There’s a saying about revenge.
It goes something like “a man may not take his revenge right away due to the circumstances
but he will remember it everyday before falling into sleep.
He then shall take the revenge when the timing is right, even if he must take the whole world
with him.”
Jean Pierre Polnareff, his journey of revenge was a very difficult one, but it’s what
had made his character.
Let’s analyze what made Polnareff the warrior of redemption.
Hello guys this is Kaleb, and this is another character analysis.
I hadn’t addressed the last character analysis for being what it is, and more of just gave
you guys the video.
Well this is going to be a video going in depth on Polnareff, and if you guys have any
other characters you want me to do, you can comment below after the video.
So back to the Chariot man.
Now while not looking too deep into Stardust Crusaders, I believe that the tarot cards
had a huge influence on the direction of the part.
Not as in it had made an influence in the anime, but it had influence while writing
it.
For example, take the Chariot tarot card.
This is the card of control, willpower, victory, assertion, and determination.
This reflects Polnareff’s character to a t.
His determination to avenge his sister shined harder than anything, and then after that
he had wanted revenge on Dio for manipulating him.
But while having these characteristics, he has others to balance the good with some bad.
Tarot cards have two separate interpretations per card, there’s the upright version, and
then there’s the reversed version.
The meanings of the reverse chariot also reflect Polnareff, and those feelings are what usually
end up being the reasons of his multiple downfalls.
The card of the reversed chariot symbolizes lack of control, lack of direction, and aggression.
If you line this up to Polnareff, this also follows him pretty well.
Anytime where Polnareff doesn’t keep composure, he ends up getting wounded or manipulated.
Silver Chariot is a stand that relies on the user’s sense of direction and control, if
he doesn’t have either then Silver Chariot is nowhere as effective as it should be.
Now this is where the art begins.
See Polnareff begins to follow the path of the reversed chariot after he had encountered
Hanged Man, the stand of J. Geil.
After the encounter, he had tried to immediately leave to continue his journey of revenge.
The journey of revenge already isn’t a smart one, but when it comes down to Jojo, then
I can understand his positioning.
See Polnareff is an honorable man, and while being honorable, you have to keep composure.
There’s no honor in a man fighting with blind rage and clouded judgement.
So he tries to leave, but Avdol comes to him to reason with him.
Polnareff is running into a battle with unknown powers going against him, meanwhile the opposing
forces know more than enough about him.
But Polnareff doesn’t want to hear this from Avdol, this is just staggering his road
to revenge and he doesn’t need to be bothered with it.
Let me take a second to bring up the quote that Avdol has used to show what Polnareff’s
position is.
“You will go for wool, and return home shorn”, this referencing the quote “Many go out
for wool and come home shorn”.
If that isn’t one of the best moments of Avdol, then I would be surprised because he
only has about 5 so this should be top 10.
How are you going to try to go after what you can’t see, and had attacked you.
Well logically, you wouldn’t.
The smartest thing would to be go in a group, but Polnareff wants to avenge his sister alone
because it had dishonored him specifically and not the group.
None of them can understand what he is going through, that’s what he’s assuming at
least.
But leaving your group due to clouded judgement isn’t enough, see Polnareff is in a hole
but he keeps digging.
He takes a stab at Avdol for having sense on not trying to engage with what he didn’t
understand, and calls him a coward for it.
When Avdol was definitely in the right for fleeing, and when going back to the power
of Dio, you know that Avdol actually didn’t stand a chance if he wanted to fight him.
But it isn’t about Avdol, the group, or Dio now.
It’s all about Polnareff’s pursuit of revenge, so the group doesn’t challenge
his arrogance and lets him leave.
Now we get into Polnareff’s #1 case of arrogance and bad judgement.
It begins with the encounter of Hol Horse.
Right off the bat, he takes Hol Horse to be an ordinary evil stand user.
Silver Chariot should be able to take care of him regardless, so I’ll be able to talk
my stuff.
Hol Horse laughs his intimidation off and tells him that Dio had already informed him
of Polnareff’s arrogance.
It’s known that Polnareff makes light of the people he goes against, so he believes
that beating him should be easy.
I don’t like saying that Dio is right, but this is 100% the case when it comes to this
scene.
Polnareff can’t directly respond to what Hol Horse had said, so he just wants to get
on with the fight even though he’s already been in checkmate since they encountered each
other.
So Hol Horse brings out his stand the Emperor and the fight has begun and ended.
Polnareff had tried to combat the bullet from Emperor, but had no clue that the bullet was
also apart of the stand.
This is what you call checkmate, Polnareff had lost the fight and this right here was
supposed to be the end.
Imagine a long journey of revenge, ended due to your own accord.
This would’ve been the case, but it isn’t because of the saving grace of Avdol.
Even after he had been told to let go of Polnareff because of his thinking, he still pursued
Polnareff because he knew he couldn’t do it.
