| “ | Your next line is... | ” |
Joseph Joestar (ジョセフ・ジョースター Josefu Jōsutā) is the main protagonist of part 2 and an ally in part 3 and 4. He is the 2nd JoJo of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series.
Joseph is a natural-born Ripple user and eventual Stand user, wielding the psychic photographic Stand, Hermit Purple. Joseph meets the fantastic threats approaching him throughout his life with initiative and impressive ingenuity, battling Vampires, the Pillar Men, and malevolent Stand users.
He is the second most recurring JoJo in the series after his grandson Jotaro Kujo and is one of its most well known characters.
18 years old, Joseph is tall (195 cm/6'5"), handsome, and powerfully built, with light eyes. He has short, dark and unkempt hair, parts of his bangs shooting outwards in spikes, apart from which he closely resembles his grandfather Jonathan Joestar.
Joseph's primary outfit is relatively minimal and pragmatic. He wears a tank top cut above the navel, gloves studded at the knuckles, fitting pants with a leather belt, and knee-high leather boots. In Switzerland he dons a long, broad, striped scarf; and later, as a gift from Caesar, a long, thin headband patterned with a row of tessellated triangles.
Joseph retains most of his health and muscularity, though his face displays his age. His hair is short and gray, and he sports a thick, well-trimmed beard.
During the group's journey to Egypt, he wears an outfit comparable to Indiana JonesW' basic outfit: a fedora; a light, short-sleeved, buttonless shirt; khaki pants; dress shoes; and white gloves with dark wristbands concealing his prosthetic hand (a result of his fight with Kars). At his introduction he also wears a trenchcoat and a turtleneck sweater.
At age 79, Joseph suffers from senility, having deterred from longevity through Ripple due to lack of motivation. While his stature is still apparent, he is hunched over and uses a cane. He wears a diminutive pair of pince-nezW spectacles, and a spotted, brimmed woolen hat with ear flaps reminiscent of a ushankaW. He wears a thick trench coat, a collared shirt and tie, and baggy pants.
In Battle Tendency, Joseph is a hotheaded, impetuous, and confrontational young man. Quick to violently respond to the slightest provocation, Joseph would often get into brawls growing up; prior to events of the story, he had been imprisoned seven times and expelled once from school for fighting. Having no respect for authority save of his grandmother's, and later Lisa Lisa's, Joseph has antagonised policemen and mafiosi alike. Furthermore, Joseph is a foul-mouthed individual and regularly taunts his enemies, enjoying aggravating them. His signature taunt is predicting his enemy's next line, which is shown to be correct all the time. He notably taunted Kars when he launched him into space, claiming to have again planned everything from the beginning just to annoy him.
Joseph is a playful man and prefers fooling around over having any responsibility. By his own admission, his most hated sentences are "hard work" and "work hard", and still had to be pushed to train his Ripple talent in spite of facing certain death if he didn't meet and fight Wamuu again. Joseph has a fairly goofy side and spends half of his fights enjoying having outsmarted his current enemy with incredibly zany schemes, which take his opponents by surprise by how silly his plans are at first sight. He also often incorporates his taunts into fights, to distract his enemies into otherwise obvious traps. A show-off, Joseph likes being the center of attention and couldn't stand that his rival Caesar had a special technique. With his prestidigitation talent, Joseph mixed his boastful nature and his love of pranks into a dangerous tool in battle.
In Stardust Crusaders, Joseph has considerably mellowed out, having lost much of his aggression and laziness. Still irascible toward Japanese in general, due to a Japanese man marrying with his beloved daughter Holy, Joseph is otherwise nice to his grandson and Noriaki Kakyoin. His penchant for befriending people is still present, notably with the appearance of his new friend Muhammad Avdol, and his tendency to approach the locals first and communicate with them, overall being the one to deal business with them. For instance he takes it upon himself to order food in Hong Kong, gladly approaches an Indian barman to try sugar cane juice, tries to salute a hotel owner in Pakistan as well as order shishkebab in Karachi.
Joseph's goofy side is also still present, and Joseph's somewhat frequent failures at blending with the local culture and his struggle at battling Stands are a constant source of humor. Moreover, his boastful nature leads him to occasional goofs, such as misreading Chinese so much he orders dishes completely different from what he figured, or pretending to know how to ride camels only to ridicule himself. At the end of the saga, he demonstrates again his love for pranks, briefly making Jotaro believe that he was DIO resurrected upon being saved via a transfusion.
Joseph inherited the Ripple and its capabilities from his grandfather, Jonathan Joestar, as well as his mother, Lisa Lisa. In addition, he uses techniques commonly present in stage magic to confuse his foes. After his Ripple training, Joseph frequently combines his Ripple with other objects to perform complex and creative attacks. Later in Part 3, he shows that he is able to pass the Ripple through his Stand, Hermit Purple. However, as he grew older, due to neglecting his Ripple training, he became unable to do the same things he was capable of when he was younger and ended up aging at a relatively normal pace.
During his battle with the Pillar Men, Joseph had demonstrated several techniques similar to his grandfather's.
In order to come up with a special attack, Joseph invented a fighting style that involved infusing the Ripple into a pair of normal American ClackersW. Once infused, the Clackers become a lethal weapon, as the user is able to rip through an opponent's skin using them, and from there the Ripple can enter the body, thus inflicting massive damage. Because of their shape and aerodynamic design, someone who is trained in the Clackers' use is able to easily maneuver them around their body, even having the ability to make them seemingly disappear by hiding them behind their back.
- Hermit Purple
Joseph's Stand, Hermit Purple, manifests itself as a tangle of thorny vines, which Joseph can wield as both a weapon and a hazardous defense. Furthermore, it has been shown to conduct the Ripple, which makes Hermit Purple one of the more effective Stands against those weak to it such as Vampires. Joseph develops the Stand after DIO pierces Jonathan's body with the Arrow, upon which it responded to DIO and Enya awakening The World.
One of its special abilities (shared with Jonathan's stand ) is to use cameras, televisions and other things to perform a form of fortune telling referred to as spirit photography. When introduced, it was demonstrated that he had to smash an expensive Polaroid camera to do this, and the camera would dispense a picture of DIO. Later on he is seen using televisions for this ability without having to damage them.