Kars (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure)
Kars is a male anime and manga villain who features in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
Contents |
Biography
Kars (Japanese: カーズ, Hepburn: Kāzu?) was a male member of the ancient race of beings that made up the Pillar Men who inhabited Earth over 100,000 years ago. Their kind evolved alongside mankind where they lived in co-existence with humans with their only weakness being the sun. Over a hundred thousand years ago, Kars was born as one of the few offspring of this ancient race with long lifespans. In time, he desired to overcome his kind's weakness to the sun leading to him creating the Stone Mask. The purpose of this artifact was to unlock the potential to be immune to the sun but it failed to do so as it lacked the necessary power. It did increase his power and also similarly increased his hunger. Members of his kind could only survive by consuming organic life but his society lived alongside humans. When Kars used the Mask, he began to sate his hunger by consuming large scores of humans. This drew the ire of his kind as they saw him as a threat and they turned against him where they sought to kill him. In response, Kars slaughtered his own people including his parents for opposing his goal. Only one other member of his race stood alongside him as an ally and together they rescued two newborn infants of their kind that they raised to adulthood. Thus, these four became the last members of their kind who were the Pillar Men. During this era, the Pillar Men encountered a tribe of humans known as the Harmon Clan that could utilize the energy known as the Ripple. This energy was able to repel and even harm the Pillar Men as it utilized the same energy as the sun. Such a threat opposed Kars and he had these humans slaughtered with Kars responsible for killing one of the last known Harmon users when his ally Wamuu did not complete the task. Long ago, the Pillar Men were turned to stone and remained in this state for thousands of years. Kars along with Wamuu and Eisidisi resided in Europe whilst Santana who was the younger and weakest of their number remained in stone in Mexico. In 1938, Nazi Germany came to power and learnt of the tombs of the Pillar Man where they began to study them. They found one in Mexico holding Santana and the other underneath the Roman Coliseum. Kars, Wamuu and Esidisi were awakened where the massacred the German soldiers that attempted to condone them whilst also easily defeating the two Hamon users Joseph Joestar and Caesar Anthonio Zeppeli. Wamuu had defeated Joseph Joestar but saw potential in him as an opponent so he poisoned him and gave him an ultimatum. Joseph was to grow strong in the next year in order to fight the Pillar Man as their earrings contained the antidotes. They then departed the scene as they proceeded with their quest to find the Red Stone of Aja in this new era.
This led to them eventually settling in an abandoned mansion in San Moritz, Switzerland. Having found a lead to the stone, Esidisi had planned to contact Kars after retrieving it, but was promptly defeated by Joseph instead. Growing suspicious at the lack of contact, Kars sets off to Italy to handle things himself. At the border between Switzerland and Italy, he is confronted by Rudol von Stroheim and Joseph Joestar; he quickly deduces that the latter was responsible for Esidisi's death, and vows to kill Joseph in return once he secures the Red Stone of Aja. Although briefly caught off-guard by Stroheim's new cyborg body - designed to surpass the Pillar Men, based off of Santana's data - he soon regains the advantage and cuts the German down, revealing that Santana was easily the weakest of the four. He manages to retrieve the Red Stone, only to have it taken from him by Joseph after a short struggle and a fall off a cliff. Kars travels back to San Moritz, where he is eventually confronted by Joseph and Lisa Lisa. After watching Joseph's victory over Wamuu, he agrees to have a fair fight with Lisa Lisa at the nearby ruins, but ultimately tricks her during their fight with a doppelgänger and steals the stone from her, leaving her unconscious. This immediately enraged Joseph, who battles Kars but is continually trapped in a dilemma where Kars pierces Lisa Lisa's feet and strings a rope through the wounds, forcing Joseph to grab the rope to stop her from falling. An overconfident Kars approaches as Joseph lights his scarf on fire and attacks, but falls from the beam clutching the rope as Kars severs it to finish off Lisa Lisa. However, this is revealed to have been Joseph's intentional setup, as he drew Kars' attention to his upper body while he arranged the loop of rope with his legs below, tricking him into stepping into the loop and forcing him to keep his opponents above the spikes below. Kars faces Joseph in a final standoff with his arm blade, but is soundly beaten as Joseph's Ripple breaks the blade and wounds his arm, knocking him off the railing and into the spikes below. Stroheim and his Nazi troops arrive along with Robert E.O. Speedwagon, Smokey Brown and the Speedwagon Foundation Special Forces. Stroheim gloats over Kars before ordering his troops to finish the Pillar Man off.