Now Avdol is getting on him and he has the right to because he had proved his point already,
and the worst part is that Polnareff knows it’s all true.
He is completely overwhelmed by Avdol’s speaking because he had just been caught in
what Avdol said was going to happen.
To put this into perspective, have you ever had a time where someone told you something
bad was going to happen if you did or didn’t do something.
For example, a friend tells you that looking on your phone is going to get you killed if
you’re not paying attention.
That same friend grabs you and pulls you away from crossing the street because you didn’t
notice the crossing signals because you weren’t paying attention.
You’re now caught in a “You were right” situation, and it’s not a situation people
can easily agree with.
Being proved wrong can be a shot at someone’s ego and in the case of Polnareff, his arrogance
had now been cut down because he was shown to be stupid for engaging.
But now what happens?
Well, let's revisit that scenario I had gave you.
What if that friend that pulled you away couldn’t?
What if you were too far out and the only way to get you out of harm's way was to push
you to safety, and then this ends up costing your friend their life.
Now look at you, you were warned that your deeds could cost you your life, but instead
of you being the one that was supposed to meet fate, it was the one that had warned
you.
The worst thing about mistakes isn’t if it’s all on you, the worst thing about mistakes
is that it’s because of you but it harms someone else.
Now this would probably be the worst case of a mistake done by someone, and the thoughts
right after said mistake would probably be “I wish it was.
It should’ve been me.
Why did they help me?”
This isn’t trying to blame the person that had saved you, this is the feeling of a deep
guilt.
This is a deep guilt that cannot be recovered from when it’s in a situation like this.
It was your fault, your were supposed to be the one that should’ve got caught in the
mess, but it wasn’t.
The feeling of wanting to take the bullet that was meant for you, and in this case it’s
actually literal.
We see Polnareff display his arrogance temporarily, but it was fake.
He shows his true feelings on this, and it’s genuinely hurting him.
Having to lose another person close to him is a terrible feeling, and I can probably
bet that the feeling of losing someone and it being your fault is even worse.
Polnareff had gone on this journey of revenge, but in the first quote I had already told
you guys how revenge goes.
“He then shall take the revenge when the timing is right, even if he must take the
whole world with him”.
The whole world is supposed to be the man’s whole world, meaning his life.
In this case, the path of revenge had taken the world of someone else.
His journey of avenging his sister had led him into losing one of his best friends, but
was it because he wanted revenge?
No, it was because he lost his way when doing so and everyone knows not to lose their way.
It even goes with everything, so you can understand it’s a common thing.
Kakyoin, stand user of Hierophant Green, based off of the tarot card “The Hierophant”.
The reason why I bring his tarot card into this is due to meaning.
See, the hierophant tarot card can be interpreted in real life as a wise mentor.
It also stands for group identification and conformity.
We get exactly that when Polnareff realizes that he actually can’t just do this alone.
Now we have the wise Hierophant leading the Chariot, and it begins to work this final
masterpiece together.
See originally Polnareff believed that he was going against a man that lived in the
world of mirrors, meaning he would be untouchable.
Kakyoin points him in the right direction saying that he really is wrong, and there’s
no such thing as a world inside of mirrors.
Oh Kakyoin, I wish you were still around to know man.
So Kakyoin and Polnareff had seen through Hanged Man’s ability, and the first read
they got on him was a strong hit.
They encounter the man who they think is J. Geil, and Polnareff unloads this speech onto
the man and while it’s a very noble and strong speech, it didn’t matter because
it really wasn’t J. Geil.
Polnareff had got played again and now had got put into a trap when being surrounded
by all of those people.
J. Geil had the advantage from jumping eye to eye, and taunted Polnareff which had caused
him to start getting mad again.
But the man, the myth, the hierophant Kakyoin leads Polnareff once again.
Easily seeing through the trap and gave Polnareff one needed chance to finish Hanged Man.
He cuts down the Hanged Man, and this is now the end for J. Geil.
All of these years, the lengths he had traveled, the sacrifices he took, all for this final
moment.
This, this right here is why this video was even made.
The chariot is back with a vengeance, and has something to do that the guardians of
Hell can’t do for him!
And that’s!
“To turn you into a pincushion!”
And that everyone, is the art of revenge.
Now to me, this is the best Polnareff moment there is, but at the same time I believe it
could’ve been worked on a bit more.
If you’re going to have all of this build up for this specific moment, you would at
least like to make the scene of Polnareff stabbing up J. Geil up a bit longer.
The anime did really well converting over, and I really do enjoy the scene.
I still get really hype when Polnareff yells in this, and it actually gets to the point
where I’m swinging a knife around But all in all, it was a tad bit anti-climatic
if we’re going to be real.
Let’s finish this off on a question though.
If you could act on your revenge, would you?
Comment below, and just remember if you do then dig two graves.
Also don’t forget to comment what character or stand you want to see next on these analysis
videos.
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But until the next one guys, peace out and God speed.