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Last time, we explored the ghats of Varanasi while Joseph was out getting his infected bug bite looked at. Let's check in with the old timer.

Joseph: G-gimme a break here! Can't you just stick some ointment and a band-aid on it and call it a day?
Joseph: That's how it always works in comics...

Joseph: Yecch, I can't look!

I'm not afraid of needles per se, but whenever I'm getting a vaccine or something I cannot look at the process. The needle itself isn't the problem, it's the needle entering skin.

Joseph: This kinda stuff sucks no matter how old you are... -grumble-

Joseph: W-whaaaat!?

Joseph: W-who said that!? ...Ah!

Empress: You're Joseph, the old fart, right? I'm gonna make it rain blood, baby!

The "chumimiiin" sound effect appears a few times in the JoJo series, usually said by some kind of wacky little creature. "Chuchu" is meant to be like a mouse squeaking sound (think Pikachu), so I'm pretty sure this is just meant to be some kind of squeak or chirp.

Joseph: Get lost!

Joseph: ! It has teeth! It blocked it! A-and... Unngghh...! So strong!!
Empress: Hee hee hee hee hee!!

Empress: Nuh-uh! You cut yourself! I'm a part of you after all... Old Man Joseph!

Empress: I know what you're thinking, Joseph... Stands can only be defeated by other Stands! Your Hermit Purple can let you see things from afar... But can you really fight me with that ability!? And furthermore... can you take me down now that I've become a part of your arm? That's what you're thinking! And by the way... You can't!

These days "nimrod" means "dummy" or "idiot", but it's also the name of a noted king in the Hebrew Bible. Traditionally, he's the guy who started building the Tower of Babel and was known as a great hunter. The change in meaning is often attributed to Looney Tunes cartoons where they dunked on Elmer Fudd by sarcastically calling him "Nimrod", but there's scattered evidence of it being used mockingly decades before that.

Other folklore involves Nimrod being dismembered and scattered after his death - an inspiration for Dormin from Shadow of the Colossus - but this originates from an 1853 Presbyterian pamphlet insisting that Catholicism is secretly a surviving sect of heretical Babylonian religion. The author conflates Nimrod with (among many other figures) the Egyptian god Osiris, who was dismembered and scattered across Egypt by his usurping brother Set.

Truly, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure contains multitudes.

With another innocent bystander dead, yet another one enters the room.

I looked this up and The Clarks is a noted hotel chain in India. The Varanasi branch in particular describes itself as "exuding a colonial charm", so I guess it's only natural Joseph would be staying there.

Empress: By the by, young lady... I've got a thing for pretty little nurses like yoooou!!
Joseph: Wha-wha-whaaaat!?
Empress: HellooOOOoo nurse!
Joseph: No! I actually hate brown people!! WAIT NO NOT WHAT I MEANT!!!

The scene fades out as police sirens blare in the distance.

Empress: Hya-ha-ha-ha! Looks like the Indian police are after you! You'll never get back to the hotel now! They'll stand between you and Jotaro! I'll kill ya for sure!
Joseph: Y-y-you little biiiitch!! I'll smash you against the wall!

Empress: I'm armed and dangerous, baby!
Joseph: W-what!? It sprouted a pair of hands! Is it... is it growing!?
Empress: Hey! You should be more gentle with your arm, old man!
Empress: I can't tell if this is tennis elbow or wanker's cramp! Oof!

Just like when we were wandering around with Cascada, if you kill any of the police you get a game over. All we can do is run.

Now, obviously it wouldn't do narratively to have last season's protagonist upstage the current one, but it sometimes feels like Joseph got done a little dirty. He is gold for comedy bits, though.

With this, we're booted into the wider Varanasi map playing as Joseph solo. It's quite rare to play as just one of the party members without Cascada around; I think it only happens when the manga dictates the party's split, like with the Hanged Man fight a few updates ago.

This is also why the Varanasi map is oddly large and winding despite not having much in it during the hub segment. Here, you're running around lost and confused with Joseph while being chased down by the cops.

The other encounters are still hanging out too, and they can get real tough without Cascada there to blast things. I avoid as many as possible.

Joseph: -huff- -wheeze- Is that...!? Hey!!

If I were in this situation and the other options for help were Jotaro or Polnareff, I guess Kakyoin would also be my first choice. Begrudgingly.

Joseph: OH NOOOO!!

Joseph: SON OF A BITCH!!

Eventually, this happens and we move on to the next scene. I believe it's on some kind of random timer.

Okay, I couldn't help my curiosity so I looked at some of the event triggers. It's not a timer at all! Invisible NPCs are placed throughout of the map, set to constantly move towards the player at half speed. On contact, they activate this event and teleport you to the next location. Neat!

Joseph: ...............!? W-what are you doing!?
Empress: ............I'm eatin'! I've gotta eat a healthy, balanced meal so I can grow big and strong, Joseph!
Joseph: Did you steal those from the shop on the way here!? You're a tricky one!

The game can't really depict this, but in the manga, Joseph's been running around while covering his messed-up arm with a cloth. Empress drops a bunch of food scraps showing she's been eating various fruits, a cabbage, and a whole live chicken.

Joseph: Blugh!

Joseph really getting into the role of parent here. Spot on imitation.

Empress: Father dearest! Thank you for raising me up until now! You deserve a break... Why don't you retire to the world beyond!?
Empress: You'll be stuck on Snake Way for decades, at minimum! Hee hee!
Joseph: N-nooo! I haven't caught up on Dragon Ball for the past two weeks!

