”King Crimson” and its confusing mechanism (Vento Aureo)
Alternative title: “how it indeed just works”
「King Crimson」 is the Stand of Diavolo, the main villain of Vento Aureo. It has a sub-Stand ability called Epitaph, which was primarily introduced by Vinegar Doppio.
A mandatory introduction, just skip this if you are already very familiar with 「King Crimson」!
Ability
Time Erasure/Time Skip
「King Crimson」's signature ability is to erase a given frame of time; it starts from the instant the ability is activated and can be made to last up to 10 seconds.
During this period of erased time, only Diavolo remains fully conscious and is the only one who can re-adjust his actions.Other people will be unable to experience anything that happens and will continue to act as they would have. After the effect of the ability ends, all people other than Diavolo will retain no memories of anything that happened during the erased period.
After the allotted time frame, people will suddenly find themselves in the situation they were supposed to be in afterwards. For example, when Fugo asked Giorno for a soda, the soda was suddenly in Fugo's hand without Giorno ever actually handing it to him, when Narancia thought that someone had eaten his chocolate, while in truth he had already eaten the chocolate himself. (VA chapter 80)
There is, however, one instance where a person (Bruno) was able to see their double before finding themselves in their future position (which unfortunately has never been brought up again). (VA chapter 80)
According to JOJOVELLER, Diavolo and KC become intangible during time erasure, allowing attacks to pass through them, as the moment that the attack would have hit was erased. However, this also means Diavolo himself is unable to attack while KC's time erasure is active.
As a result, he often relies on the ability to avoid attacks and move into advantageous positions, such as the enemy’s blind spot, then directly attacks the enemy with KC's great destructive power the moment the ability ends.
He may also use said intangibility for a brief period of time in order to cause an attack to pass through him and hit whatever is on his opposite side. However, during his fight against Polnareff, Diavolo is also able to splatter his own blood onto an enemy's projection in anticipation of blinding them.
Forecast via 「Epitaph」
「Epitaph」 serves as a sub-Stand that assists and completes KC's time erasure. Epitaph gives Diavolo/Doppio the ability to forecast what will happen into the future up to ten seconds, using Doppio’s bangs or Diavolo’s long flowing hair as a projector.
Diavolo and Doppio often use the forecasting ability of Epitaph to predict any incoming threat, making sneak attacks ineffective against them.
However, the visions are incomplete and only show the final result without the events leading up to it (hence the 10s limit), and thus can be subject to interpretation. In one instance, Doppio could see himself on the ground with a severed human foot flying by; he initially thought that the foot was his own, but was mistaken. (VA chapter 106)
While the predictions seen by Epitaph are unavoidable, they still effectively warn Diavolo and Doppio against incoming danger, allowing them to steer events to lessen the potential damage, such as when Doppio realized a pair of scissors would form inside his throat, he easily tore them out in order to save himself. KC itself can prevent the predictions from being completed if it erases the frame of time when the prediction would have come true.
How does it mean that Diavolo can’t interact during “time erasure”?
Through Diavolo’s POV, he had shown how the "time erasure" process happened during his fight with Bruno, we can say that this is what is called “during time erasure”:
Diavolo used his "time skip" to dodge 「Sticky Fingers」's punch, but isn't this called "interaction"? That Diavolo is able to move inside his "time skip"?
I thought what it meant by "he is unable to interact" is that he cannot move or do anything at all, then what is the true meaning of "unable to interact"?
Based on the description from the JOJOVELLER, I think what it means by "unable to interact" is that Diavolo can't use KC to (physically) attack. Like in his fight with Bruno, why didn't he attack him and just dodge “during time erasure”? Why didn't he punch Risotto "during time erasure" and just dodge 「Aerosmith」's shots?
Therefore I concluded that KC cannot do two tasks at once: “time erasure” and “physical attack”, because both can only be done at separate times. His “prediction using Epitaph” and “time erasure” are also carried out by him sequentially, not simultaneously.
But what about the event when Trish's hand was cut off after the "time skip"? Or when the fortune teller's hand got cut off? Didn’t both events happen "during time erasure"?
To be honest, I also think that those events contradict what JOJOVELLER has explained, but only by assuming that their hands were chopped off by KC. However, what if Diavolo actually didn't cut their hands using KC? Yet using another unknown method? But we never saw him carry any weapons other than his Stand.
I think this mystery is quite impossible to answer, other than simply admitting that Araki did a retcon (the case of inconsistency). Still, by rereading chapter 102 (the fortune teller scene): right after the fortune teller realized that his hand was cut off (after the "time skip"), KC obliterated the fortune teller physically.
