss take

[duhragonball]

Battle Tendency Liveblog: JJBA Ch. 65-66

This is the start of the “Ultimate Warriors from Ancient Times” arc, but I want to focus on these two chapters because they feature Mark.   I’ve got a lot to say about Mark under the cut, but the short version is that he’s a lousy Nazi and he deserves everything that happens to him.

A large chunk of Chapter 65 is just Caesar hanging out in Joseph and Speedwagon’s hotel room.   They try to play cards, but they’re both cheats.  This wouldn’t bother me at all until Speedwagon points out that he’s been here for eight hours, and never bothered to explain why.   You’d think Joseph would have demanded an answer a long time ago, since he’s not known for patience.  

As it turns out, Caesar’s been waiting for Mark, a buddy of his in the German Army.   Stroheim was in the German Army too, and he told Joseph that the Nazis had discovered three other Pillar Men in Rome.   That’s why he and Speedwagon came here, after all.    Well, Caesar’s an Italian, and Italy and Germany are allies, so Caesar managed to persuade the Germans (through Mark) to let him take a look at the Pillar Men.    So in this chapter, Mark rolls up in a car and drives them over to the site. 

But we already know what happened at the site in Chapter 64.   The Pillar Men have already reawakened, and all the Nazi soldiers stationed there have been slaughtered.   When Mark leads our heroes into the catacombs, they find the remains of the Germans, while Mark bumps into the Pillar Men themselves.  (Note: the above image is not to scale).

The thing is, bumping into the Pillar Men is hazardous to your health.    We saw that vampire grab Santana and large chunks of his body were completely absorbed.   The same thing happens to Mark, only faster, because Wamuu doesn’t even slow down as he walks past him.    He just walks right through Mark and half of his body is gone.  

So when I first watched the JoJo anime, it was right after I watched the Hellsing Ultimate anime, and I got a kick out of seeing two completely different anime takes on vampire lore.   Let’s face it, the Pillar Men are presented as something beyond mere vampires, but they’re basically just super-vampires, not so different from Alucard in Hellsing.    And both make use of the Nazis, except in Hellsing, the Nazis are the villains, while in Battle Tendency, they’re kinda sorta allies.  Stroheim is clearly a bad guy, because he killed his prisoners and tormented Speedwagon, but Mark is presented as a completely sympathetic person.   He’s got a sweetheart back home, Caesar’s the one who introduced them, and he’s planning to get married the next time he goes back to Germany.   And for his very brief appearance in JJBA, he’s completely friendly and helpful to the heroes.   We’re supposed to feel very sorry for him when he gets killed here.  

Part 2 is my favorite, but I think this stands out as it’s biggest flaw.   I get the idea.    Hellsing was dealing with a lot of dark themes, and the protagonists were horrifying in their own right.   So Kouta Hirano used the Nazis as villains to humanize his vampire characters.    By contrast, Hirohiko Araki seems to be using the Nazis to dehumanize the Pillar Men.   They’re so evil that even the Nazis look halfway decent by comparison.   At least the Nazis are human, with human loves and fears and honor.    The Pillar Men kill Mark without even noticing him, and Speedwagon likens this to a human stepping on an ant.     I get what Araki is trying to do here, but it rings hollow.    Fuck Mark, and fuck his Nazi fiance.  The first time we see him, we get a close up of his Iron Cross medal, with the damn swastika in the middle of it.    We’re supposed to buy into the idea that he’s “one of the good Germans”, and it’s 1938, so World War II hasn’t officially started yet, so somehow Mark is supposed to be cool.   But no, I don’t buy it.

Let me go off on a little sidebar and try to explain how we got here.   Battle Tendency was published in 1988.   Back then, Hitler had been dead for decades, and Germany had been partitioned into two countries, East and West Germany.   The Nazis seemed to have been consigned to the dustbin of history, and as time passed, pop culture grew more comfortable using the Nazis as historical villains in stories like this one.    There was a sense that yeah, the Nazis were really bad, but they were gone now, and they would never come back.   I think there was a similar mentality surrounding the Soviet Union after the U.S.S.R. dissolved.    By the 2000′s there were all sorts of internet memes about Nazi stuff and Soviet stuff and it was rationalized as harmless envelope-pushing. 

The problem is, it doesn’t seem so harmless in 2021, when Russia is a autocracy that meddles in U.S. elections, emboldening white nationalists in the process.   The “alt-right” fanatics who marched in Charlottesville in 2017?   The rioters who stormed the Capitol building this past January?   Those assholes probably wouldn’t call themselves Nazis, but neither did the Nazis.   They called themselves “National Socialists”, because they were trying to make their ugly policies sound more legitimate.   The same holds true for “alt-right”, “economic nationalist”, “Qanon”, “truther”, and so on.   They’re just new labels for the same old horseshit.  