Empress: Atchooohhhh!!
Joseph: !?
Empress: Heh heh heh... I've already gotten big enough to kill you easily! Check it out! I can already reach your neck! Once I cut your artery, you're history! Just wait and see... I'll show you my REAL strength!! Haiyaaa!! Atchooohhh!!!
Joseph: Nnngh! OH NOOOOO!!

I assume this goes without saying to anyone familiar enough with anime to be reading this, but Empress is doing kiai here, aka The Sounds What Bruce Lee Makes When He Punches A Fool. The "atatatatata" bit specifically is a shout-out to Fist of the North Star, a seminal martial arts manga and major inspiration for JoJo.

Hitting the 10 turn limit isn't a game over or anything. You get tossed back to the map and have to do things the manga way, which involves dunking the Empress in tar to halt her movements. That's why all the NPCs in Varanasi wouldn't shut up about where to find tar.

Empress occasionally boosts all her stats like this, and otherwise does hefty enough damage that 10 turns is a pretty tough ask if you're trying to heal. But Cascada's training sessions weren't for nothing.

Watch this gif loop about 8 times and you've got an idea of how the battle goes.

Get fucked.

Empress: T-that's right... Dio warned me about this... About the intense determination of the Joestar bloodline...!
Empress: Now I need to update the "Intense Determination" page on the fansite!
Joseph: I told you... You don't have the fighting experience to beat me! When the enemy is sure they've won, they've already lost. I'm old, but I still know that! This is how Joseph Joestar does things! But Stands can only be defeated by other Stands... Hmm... What should I do with you?
Empress: N-no...

Predicting the enemy's next line was Joseph's catchphrase back in the Part 2 days. It was mainly meant to show how he was a more cerebral and tricky fighter than his grandfather Jonathan, who was more of a regular "I love justice and I punch things real hard" kind of guy.

In the manga he does this by wrapping her up, slinging the other end of Hermit Purple's vines around a balcony, and jumping. Gnarly.

Polnareff: In ze French manner, of course!

Polnareff: W-whaaat!? What is that thing!?

Polnareff: What!? Her!? An enemy!? Y-y-you... You tricked me!!
Joseph: So she was using the body of a beautiful woman as camouflage... You're too naive, Polnareff! It's a good thing we found out before anything happened...
Polnareff: ...W-... Waaaaaaaah...

See you again!

<= Previous | Top | =To Be Continued=>

Cascada: Wait, I didn't show up AT ALL this episode? Seriously?

new update, which (somehow) includes a very brief detour into an 1853 anti-catholic pamphlet

the windows NT 4 install process contains a tripping hazard so profound that i'm surprised joel spolsky never wrote a blog post about it

my very first real job back in the early 90s was working for IBM Personal Software Products, which had (if I remember correctly) just shipped OS/2 v2.2. my primary job was triage and routing, i.e. "which line in Boca Raton do I transfer this caller to", based on what their problem was, if they were a Big Fucking Customer or not (we got a lot of calls from Abbott Labs who were an IBM shop at the time), if they had a service contract, etc etc

most of the calls we got were OS/2-related, as that was the most widely-used IBM Personal Software Product at the time, as it was something you could buy in CompUSA in a retail box. this was also before CD-ROM drives were universal, so many of these were floppy installs; one of the new and exciting problems that occurred while I was there was that the first IDE/ATAPI CD-ROM drives were just coming out, Gateway was putting them in their new desktop systems, and OS/2 didn't have a driver for that yet, just SCSI and the various proprietary drive interfaces (Matsushita/Panasonic, Sony, and Mitsumi IIRC)

the majority of my coworkers were just phone people, they had just enough tech knowledge to route the calls properly, but I was a young nerd (maybe 20?) and I wanted to get promoted and so I was learning stuff, and if I could give a caller a quick answer or fix and avoid routing them to the people who were paid properly in Boca Raton, that was fine with my supervisors. so I had to tell a lot of people that they couldn't install OS/2 via CD-ROM on their new system, but that we were working on it. (I think Warp 3 was the first version to support those drives but that was after I left)

anyway, one day I got a call from one of those big companies. there was the entire upper echelon of their IT group on a conference call, they had just performed an upgrade on a very, very fucking important server from OS/2 v2.1 to v2.2. everyone was on hand for it, and now the server wasn't booting after the upgrade process

I got their account details, and was writing up whatever we called a ticket internally (it was something very IBM and absurd) and getting ready to transfer them to the Big Accounts line where they would get white glove treatment, and I asked them what was happening when they attempted to restart the server

"we're getting an error message we don't recognize, let me read it to you":

OS/2 !! SYS01475
OS/2 !! SYS02027

I paused. "sir, if I can ask you to do something real quick before I transfer you? can you check and see if one of the upgrade floppies is still in the drive? I'm fully prepared to transfer you, but can we check this first, just in case? it may save you some time."

my supervisor got in touch with me later to say that they received a very angry call from that client the following week, not because I hadn't done a good job, they were very happy that I was able to get their server booting for them in about five minutes instead of the many hours of data recovery and server rebuild they were expecting, but because those error messages had required them to call in the first place

those error messages, which you get when you try to a boot from a non-bootable HPFS floppy, date to the OS/2 v1.2 release in 1989. their utter uselessness pre-dates the split from Microsoft and IBM that led to the development of Windows NT, and I'm pretty sure that if I acquired a copy of ArcaOS and formatted an HPFS floppy with it, it would do the exact same thing