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User:GiverOfThePeace/Stanpai's "Can Jonathan Joestar Survive Castlevania" Response
Introduction
The title itself should be self-explanatory, I've decided to make this post while I'm working on other Castlevania pages so I have Castlevania still fresh on the mind. You see a youtuber called Stanpai about 6 years ago made a video titled: "Jojovania: Can Jonathan Joestar Survive Castlevania?" Now if you see the stats on this wiki for Castlevania and Jonathan Joestar then the answer would be pretty boring and also they are moreso theoretical stats anyways, so instead I'd like to look at this from a narrative angle rather then a powerscaley angle, if that makes any sense. Hell this is what Stanpai himself is doing in this video from what I can tell. So if you were expecting to read this with me going "Erm actually Jonathan is only 9-B while Dracula is 7-C so he just one-shots" sorry to tell you but there'd be no point in even making this post in the first place. Without further ado let's begin.
For how this is going to work, I'm just going to go over his big points and see how they work from a narrative perspective.
Oh also obviously I'm not calling Stanpai wrong, stupid, or anything, I heavily doubt he cares much about a video he made almost 6 years ago now, I'm just bored and want to check and see how his points hold up.
Hamon Affecting Undead
We're starting off pretty strong here because this is an actual important starting point to go over and is a huge crux to why or how Jonathan would even be able to affect the undead in Castlevania. So the reasoning Stanpai gave was that hamon is the power of the sun and creatures of the night are weak to that. This is technically true to an extent in Castlevania. But it's moreso an abstract way. Dracula and creatures of the night by proxy aren't weak to the literal sunlight itself, we see regular creatures of the night can be out in the sun just fine, Dracula has stood out in the sunlight as Malus and has only ever really died to sunlight after he went into a great battle and was gravely injured by the likes of a Belmont or Morris. Moreover the reason Vampires are weak to sunlight is due to more holy reasons then literal heat from sunlight reasons, as Vampries are loved by the Night, the Day is their enemy. I bring this all up to say that technically since Hamon isn't inherently holy and never really treated as such as far as I remember, I can't confidently say Jonathan would be able to affect vampires with this, much less creatures of the night in Castlevania. Especially since vampires can naturally resist holy attacks anyway, here's Dracula taking holy water in his weakened Malus form and he just cries out for a bit before emerging just fine afterwards. This is to say holy attacks aren't really insta kills for vampires. Hell, even for lower tier vampires like Rosa she could stand in the sunlight for a while without dying even while she was trying to die, I'd like to ntoe also that her wounds were gone after Reinhardt pushed her away from the sunlight, so it's hard for me to agree that Hamon can really be compared to the sunlight weakness vampires have in Castlevania. I should note also that in JoJo's I don't think holy weakness exists for vampires, from what I remember of Dio he just casually crushed a holy cross showing no real weaknesses from it. Though I'll come to a compromise that Hamon CAN harm the undead, it just won't one-shot the big guys like the pillars of the castle, Dracula, Death, etcetera (Not fully sure if even basic undead would apply to being one-shot by this honestly, but I'll just say it will for the sake of it).
Jonathan Joestar's Unwavering Resolve
Basically Stanpai's point on this one is Jonathan's will is his single strongest asset, which honestly because of how the Castlevania series works, this is in line with it, Simon directly notes in Grimoire of Souls that the will and desire to stop evil and protect the innocent is what has all the heroes defeat Dracula, not the vampire killer or "physical strength", so this is a completely correct assumption from Stanpai here. It should be noted however, merely having a very strong will is not enough to defeat Dracula and his castle, as many with strong wills have come and died in the castle, so Jonathan's will essentially would need to be on par with the likes of Belmonts, which comparing wills is king of hard to give a definite value too since they're more an abstract idea than a direct value. What I'd say is Jonathan does have very strong resolves and will, however, we haven't seen anything as great as what the Belmonts have, such as being able to cure themselves from statuses such as poison or curse just due to having very strong constitutions, or still having hope and fighting to destroy evil even while their literal existence is being erased from history, or having greater will then the likes of Camilla Fernandez, where she had great spirit and struggled mightily against the curse before she became a vampire. Also to note, while Jonathan has expelled poison from his body using Hamon, this isn't really the same as having it where your constitution is so high that you naturally just nullify the status that hit you from continuing. They're essentially doing what Jonathan did without the need for Hamon but just sheer will alone.
