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.

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.

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.

Related Memes

"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).

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).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References