VA chapter 102: The Island of Sardegna – Storm Warning!
Your mileage may vary, but I have a feeling that Diavolo had not used KC to cut off the fortune teller's hand, otherwise why would he strike him twice with KC (during and after the time skip)?
You may say that he chopped off the fortune teller’s hand as a distraction, but why would he need “distraction” if he was able to kill him using KC “during the time skip"? After all he was carrying a briefcase back then, in which it was quite possible to keep a weapon there.
The same thing might have happened to Trish, we didn't see Diavolo carrying any weapon at the time, but given the fairly large arena (in the tower of San Giorgio Maggiore), he could have thrown it away “during time erasure".
But what about Narancia’s death? As he was impaled by the fence “during the time skip”, it can be said that he died by “getting impaled by the fence”, not because of a physical attack from KC, even though KC (Diavolo) himself is the one who put him there.
Therefore, KC can’t directly attack its target (with its own body) but it is able to move and do anything else inside “time erasure”.
Even so, I also partially think that Araki did retcon KC's ability and limitation so that whatever excuse my explanation about this will always be contradicting to each other. Therefore, I am not saying this as fact, but only as theory, it's up to you if you agree to this or not.
Does 「King Crimson」 really “erase the time”?
VA chapter 80: The Mistery of King Crimson – part 2
In Japanese, KC (Diavolo) did say 「時間を消し去て」”jikan o keshisate” which really means “erase the time” and then “I make sure that I will have everyone who jeopardizes my everlasting climax/peak to be vanished” 「消え去てもらう」or something like that.
Therefore, he really said that he erased the time and jumped over it/leapt past it, but by taking into account the scene and the atmosphere at that time, I thought that he was dramatizing his choice of words, so that "erasing" might not actually be erasing in literal sense, but still… the time (feels) skips due to KC’s ability.
Also, I was googling for any forums that discuss this issue and I found a very interesting one:
King Crimson (JJBA) does NOT erase time!
According to “Beatrice The Endless Witch”:
Diavolo causes fate to follow through unhindered for a period of time while he himself slips out of the physical world. Basically, everyone moves as they had planned to, unconsciously, while he himself phases through everything. Araki shows King Crimson dodging punches and Diavolo constantly refers to "erasing time" and stuff like that...that's all nonsense. I don't know if Araki himself wasn't sure what KC did so he constantly retconned it into ways that still made some sense, or maybe he didn't care about explaining it and he or his editors were like, "we'll just show some neat visual stuff and have Diavolo say one-liner to get the point across." It's possible, right?
I'm not Araki, so I don't know what his thought process was...but I'm guessing it was this:
“I want a Stand that can skip time forward - just like how CDs skip if they're scratched."
"But that wouldn't be beneficial to the user...so maybe the user is invulnerable to the time skip."
"But wait...if he's conscious during the skipped events, other people must be unconscious. Otherwise it doesn't work."
"But wait again! Can Diavolo just fucking wreck people during these events? Well...I guess he's just ethereal. He can't affect things." (which came the “unable to interact during time erasure”)
"...Well that's a great way of confusing people, but how does he fight with it, he just follows people? That's dumb. I guess he can see where they'll end up when the time skip finishes, so he can be prepared." (Epitaph)
"I guess that means other people can't phase like he does, because it'd contradict his predictions. This is good, he can use this to make people shoot each other or run into traps and stuff."
And that's how we got 「King Crimson」 and 「Epitaph」. It also fits well with his character (someone whose ability is easily felt by the entire world would be quite paranoid and need ways to avoid relying on its usage) and also does something that Araki likes in explaining real-world phenomena (short term amnesia, people spacing out).
Some people argue that KC erases the cause and keeps the effect except that doesn't make sense. Cause and effect are not two separate entities, but instead two ways of describing the same event from a different perspective according to the flow of time. You can't just pick and choose what you like to call cause and then label everything else as an effect. If you run down an alley and shoot a person during KC's time skip, you're telling me that you will end up down the alley but the person won't be shot, but there's literally no difference between the movement of your person across the ground and the movement of pieces of your skull as it gets shattered by a bullet. The CAUSE of moving your ass down the alley wasn't erased? Why not? Cause you don't want it to be?
I think s/he meant that “if you shoot a person” inside “(during) time erasure”, which the action is referred "cause", then “after time erasure”, the “effect” which should be “the person got hits by bullet” should not have happened, because the "cause" was already removed by KC so the "effect" shouldn't have existed in the first place.