Manifesting his own Ripple, Kars power was shown to be potent enough to melt human flesh and he intended to use his new power to kill Joseph. Joestar though unwittingly defended himself by using the Super Aja to redirect the Ripple's energy into the ground causing an eruption from the volcano that blasted the piece of ground that the two fighters were on high into the air. Going high into the sky, Kars intended to use his wings to escape but was briefly distracted by Joseph whose severed forearm came to strike the Pillar Man and sending him higher into Earth's orbit. In space, he attempted to use built-up air to propel him back towards Earth to get his revenge but this came to freeze in the near-absolute zero conditions of space. This caused his body to solidify as he tumbled further out into deep space where he was frozen into a statue where his status as an immortal meant that he did not die but was rather trapped in his own body as it fell into the void. Kars came to wish to die but instead his body floated in space until he eventually stopped thinking.
Overview
Personality and attributes
In appearance, Kars shared the other aspects of his kind in that he resembled a human but with muscular frame. As with other Pillar Men, he had a number of small horns on his forehead and had long black wavy hair that he kept wrapped unless he was involved in a fight against a serious opponent.
Initially, he appears to be the most aloof and no-nonsense of the Pillar Men, rarely smiling and often being the one who has to remind the other two of their ultimate objective. Obsessed with obtaining the Red Stone of Aja, he is willing to trample anyone in his way, no matter how dishonorable the method. At his worst, he broke his word about fighting for the Stone fair and square, cheating to defeat Lisa Lisa and then unleashing his Vampire minions to kill a weakened Joseph Joestar and has been revealed to execute children, anticipating their revenge.
Kars was shown to be highly intelligent, ruthless and single minded in the completion of his goal namely the acquisition of the Red Stone of Aja. He was shown to not value concepts such as honor and instead sought the achievement of his goals. According to JoJo, it was this tenacity that made Kars a particularly dangerous enemy for him. He stated that he had no desire to be a warrior like Wamuu and did not care for how he achieved his goals so long as victory was achieved by any means. When fighting Lisa Lisa in a one-on-one duel, she noted that she could register no violence in his stance. It was later determined that this was because he had no intention of fighting her and instead turned a vampire to resemble him with the creature destroyed by Lisa Lisa. The distraction was enough for Kars to appear suddenly and nearly fatally wounding her with his bone blade allowing him to achieve victory. Upon the completion of his goal, he desired no further need for a fight and dispatched his vampires to kill JoJo rather than fight him. Later on, during the fight with JoJo, Kars used Lisa Lisa as a hostage in order to prevent his foe from fighting back or escaping. Kars threatened to cut a rope that would have plunged Lisa Lisa to her death unless JoJo fought him but then severed it anyway in an effort to kill both his foes.
Like other Pillar men, Kars looks down on machines like guns and planes. Sneering at the cyborg technology Rudol von Stroheim demonstrates, considering it and other human advancement inferior. Moreover, he considers his Vampire grunts to be worthless pawns, unmoved if they are victimized or slain, and willing to execute them himself should they prove annoying to him.
Contradictory, despite his apathy and willingness towards humans; he demonstrated a more compassionate side towards other forms of life. An example was in Switzerland where he sliced a car that was about to hit a puppy where he cut it in half to save the animal. Another moment was when he maneuverer himself on a long fall in order to avoid a patch of flowers that was near the bottom of the cliff. However, when he became the Ultimate Being, he casually killed a squirrel after separating a part of himself in order to demonstrate his power.
