King Crimson (JoJo)

About

King Crimson is a stand, a supernatural ability represented by a humanoid spirit, featured in the popular Japanese manga series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Due to its angry appearance and confusing powers, it is a popular subject within the fandom in discussions and fanwork.

Origin

King Crimson made its first appearance in chapter 519 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure released in 1998^[1], during the Part 5: Vento Aureo, as the stand of the main antagonist Diavolo. The name King Crimson is a reference to a British progressive rock band of the same name^[2].

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, on top of being a powerhouse in physical strength, allows Diavolo to “skip” time up to 10 seconds. King Crimson’s second face on the forehead, named Epitaph allows him to see for up to 10 seconds into the future.

Spread

One of the most common subjects of discussion regarding King Crimson is the nature of his ability. Due to often confusing presentation in the manga and poor translation, many fans were left wondering how does the ability to skip time work, questions about it dating back to as early as of August 29th, 2006^[3]. Many explanations for King Crimson’s ability had been made, some of them even including graphs, though the most common explanation simply being “It just works”.

On October 22rd, 2012, an anonymous 4chan poster uploaded an image parodying an Apple advert containing the phrase with King Crimson’s head superimposed over the Apple logo^[4]. On January 9th, 2014, a YouTuber Coleo Kin uploaded a video of Slovenian cultural critic Slavoj Žižek, made to look as if he was talking about King Crimson’s ability^[5]. Over a year and a half, the video had over 17,000 views.

On January 15th, 2015, a Tumblr user SuperFooby posted a gif of Google Street View transition (below, left), where the person is walking at first but is laying on the ground afterwards. The post also had a comment “king_crimson.gif”, and on late August 2015 had over 7,536 notes^[8]. On January 23rd, 2015, a Tumblr user kegminami posted a gif (below, right) featuring Kronk Pepikrankenitz from the animated movie The Emperor’s New Groove telling that King Crimson doesn’t make sense. In 7 months the post got over 848 notes^[6].

On July 26th, 2015, a Tumblr user autotoiras posted an edited page from a manga Prison School(below, right), where Hana Midorikawa is insisting Kiyoshi Fujino to explain how King Crimson works. Over a period of a month, the post got over 1,903 notes^[7].