I'd like to remind you that if Diavolo could attack people in time skips he would've done so against Buccellati, Polnareff or Giorno, but he didn't.
Hence my theory that KC can't attack physically with its body “inside/during time skip”.
People also argue that Diavolo hitting Polnareff in the eye with his blood makes no sense if time was skipped, but it does. Why wouldn't it stay there? It's no longer part of Diavolo, so it gains collision. And Diavolo doesn't erase time, so the blood is still there when the ability deactivates. Same with Josuke (part 4) when he used his blood as an attack, when it leaves his body, it's no longer part of him.
However, the reaction by “TehChron” suggested him/her to basically suspend his/her disbelief:
That's because you're misunderstanding how Araki presents time in JJBA. He presents it as a true 4th dimension, which has its own rules and effects, which he admittedly bullshits at times, but “Time” and “Gravity” are the highest natural forces he presents in the series. In effect, he treats them as constants across the mutiverse that exist as fundamental physical laws.
「Made In Heaven」 doesn't merely reset the Earth by infinitely increasing the flow of time from a single point at in Florida. Because what they are doing is manipulating time itself as a force of nature, rather than a concept.
Araki states that King Crimson erases time, and therefore is given the difficulty of expressing that in tangible effects, which is where we get "erasure of cause and keeping of effect", which is a nice way of summing up the ability in a way that we can observe in the series proper.
You say that cause and effect are interchangeable based on the flow of time, but that is incorrect “based on how Araki treats time”. I've explained it elsewhere when describing "relative time", but when a character gains the ability to manipulate time, they move under a different set of laws, much like swimming or flying.
Therefore, what KC would be erasing in cases where he phases through bullets are the "cause" of a bullet connecting with Diavolo, and as a result the "effect" of the bullet doing damage to Diavolo would be changed to an "effect" of "the bullet continuing along its course harmlessly". It erases a "cause" and as a result produces an entirely different "effect" based on that event.
As such, in instances where it appears that Diavolo teleports, he could use KC to erase the "time" experienced by his opponent. The "cause" of recognizing Diavolo's actions eliminates the "effect" of an opponent being able to react to him.
Rather than erasing time as if someone were scooping water out of a river, KC, and even most time-related Stands treat “time” as if it were a physical thing to be interacted with.
If 「The World」 and 「Star Platinum」 affect time by holding it still, then KC affects time by removing unwanted chunks from it. 「Bites the Dust」 uses specific stimulus to roll time back, as does 「Mandom」, to a lesser degree. MIH treats it like physical loop of some kind, and simply speeds it up until it loops back to the beginning or another desired part that had already been passed up. With alterations, if desired, naturally.
In the end, both agreed with this explanation. As for me, I think "time erasure" is more like "cause erasure" or even "causality manipulation", although only limited in removing a certain factor inside the "cause" (based on above explanation).
Does 「King Crimson」 have “universal range”?
I was also googling for a forum that discuss this issue as well and I found one:
Does King Crimson really have a universal range?
According to “Power That Preserves”:
Actually this is also a big question for me regarding KC’s range. And admittedly, I also agree with him/her. Logically, it should be really weird if we (the people) experience "time skip" several times around the world. At this point, it should have become a big "phenomenon”, not just a simple memory loss that happens to several people (who are aware of it) in one place.
The example brought by “noobthemusical” also makes sense, during Bruno vs King Crimson arc in Venezia, the rest of the gang who were outside at that time, not all of them realized that the "time skip" happened.
It is possible that not everyone realizes that time has just been skipped, especially for those who are daydreaming or who tend to ignore the events around them.
Others opposed him/her by referring to Araki's interview. Let's see what the interview actually was:
At the beginning of the interview, they did say about "time-based" abilities in general. However, when Shibasaki asked about the "range", she specifically asked about the "affected range" of the time stop, in other words: the range of this particular Stand named 「The World」! Hence Araki's answer which said that it is "all the way out into space", it is an answer regarding the "range" of the ability to stop time, (it should be) not the ability to manipulate time in general.
“Power That Preserves” has also understood this, s/he even admitted that a “localized time-stop” won't make sense, but for him/her, not for the “time-skip”.
You really think the writer will think of this and go out of his way to show us? The feat is there and the range is given, trying to break your head over it will not end well especially if the writer doesn’t care to show us the consequences of such an ability being used. – said “Tranquil Fury”
I think so too, s/he basically said again to “just suspend your disbelief, that’s a fiction for ya!” I also feel that Araki probably didn't think too deeply into this, let alone use the "real life logic". I think his main priority was that the main villain had invincible ability that makes it difficult for the protagonist.