Though single minded in his goals, he did claim that he desired to get revenge on JoJo for the death of Esidisi and Wamuu. He, however, demonstrated no such desire for revenge for Santana who he called a guard dog.
Powers and abilities
As a Pillar Man, Kar had abilities beyond that of a human being and afforded him a number of traits. His kind feasted on organic life and did so by simple body contact with humans consumed in the process. Only Harmon users that utilized the power of Ripple were able to stop this consumption process. As with each Pillar Men, he had his own unique skills which in Kars case was blades made of bone that could emerge from his arms. This was an ability that was known as Light Mode (光の流法モード, Hikari' no Mōdo, Brilliant Bone Blade) which when extended could them to stab his foes or badly wound them with a strike or manipulate light to blind his enemies. The blades were composed of tiny, shark teeth-like claws running along the edge of the blade much like a chainsaw. These were responsible for giving the Light Slip Blades (輝彩滑刀 Kisai Kattō, lit. "Gleam Coloring Slide Blades") their shining intensity. In this mode, Kars' blades are sharp enough to cut through most objects, including an automobile and several bullets at blinding speeds. Kars was able to get smaller blades to vibrate on his bone blade that moved at such speeds that it could cut through other objects with ease. One weakness that was shared with other members of his kind was a vulnerability to the power of Ripple that could damage his body. The sun was also a deadly weakness for him forcing him to utilize tactics to dampen its effects in daylight conditions or operating at night.
With the Red Stone of Aja, Kars managed to attach the relic to his Stone Mask with the pair being activated by a burst of UV light. Thus, the Stone Masks function was complete as it unlocked the full potential of Kars making him the Ultimate Life Form (究極生命体アルティミット・シイング Arutimitto Shīngu?, lit. "Ultimate Thing"). As a result, Kars was not only immune to the power of the sun allowing to walk during daylight but was effectively immortal as his body did not age. Several of his natural traits were increased such as his intelligence with his IQ rising to 400, the ability to sense heat or air pressure and superhuman strength. Kars also gained a complete biological mastery over his form allowing him to heal any wound in a short matter of time. Even further, he was able to reconstruct his entire body on a cellular level to the point that he could transform limbs into any lifeform. An example of this was him turning his hand into a squirrel that viciously savaged and consumed another squirrel before slaughtering numerous German soldiers. This was due to the fact that his cells now stored the DNA of every lifeform in the world. In this state, Kars could change his parts of his body into other forms such as turning his arms into wings to fly allowing him to follow a fast moving airplane. He was even able to gain additional offensive abilities such as hardening feathers into shrapnel that he discharged at his enemies. Even if a part of his body was separated from him, Kars was able to manipulate it such as the numerous hardened feathers that he discharged being later transformed into piranhas in order to attack JoJo on a plane that was a distance away. Another example was Kars transforming his skin into a hard shell similar to a crab in an effort to withstand burning magma before creating an air pocket that prevented his destruction until he could escape. The one weakness Kars demonstrated in this form was its inability to survive the vacuum of space where got frozen and solidified despite his attempt to return to Earth.
One further ability Kars gained in his Ultimate Form was he was able to use the power of Ripple. This was noted to be a hundred times stronger than the power of Joseph Joestar with the capacity to melt human flesh. According to Stroheim, the Ripple that Kars utilized was so strong that it comparable to the intensity of the Sun. When amplified by the Red Stone, Kar's Ripple was shown to be capable of triggering a volcano and causing it to erupt.
Notes
- Kars was created by Hirohiko Araki where he featured as the primary antagonist in the Battle Tendency plot arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
In other media
Television
Video games
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, Kars appeared as a playable character in the fighting video game where he was voiced by actor Kazuhiko Inoue.
- In JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven, Kars appeared as a playable character in the video game where he was voiced by actor Kazuhiko Inoue.
Appearances
- JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
External Links
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