I don’t want to judge Battle Tendency too harshly, because it’s the product of a different time, an era when people could at least pretend that Nazism was one of the few problems that we didn’t have to worry about any more.   The same mentality can be found in Hellsing.   The Nazis in Hellsing are definitely villains, but the conceit is that they’re all immortal vampires or werewolves, because that’s the only way the Nazi menace could possibly exist in 1999.    Otherwise, they’d all be dead of old age.   Battle Tendency is set in 1938, so it takes the liberty of presenting sympathetic Nazis, because we already know they’ll be defeated in the end, right?   We might as well see what makes them tick.  

Araki may have thought that using Nazis in a story set in the 1930s would be no different than using Napoleonic French soldiers in a story set in the 1800s.  And in the long run, that might be true, but I don’t think we’re there yet.   In the here and now, it’s aged rather poorly.  

Of course, just because Caesar and Joseph feel bad for Mark doesn’t mean I have to.   And Araki may have been more self-aware than I’m giving him credit for.    Nazi Germany wanted to set itself up as the Master Race, and in this fictional world, the Pillar Men have come to do the same thing, only they’re much, much further ahead of the game.   I think part of the point of Stroheim and Mark was to contrast the Nazis’ supreamcist attitudes with Kars’ ambitions.   For all of Stroheim’s boasting, he’s helpless against Kars’ might.   But at the same time, for all of Kars’ power and brilliance, he’s ultimately chasing the same pipe dream as Hilter and his followers.  

Let’s get back on track.    While the good guys react in horror at what happened to Mark, the Pillar Men just stand around nearby and discuss their situation.   They completely ignore our heroes, just like they ignored Mark.   Kars wants to locate the Red Stone of Aja, because it’s the secret ingredient to the mask he designed that will make them immune to sunlight.   Esidisi doesn’t understand how the stone helps their plan, but he’s totally on board.    But as they head out, Wamuu suddenly attacks Kars, because Kars stepped in his shadow, and apparently Wamuu just lashes out at anyone who does this, friend or foe.   

Wamuu is deeply sorry for this, and begs to be punished, but Kars apologizes instead, because he knows about Wamuu’s whole shadow thing and he feels that he’s the one who made the mistake here.  I really love this exchange, because it defines the Pillar Men so well.    As indifferent as they are to human lives, they respect one another a great deal.   Kars is the leader, but he still treats the other two guys like close associates.    He needs Wamuu’s sharp senses and keen warrior instincts.   Meanwhile, Wamuu and Eisidisi practically worship Kars like a god.   They’ve literally followed him around the world and across thousands of years in pursuit of his vision. 

So yeah, if the goal here was to use Mark’s suffering to make me hate the Pillar Men, it doesn’t work.  The Pillar Men are evil, sure, but they’re pretty cool bad guys.   On the other hand, Mark looks ridiculous here, with Caesar holding and talking to half of his body.   This looks like something out of a Tex Avery cartoon.   

I mean, let’s set aside the whole Nazi thing for a moment.   Why should I feel sorry for Mark?  Because he’s in pain?   He got cut in half!   He should have died instantly!    Because he was going to get married?   We only met this guy one chapter ago!   Because he’s Caesar’s friend?  Well Caesar’s kind of a jerk too.  

Anyway, Mark begs Caesar to kill him and end his suffering, so Caesar uses the Ripple to stop his heart.    Or the half of it that’s still there, I guess.   

Okay, so the whole point of Mark’s death is to really get the good guys fired up to battle the Pillar Men, right?    Okay, Caesar tries to take them on, and he opens with the Bubble Launcher, the same move he talked about earlier.   It didn’t beat Joseph, but Caesar’s Hamon power does hurt Wamuu’s skin, which is more than Joseph managed to do against Santana.  

The Bubble Launcher is supposed to surround the opponent with dozens of soap bubbles charged with Hamon energy.  Wamuu can’t escape without touching them and getting hurt.   But Wamuu just sprouts all these long braids from his head and clothes, and swings them around with superhuman precision to know the bubbles away without hurting himself.  

As it turns out, these Pillar Men are familiar with Hamon.   Santana was surprised to encounter Joseph Joestar’s powers, but Wamuu and the others have fought Ripple users in the past.    And Wamuu’s more intrigued than worried...

Oh, as one final aside, on the car ride to the catacombs, Speedwagon asked Caesar if he tried to use the Ripple to destroy the Pillar Men before they woke up, and Caesar explains that it didn’t work while they were in their dormant state.   Remember, at the very start of this story, Speedwagon called Straizo because he wanted someone to use the Ripple to destroy Santana before he could wake up.   Now we see that even if Straizo had agreed to his request, it wouldn’t have done any good.   Sunlight doesn’t seem to kill the Pillar Men so much as it makes them turn to stone, and the Ripple only hurts them while they’re flesh and blood.   So the only way to kill them seems to be by using Hamon in a direct confrontation, and that’s a tall order...