I should also note that it took nearly everything in Jonathan's power and will to take out the likes of Dio Brando, who while a very strong vampire for the series, is not a Dracula of his series as there's beings like the Pillar Men who are far beyond him. Dracula meanwhile is noted to be absolute evil itself and the root of all evil, so Jonathan is going to need an IMMENSE amount of willpower to deal with him. I'll leave this moreso up to whoever reads this in their own head to deduce for themselves if they believe Jonathan's will would be great enough to go against Dracula, though this is a correct point Stanpai has made that this will be Jonathan's greatest asset.
Jonathan Entering the Castle
Alright so this is realistically Jonathan's first major roadblock, the castle's influence alone has so many different effects, read here to see all of them, and the question is could Jonathan realistically resist all of these? Well going by his series then no, but since we're going by a narrative perspective, I'll try to look at this from a more interesting lens. So I assume with the character archetype Jonathan has, he's meant to be an incorruptible spirit, thus standard mind tricks and such will not work on him narratively, well that's at least what I would say if the archetypes of the Belmonts weren't the same thing. All the Belmonts are meant to be heroes beyond heroes that are incorruptible, but beings such as Dark Presit Shaft were capable of possessing and taking over Richter Belmont's mind, making it heavily possible for the mind tricks to even work on the likes of Jonathan. However, for the sake of discussion, let's just say Richter just was really unlucky and Shaft caught him off guard. There is another example of a strong soul however almost being affected, Eric Lecarde was almost affected by Dracula's Castle and needed to cast a barrier around himself to protect him, Eric mind you is the same person that fought together with John Morris to take down Dracula during the events of Castlevania Bloodlines. So these are two pretty notable cases of two extremely strong minded incorruptible clans and characters being affected by Draucla. There's also obviously Soleil Belmont though it's safe to say that's moreso due to him being 15. With this in mind, Jonathan resisting the mind based abilities is heavily doubtful but we'll go ahead and say he can resist it to see further what he has to deal with.
Jonathan still has other issues other than just mind-based abilities to deal with once in the Castle, such as being it being capable of rewriting Grimoires. However, due to the fact that it comes from Grimoire of Souls and the video is quite obviously talking about NES Castlevania (even though the Castle would still technically have this ability even all the way back then), I'll leave it at that, Jonathan can potentially survive just entering the castle.
Merman Room
So this is where it gets interesting, Stanpai claims that Jonathan can just walk on water, except there's one major issue here, that isn't regular water. See, water inside of Dracula's Castle is harmful and poisonous, it's even shown to kill enemies instantly upon them touching it, mind you also that Jonathan walking on the water would be more dangerous as he'd leave himself open to sneak attacks from the fish man that jump and pop out of the water. Stanpai didn't really actually bring up the fishmen there for... some reason, but regardless the way he said Jonathan could get through the room actually wouldn't help and instead get him killed, I'll just assume for the sake of going through all points in the video that he can just jump across the room and avoid the fishmen like Simon does.
Giant Bat Fight
Okay so Stanpai somewhat downplays the importance of the Giant Bat and I don't really blame him as I doubt most people really think that in-depth about the Giant Bat beyond "he was a cool first boss", but basically the Giant Bat serves as one of the four pillars that protects Dracula's Castle so it's much stronger then a standard "giant bat", also Hamon wouldn't really do anything to it as it isn't undead, it's just a creature of chaos. Though going by narrative it wouldn't make much sense for Jonathan's journey to end at a Giant Bat fight, so I'll say he goes past the Giant Bat and defeats him.
