King Crimson (JoJo Stand) meme.

King Crimson (JoJo Stand)

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Updated Mar 18, 2021 at 05:58PM EDT by Zach.

Added Aug 24, 2015 at 05:08AM EDT by MScratch.

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Editor's Note: This entry contains spoilers for the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure manga and anime series. Read at your own risk.


About

King Crimson is a stand, a supernatural ability represented by a humanoid spirit, featured in the popular Japanese manga and anime series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Due to its angry appearance, based on the cover artwork of the 1969 album In the Court of the Crimson King, and confusing powers, the stand has become a popular subject within the JoJo's Bizarre Aventure fandom in discussions, memes and fan art.

Origin

On August 18th, 1997, chapter 516 "The Boss' Last Orders" of the manga series JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was released in Weekly Shonen Jump.[1] In the issue, activity of the yet-unnamed stand King Crimson is first showcased. The stand, who belongs to the main antagonist of Golden Wind story arc The Boss / Diavolo, fully reveals itself during a battle with Bruno Bucciarati in Chapter 519 "The Mystery of King Crimson, Part 2," released on September 15th, 1997 (manga panel shown below, left).[2]

The name of the stand is a reference to English progressive rock band King Crimson, while its design is based on the cover art of the band's debut album In the Court of the Crimson King (shown below, left).



On February 23rd, 2019, episode 20 "The Boss' Last Orders" of the Golden Wind arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime adaptation premiered.[3] In the episode, the stand was introduced (scene shown below).



Description and Abilities

King Crimson appears as a humanoid figure, with its most notable features being the grinning, angered expression and the second face on its forehead. King Crimson possesses significant physical strength and is able to deal swift powerful attacks that are nearly always fatal.

King Crimson's signature ability, Time Erasure, allows its owner Diavolo to "erase" time for a period of up to 10 seconds. During that period only Diavolo remains conscious and is able to adjust his actions, while other people proceed to act as they would have, incapable of reacting to Diavolo's actions. Nobody except Diavolo retains memories of anything that happened during the "skip."

King Crimson's sub-stand Epitaph, a second face on its forehead, allows him to forecast events up to 10 seconds into the future.

Spread

Due to both the interesting nature and complexity of King Crimson's time erasure ability and the confusion about it being furthered by the poor quality of fan translations, the stand became a popular character of memes.

On August 29th, 2006, Arlongpark[7] forum user Tizoc made the earliest found inquiry about the nature of King Crimson's ability, with more similar discussions appearing on forums and imageboards in the following years.

On January 15th, 2015, Tumblr user superfooby posted[4] a GIF of Google Street View transition (shown below, left), with the first frame showing a person walking and the second showing them laying on the ground, with SuperFooby writing "king_crimson.gif." As of late August 2015, the post had over 7,500 likes and reblog notes. On January 23rd, 2015, Tumblr[5] user kegminami posted a GIF (shown below, right) featuring the character Kronk Pepikrankenitz from the animated film The Emperor's New Groove showing an image of King Crimson on a whiteboard, captioned with the character's quote "by all accounts, it doesn't make sense." The post accumulated over 840 likes and reblogs in seven months.


gifbin.com Byall accounts, it doesn't make sense

On July 26th, 2015, Tumblr[6] user autotoiras posted an edited page from the manga Prison School (shown below, right), in which the character Hana Midorikawa asks character Kiyoshi Fujino to explain how King Crimson's ability works. The post gained over 1,900 notes in one month.


ド 71 DONT GET IT HOW DOES KING CRIMSON WORK? HIS TIME ERASE JUST DOESN'T MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL! tio DVD 18 HUH? 5誰もこの娘を止められない次号に続く

King Crimson has also been the subject of various reaction images and image macros, many of which highlight or poke fun of its angry-looking facial expression.

"It Just Works"

The confusing nature of King Crimson's time erasure ability, furthered by the poor quality of existing fan-made translations of the manga, led to recurring questions about the ability among JoJo's Bizarre Adventure fans. Various explanations for King Crimson's ability had been made, with some of the explanations even including graphs. However, one of the common explanations has been "It just works." The phrase gained an association with King Crimson and has been used in various image macros and other memes featuring the character (examples shown below).