They have tried to use their logic and that's not really wrong. But for me, they are the type of readers who prioritize the mindset "suspend your disbelief because it's fiction" or generalize the above interview by thinking that "the interview is about JoJo villains’ time manipulations, therefore the questions and answers from there are surely related to that".
What I regret about them is their lack of careful reading, in which Shibasaki’s question was obviously: “What is the maximum affected range when time is stopped?”
And of course Araki’s answer was about the range of 「The World」, which is universal.
They are very much the opposite of "Power That Preserves" who was being hard to suspend his/her disbelief and fixating on the "real life logic" of understanding fiction.
But the more interesting thing here is actually about 「Made in Heaven」, where “Schneider” and “zenieth” have said that the range of it is "universal", which is of course true, because in Made in Heaven arc, the effect of MIH’s time acceleration around the world had been shown to us. (SO chapter 150)
Localized time-stop doesn’t make sense (and impossible), so does “time acceleration” because time is universal, therefore logically as well, this also (should) apply to the "time skip".
Some have explained that KC’s time skip around the world to most people feels like a momentary "memory loss". But is there nothing dangerous about it (apart from those who are confronting Diavolo)?
「Made in Heaven」 has been shown to be an extremely dangerous Stand, given the impact it has had around the world:
SO chapter 150: Made in Heaven – part 2
One of the fatal consequences caused by MIH was this traffic accident, in which all vehicles were traveling very fast beyond the control of the drivers.
KC’s "time skip" that happened in VA often made people who realized it become shocked (the scene when Trish's hand was chopped for example), but at other times when the atmosphere is relaxed, those who experienced it just think of it as a momentary "memory loss".
But then, what will happen if the "time skip" occurs on a traffic? For example, when we are about to cross, a "time skip" occurs, will we be hit or hit something because we lost focus and didn’t prepare for a moment?
Then what about some jobs that require time observation (e.g. some researches or manufactures), in which it’s highly possible to notice that a "time skip" has occurred? Not to mention there are a lot of such jobs which require observation. "Power That Preserves" is not wrong when s/he brought up the lack of attention to "the law of common sense".
And I agree that we can't necessarily apply all of the laws of physics. That's why I think there can be localized timeskips without the affected area becoming seperated from the rest of the Earth, but King Crimson's power affecting the entire world and going unnoticed by the public isn't a matter of violating the law of physics, it's violating the laws of “common sense”. – said "Power That Preserves"
This is something that was very unfortunate in the forum, "Power That Preserves" was not entirely right (where s/he had difficulty understanding "fictional logic" yet proposed the “localized time-skip”), but s/he also had an opinion that deserves to be taken more seriously than simply "suspend your disbelief", "the author said so in his interview”, “there is fictional canon fact that you have to accept" and “don’t you dare to question the author!”.
This is the point where discussion can't really develop well, in the end, "Power That Preserves" did not get a satisfactory answer, instead s/he was bullied for his/her critical thinking. His/her critical opinion was underappreciated because of the mindset of those responders who were too accepting of everything that was "canon", even though the canon itself is “illogical”.
Unfortunately, there are many readers who have this kind of mindset.
We may not get the "right answer”, but had they been a little wiser, at least it might be possible to reach a conclusion that would satisfy both parties. I would like to join them to neutralize the atmosphere in the forum at that time, if only I had found this forum ten years earlier.
Coincidentally, I recently came across a fanfiction from AO3 that might unintentionally acknowledge the criticism from "Power That Preserves" ten years ago. Particularly, in this part:
TowerDogs’s Golden Redemption, chapter 24
“Memory manipulation”, really? But didn't Diavolo (Araki) clearly say that 「King Crimson」's ability was "time skip"? Do you seriously believe in fanfiction more than “The Word of God” (canon)?
Of course I'm not saying that KC's true ability is "memory manipulation", but considering some confusion and contradiction that indeed exist in the manga (Vento Aureo) itself in portraying KC and its time skip, this fanfic is more to explain about how to understand the mechanism of KC in its own language.
The fanfic also uses the same logic as "Power That Preserves" in that the so-called ‘time skip’ has a limited range.
Using the term "memory manipulation" is not too far-fetched in itself if we consider these scenes:
VA chapter 80 and 101
In which both Fugo and the hotel employee only thought that they forgot a moment and brushed it aside, but what if it happens when we are doing something like "observation", in which we were observing something moving like this:
Without blinking, we clearly see that the blood drip suddenly adds up against their supposed sequence (no longer drop by drop).