Jonathan Picks up Spear
Stanpai basically explains it here and there's nothing really wrong with the point, yeah if he manages to defeat a armored knight he'd gain their spear, one could say they burn away along with their spear when they die but that's because a Belmont is hitting them with one of their sub-weapons or the Vampire Killer.
Something weird to me though is he never really mentioned how he'd get around the medusa heads, since there are games that show they can petrify through touch alone. Though since it's not shown in NES Castlevania I'll just ignore this.
Jonathan Would Get Around the Traps and Survive Them
He says it here, also fair, nothing really wrong with this.
Queen Medusa
Alright this is where it gets really interesting, so Stanpai claims that this would be the most challenging thing for Jonathan to face on an emotional level and he's going to struggle to hit her, fair.
He also said Jonathan would instantly know about Queen Medusa because he's a history buff, also fair.
He claims however that Jonathan would be able to deal with Medusa because he's dealt with another user that uses snakes, this is kind of a false equivalence honestly, Doobie and Medusa are two completely different entities and for some reason he links the Doobie fight as the same as the Medusa fight. Not even from a narrative perspective does this make much sense and he never really commented on how exactly Jonathan would get around Medusa's petrification, along with this, Medusa is directly noted in Castlevania lore to be the gorgon queen, so she's not an undead being so hamon wouldn't do anything to her and Jonathan's already existing weakness of struggling to hit a woman makes it where I'd say Jonathan's journey would just narratively end here. There's just too many things going against him for him to realistically win this fight, he doesn't really have any direct means to kill her, he's already going to be reluctant to hit her since she's a woman, and she has the ability to turn him to stone which no piece of JoJo's media has ever shown Jonathan resists. So yeah, I think this with all of the leeway I've been giving him would be the absolute end of his journey as there's no realistic way for him to get past this challenge. However, let's just say that Simon Belmont came by, whipped Medusa and killed her and disappeared so that Jonathan can get past this to see if maybe he could handle the later threats or not.
Foliage
Basically Stanpai claims that Jonathan could use the foliage around the area and his hamon to make a magnet of leaves that let him travel safely to the ground so he doesn't die from large falls, I don't know though if he'd be able to do that while also being attacked but sure I'll go with it.
Mummies
Ok this one I need to rebring up the hamon point, so he claims it'd be a one hit ko because they're undead, issue is that you can use holy weapons on bosses and while it does some damage to them, it's never an instant kill, so to say Jonathan would instantly kill both mummies with hamon wouldn't really be accurate. Also Mummy is another one of the great four pillars the protect the castle so he is considered a very high tier enemy, though Jonathan at least has more of a chance of surviving this encounter then Medusa's so I'll give him a pass here.
Stage 4
So he uses the same argument here that Jonathan can just walk across the water, however I already brought up earlier not only how dangerous the water in Dracula's castle actually is but also he'd leave himself open for merman sneak attacks. I also went to check and as far as I can see, it's never called the River Styx, though the waters in Dracula's castle are so harmful they might as well all be the River Styx. Though we'll assume Jonathan can get past this stage.
Fleaman Point
Alright this is one of the points where I do need to genuinely question the logic, see Stanpai tries to treat the Fleamen like they're little men so they're not strong and he can just run away. Not only do Fleaman catch up with the Belmonts who as we see with the likes of even Leon Belmont can escape the castle before it finishes collapsing, but he also tries to use an example of several athletes grabbing Jonathan and him still running and applying that he can do the same with the Fleamen, the issue here is that this is assuming that the athletes are as strong as the Fleaman, which they're simply not. Even the weakest and smallest creatures of the night can destroy an entire bridge, so their strength is nothing to mock really, they're easily superhuman. Fleaman also can hurt Simon Belmont and other Belmonts, where Belmonts are known as the most powerful and renowned vampire hunters that were even feared for a time because of their immense power. So saying Jonathan can simply outrun the fleaman or shrug off several jumping into him and attacking him is simply just wrong.