Nameless_One Remember the last time we tried to explain King Crimson's powers? Well, we were outshined by this helpful fellow who contacted us Let's ue Nemeless Onc s "timeline", where TI ia the time peint at which King Crimcon initiates its power, and T2 is mhcn its power cads What actually happens in this case is that the two tegether: ime Points" get crashed There actually is n, time anymore along the timeline between these two peints of King Crimcen 's power being activated and then running out The time T2 basically gets pulled back to Ti, climinating all the time peints inbctween And that's really ell that happens There's a few peints te make obout the effeets thie has theugh 1 Nobody actually loses their memory of this sectien of time, or hes their mcmory directly affected in ony way Why they can't remember it is becosie it didn't actually happen anymare Saying peoplc forget" about it nt really ewen applicable, tince you can't rcolly forget tomething that docent happen Any events or effeets thet would hove taken place during ths "erased period of time also de not exst onymore, since you con't have recults from an event that didn't hoppen In other words, if somcone is attacked or injured within this crosed time (and not outside .f it), then since that attack/injury didn't happen anymore, any results thot would have boppened from that event ase de not happen To put it simply, you con't have effeets witheut a couse; erase the couse, and you erase the effeets 0 3 The Boss and King Crimson arc offected in exactly the same way everyone cke by thie time cracol In other words, while the effects of any attocle ogainct the Bocs within the erased peried of time get effeetively nullified, the effects from ony of king Crim on 's actions within that time are alse erosed as well This i why he never bothers attacking Ducciarati directly within any of the portions of time he's crasing, for instanes because the effets of him attacking Bucciarati would be craced in exactly the same way as the effeets of Bueciarati's attacle on him get croced Note that what he does do instead is attack Bucciarati directly after the time eraal is completed, when Ducciarati i deericnted from the sudden movement shifts Which brings us to the last paint 4 The location of things after the time erasal gets determined by the T2 time, not the Ti time Thie ie were it gets little confuing, but it may help if you think of it this way: coneider that what King Crimcon doea ie asically while he's remaining ot T1- reeche forward in time to T2. and drogs that T2 peint boaclowards to TI, collopaing oll of the time inbetween (this is why some parts of the comic show multiple fromes of time simultancouzly in the tame frame, to try te idlustrate him "collapaing time tegetherj The effects between Ti and T2 get nullified as a recult effectively erushed out of existence as the twe time points are brought together Dut all of the location date at T2 (and afterwards) remain along the timeline intact Se, you've got lecatien data at T1, ond then different set of location data at T2, and the stuff inbetween is gone new becouse T2 sow comes directly after Ti The result: yeu get pcople sceming like they 've teleperted te weird lecatiens instantly becouse f this (and in fect, that baically what i happeni To comment on Nameless One 's comparicon te Die The World" itactually extremely different from The World, in beth concept and effect You can think of The World basically just speeding itself (ond Dio) up t. incredibly fast speeds fer a single moment of time, allowing Die to do 5 second's worth of stuff in the span of some incredibly chort omount of realtme ike 0 001 milliecconds er comething) king Crimcon iz actually messing with the entire timeline much more direetly, and net really doing anything t·itself ot all since the Bee' time gets erased along wth ewryene eke's The enly thing thet mokes this such an incredible Gndeed unctoppable ability for the Boss simply duc to him being the one who gets te cheose which pieces of time get erased, and which onee will remain Much thanks to Bitoku Kishi (SAL) HOW King Crimson WORKS: AN (POORLY MADE) INFOGRAPHIC SO YOU NEVER HAVE TO SAY "IT JUST WORKS! AGAINN TIME PAST FUTURE King Crimson is activated THE SEGMENT OF TME WHICH DIAVOLO WISHES TO CHANGE, WHICH CAN BE SEVERAL MOMENTS, IS "SEPERATED"; THIS "PRESENT NOW ONLY APPLIES TO DIAVOLO. HE CAN NOW EDIT THIS MOMENT AS HE SEES FIT. THAT MOMENT 1S THEN ERASED, "SKIPPING" SEVERAL SECONDS AHEAD INTO THE FUTURE CI.E. WHAT WOULD HAVE BEEN THE PRESENT IS ERASED). KEY POINT: WHATEVER CHANGES DIAVOLO MADE IN THE ERASED SEGMENT OF TIME S APPLIES IN THE FUTURE. EX: King Crimson ACTIVATES, DIAVOLO EDITS THE PRESENT TO WHERE HE KICKS CPERSON ACROSS THE ROOM, TME SEGMENT IS ERASED (PERSOND SUDDENLY FINDS HMSELF LYING ON THE FLOOR ON THE SITE SIDE OF THE ROOM FROM WHERE HE HAD JUST BEEN STANDING THAT'S IT! THAT'S King Crimson SUMMARIZED IN ONE CRAPPY GRAPH! HAPPY MANGO READING!


On October 22rd, 2012, an anonymous 4chan poster uploaded[8] an image parodying an Apple advert containing the phrase with King Crimson's head superimposed over the logo (shown below, left). On January 9th, 2014, YouTuber Coleo Kin uploaded[9] a video of Slovenian cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, made to look as if he was explaining King Crimson's ability. The video accumulated over 17,000 views in 18 months (shown below, right).


It just works

Various Examples


SAVTHAT TOIMYEFACES UCKERNOTONLINE AND TRYTO UNDERSTAND WHAT HAPPENS
NOWIMSO F------ ANGRY GRRR TM REALLY F------ ANGRYGRRRRRR ANGRYA ANGRY DOESN'T EVEN F------ DESCRIBE IT

Search Interest

External References

[1] JoJo's Bizarre Wiki Adventure – Chapter 516

[2] JoJo's Bizarre Wiki Adventure – Chapter 519

[3] JoJo's Bizarre Wiki Adventure – GW Episode 20

[4] Internet Archive – superfooby

[5] Tumblr – I had to do it.

[6] Tumblr – aurotoiras.tumblr.com/post/125138058200

[7] forums.arlongpark – Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

[8] 4chan – /a/ Post #73449502

[9] YouTube – Slavoj Zizek on King Crimson

[9] Jojo Wikia – King Crimson

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