If so, doesn’t the excuse that it is a "memory loss" (as in the chapter 80 and 101) become invalid? Yes but actually no, because I think what “TowerDogs” means might be that Diavolo's "memory erasure" works by erasing everyone's memory in 10 seconds without leaving any details behind. People who lose their memory don't just forget about a single thing (for example: what they were doing at the time), but the whole memory for that 10 seconds (including what happened at that time and what they were doing at that time).
Then as I said before, the people who have the jobs that require high focus and observation are not just a few in around the world.
Hence, “Power That Preserves"’s logic which said that “when it happens to everyone in the world every time Diavolo uses his powers, this should be big news pretty fast” becomes something that should not just be brushed aside because canon.
And I also believe that the fanfic is aware of such problem as well (hence the “limited radius” which has been written there).
「King Crimson」in my own word
Although both interpretations from “TowerDogs” and “Power That Preserves" are controversial and might contradict the canon portrayal, thanks to them (and the explanation from “TehChron”) that I can get a better understanding of 「King Crimson」's true ability.
In order to be more accurate, I will leave aside the terms that often used by the manga canon: "time erasure" & “time skip”. These terms are what often misled the readers, if I have to interpret the meaning of “time erasure” alone, of course I would interpret it as "erasing the time elapsed for 10 seconds along with all the events (which contain causes & effects) that occurred during that time without a single trace", example:
Mista runs down an alley and shoots Diavolo “during KC's time erasure”, the outcome of KC's time erasure would be that Mista never ran into the alley and shot Diavolo in the first place as the events (which contain causes & effects) got erased along with the time (10 seconds).
To be honest, the above interpretation is more suitable for 「Gold Experience Requiem」.
What about “time skip”? The example of “skipping time for 10 seconds regardless of events (which contain causes & effects) that are happening during that time” will be like:
Mista runs down an alley and shoots Diavolo “during KC's time skip”, the outcome of KC's time skip would be that Mista already arrived at the end of the alley with Diavolo who got shot without seeing the process where Mista ran and shot in the previous 10 seconds as the events (which contain causes & effects) still happened and only the process got skipped.
But canonically, KC doesn't work that way, the result of KC’s time erasure based on the example above will be that Mista shot did not hit Diavolo and instead hit someone else (who should have been blocked by Diavolo prior to the manipulation).
In the end, I conclude that from several events that occur for 10 seconds “during KC's time skip”, Diavolo manipulates one of them (which is called "a cause") by removing several factors inside it, so that when the time skip ends (10 seconds later), the “resulting effect” of the "cause" which has been manipulated becomes "different" as desired by Diavolo.
During Diavolo’s manipulation, only he has the “consciousness”, as the people other than him will only feel the altered "effect" based on his manipulated "cause".
Still, Out of respect for Araki, let us just call this ability as a "time skip / erasure", it’s the easiest term to describe 「King Crimson」 ‘s ability.
「King Crimson」’s callback in “Hunter x Hunter”
Major spoilers of HxH!
“Hunter x Hunter” also made a callback of 「King Crimson」 through a character named Tserriednich. The Kakin Prince has developed Nen ability that has a similar mechanism to KC.
HxH chapter 387: Replay
“Similar but not the same” is the right word to describe it, Tserriednich also mentioned "parallel world" which for me could be a callback for 「D4C」 as well.
Unlike KC, in which time is noticeably skipped so that people affected are either shocked by the sudden event or experience a momentary “memory loss”, Tserriednich’s Parallel Future doesn’t skip the time at all, instead he just alters an event (a “cause”) through his personal “parallel world”. Initially, the affected people are not aware of the change and experience the original "effect" of the unaltered "cause", only then he surprises the people with the new “effect” of his altered "cause."
What KC and “Parallel Future” have in common is that both use forecasts for 10 seconds ahead of reality (Epitaph’s mechanism), it's just that Tserriednich’s forecast happened during the reality, but the future 10 seconds forcasted by Tserriednich are compressed. Tserriednich can also sense forecast and reality simultaneously (as if he is inside two parallel worlds that are being merged).
Amusingly, Tserriednich also made a reference to the initial mechanism of KC where Diavolo cannot interact during the “time skip”:
If you want to know about “Parallel Future” more, you can read chapter 387 of HxH, starting from page 3 to page 17.
JoJo Villains’ Stands’ Ability Breakdown (Conclusion)
And eventually, I got inspired to make this:
Thank you for reading up to here.