As usual though we'll let Jonathan pass this as it's entirely possible from a narrative perspective for him to get through this.
White Dragon
Stanpai makes the claim that Jonathan would instantly kill the white dragon, however the White Dragon is an immortal being immune to pain, it's not exactly the same as the typical undead type being.
I feel this would be another end of Jonathan's journey route, there's no real way for him to kill the White Dragon as it's an immortal creature that's immune to pain.
Though since I did say we'll assume hamon can harm them for the sake of seeing how far he can get, I guess there is a possible chance that the hamon would eventually bypass the immortality as the White Dragon is considered a skeleton.
The Creature & Igor
Alright so this one's also interesting. Stanpai claims that according to the Castlevania lore, the Creature's a zombie. So I uh, went to look through this cause I never heard this once. I went to check the enemy data and no official enemy data ever once calls the Creature a zombie. The only thing that calls The Creature a zombie is the Castlevania wiki listing him as a zombie. If you want to be technical, the only real way it's a zombie is that it's made from several corpses and brought to life so it's a zombie as it's a living corpse, but it's not really the same as the tyical zombie so the logic of Jonathan being able to just one-shot it with Hamon wouldn't work here at all. I kind of wish when people make claims like this in their videos they could reference where they got these claims from cause I couldn't find anything on The Creature being a zombie and it's weird how he said "according to Castlevania lore" cause no lore as far as I can see says that. He's also another pillar of the castle so Jonathan is going to have a hard time fighting and defeating him.
He also tries to compare the Creature to Tarkus however from what I can see of the things The Creature has done like causing an entire room to shake just from hitting it while being chained up mind you and having the entirety of the room shake just from hitting him I don't know if it's a fair comparisson to say Tarkus is as strong as The Creature.
Though we'll say he passes this test too as it's not as outlandish as Medusa.
Regenerating Zombie Skeleton... Things?
This is what Stanpai calls them, they're just red skeletons Stanpai, they regenerate endlessly due to being soaked with blood, not even strikes from the vampire killer can kill them permanently and that thing can render Death mortal.
Overcoming Enemies
He also assumed randomly that holy water has similar properties, don't really know why but even if that's the case, knights don't instantly die to holy water.
Though yeah we'll say Jonathan can get past this.
Jonathan meets Death (Both figuratively and literally)
Alright I'll just say it straight up, this is another end of Jonathan's journey, there's genuinely no way for him to get past Death, but let's hear Stanpai's reckonings first as to why he thinks Jonathan CAN do it.
He claims if Jonathan gets stabbed with one of Death's scythes or sickles he'd use them as a weapon that'd he'd infuse with his hamon and throw it at Death, he claims that Death can be defeated here because he's of the "darkness attribute" and according to Castlevania lore light and holy attacks are super effective against them.
ALRIGHT so a lot to unpack there. Firstly, yes Death does have a natural weakness to holy attacks, however I should note they need to be holy attacks on the level of at least Trevor Belmont. Leon Belmont's holy weapons deal no damage to Death and it's actually shown that even though Leon is using holy attacks it's surprising he even killed Death, with Leon noting he has the power to destroy all related to vampires even Death's divine powers are no exception. This straight up would not at all be the same case for Jonathan, as the vampire killer is such a powered up tool that it's powered up even from the whip of alchemy, which Leon can use to kill vampires such as Joachim Armchester but could do nothing to Walter too. As strong as Jonathan is, the Joestar family do not have the same strength hype statements as the Belmonts do and they're moreso just above the average peak humans in strength, reaching lower superhuman levels, the Belmonts superhuman strength is noted even with other clans existing in series that are blatantly superhumans such as the Danasty's, Belnades, Fernandez, Kischne, and even the likes of Shanoa and Albus. I should also note that Death is completely immortal, as in he is not bound to mortality, so simply holy weapon abusing him would not be enough to kill him. Also on the point of "Jonathan would grab a sickle stabbed into him", he would not. He would be dead. See the first thing Death did upon appearing was instantly kill Walter Bernhard with a single scythe swing, mind you that this is a vampire who noted he would come back due to being immortal. He's also directly noted to be a being that governs the fate of death having the power to govern the end of all living things killing abstractions such as distance and sound. So Jonathan most definitely does not want to get hit by one of Death's scythes, or that will kill him pretty instantly. Also Death is officially canonically a God of Death, Jonathan has literally never dealt with a being on this scale before, the highest thing he's dealt with is Dio who is below beings such as the Pillar Man who would be below Ultimate Kars who would be the closest to a godly figure. Put this together too with Death being an entity that has lived for eons so he has combat experience up the wazoo, this is just impossible for Jonathan to win. He has no real way to kill him, if he touches Death once he dies, and if he gets hit by any of Death's scythes he dies.
So this is another roadblock, though we'll assume again that Simon just came out of nowhere and killed Death and disappeared again.
Jonathan vs. Dracula
So Stanpai uses two games, Super Castlevania IV where Dracula dies to sunlight and Castlevania Portrait of Ruin he dies to sunlight too thus Jonathan can affect him with Hamon.
Major issue here, the two examples listed as after Dracula has been SIGNIFICANTLY WEAKENED, to the point that he was going to die anyways, if you watch the Portrait of Ruin fight before the sunlight hits him he notes that he will come back and have his power fully revived, so he's basically noting he was already going to die, the sunlight just finished him off because he was already completely weakened. We actually see Dracula can be in sunlight. Dracula has stood out in the sunlight as Malus, and there's boss fights with stars in the background where Dracula is seen just fine. Also the likes of Alucard can naturally just stand in the sunlight just fine. So to say sunlight is a weakness of Dracula's is correct but nowhere near enough for hamon to do anything even if we linked it together with the sunlight weakness context of Castlevania. I find it weird also how he doesn't even mention Dracula's different attacks, strategies, and how he admitted Jonathan would just barely win against Death so how would he be well rested enough to even take on Dracula? Honestly there's just no feasible way I see Jonathan winning this fight on his own so this is his official end. Dracula shoots a demonic megido and Simon has to come save the day before Jonathan dies. Maybe they'll have a team attack together though, so there's that.
Conclusion
Overall conclusions on Stanpai's video? I feel there was obvious bias in it, not to say it in a negative context or light but he was clearly well versed on Jonathan while missing a lot of key details with Castlevania and getting some information wrong. This isn't to say the video is bad mind you, I'm just pointing out what I see. And the way I see it, obviously you'd want to write your favorite character going through one of your favorite NES games and clearing through it through the reasons you like him for, his personality, character traits, fighting styles, etcetera. I don't really take the video too seriously since it's clearly meant to be in this light and it's purely hypothetical but it was still an interesting discussion nonetheless. Plus it's fiction so these characters can be whatever they want to be for the sake of a story, remember what good old Stan Lee said.
Though using purely narrative and what the characters have shown, there's several times where Jonathan's journey is just done for good.
This was an overall interesting discussion to make, mostly cause it didn't boil down to borrowing "Dracula 7-C Joanthan 9-B one shot!!!1111!!!1" "Faster Than Light" "Passive Hax" etcetera. Yes using stats Jonathan does just end up dying to the first zombie in the castle cause haha funny Creature of Chaos hax but what's even the point of that discussion, why would I even waste my time making a post on that?
Hell, if Jonathan ever got a crossover in Castlevania that wouldn't even happen anyways so I see less and less of a point of using direct stats in discussions like this. Anyways I rambled long enough, this is my post fully dissecting Stanpai's video, thanks for reading!
