#axl ro

See the title page looks waaaayyyy better when Hot Pants is the lady in the group with Johnny and Gyro. Nothing against Lucy Steel, she's a great character, but she's way to young to be the hot chick. I don't know why this even needs to be said when your story has Hot Pants in it.

Speaking of Lucy, her corpse was discovered in Chicago last month. Stephen Steel is distraught, until he gets a closer look and realizes it's not Lucy Steel. The face is the same but it looks like her head on an adult woman's body, which is ridiculous. We, of course, know that this is actually Scarlet Valentine's corpse, and Hot Pants disposed of it after disguising Lucy and Scarlet as one another.

Wait, Stephen should know about this too, since Hot Pants said she would inform him of the switch later on. Anyway, the real Lucy is still with Funny Valentine, who continues to follow the Steel Ball Run race.

This is kind of superfluous, but I always enjoyed this scene of Johnny and Gyro just chilling out by the campfire. they're playing cards, Johnny's ordering a new knife via mail-order catalogue, they got a pot of coffee brewing. I just noticed they're using their saddles as pillows. That's adorable. Just two special boys having a fun night.

Gyro's teddy bear is looking kind of shopworn, so he orders a new one.

Unfortunately, this peaceful scene is interrupted when Johnny spots Hot Pants riding by. They decide to follow her and take back all the Corpse Parts she took from them back at the Mississippi River. I was going to say "Illinois," but I think they were still on the Missouri bank when she mugged them.

They follow HP into Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. She goes in this building, which looks like it ought to be kind of important, but apparently this is just where the townsfolk go to dump their trash. That seems really inefficient. You're just going to have to clean out the building when it gets full, and put it all someplace else. I don't know how they handled garbage in 1891, but I don't think this makes sense.

Anyway, Gyro wants to beat the shit out of Hot Pants and find out what "he" is up to. Johnny knows Hot Pants is a woman but he hasn't told Gyro yet. Even he isn't sure why he hasn't told Gyro, but I'm pretty sure it's because Hot Pants is the hottest woman alive in this story, and he sort of assumed Gyro would figure it out himself a long time ago, so it'd be kind of awkward to explain it now.

So they go inside and find this nun. Johnny recognizes her as Hot Pants immediately, but Gyro is like "Sorry to bother you, sister, but we're looking for a man who ducked into this building. You'd remember him. He was about your height and build. Wore pink lipstick like the kind you have on. Kind of an hourglass figure. Funny thing about his chest, his pecs are really round, not in a bad way. Hell, it's kind of pleasant to look at if you know what I mean. He had a fantastic butt, too. The kind you dream about during long winter nights by the campfire."

Gyro goes to look in the back, and Johnny questions her alone. "Are you a nun? Do you live as a woman in normal life? Have you ever fallen in love?" I'm not sure if Johnny is just confused or he's trying to ask Hot Pants out on a date. Can't blame him there.

Then her clothes open up to reveal a small boy partially merged with her own body. He keeps calling her "sister" and she pleads for Johnny to escape and find the Corpse Parts while he still can. As for herself, she believes she's doomed.

Now, this might be a shock to some of you reading this, but it turns out the strange business going on in this building is because of an Enemy Stand. I know, I was flabbergasted when I found out too. This is "Civil War", and it takes a while to understand what it does, but suffice to say that it's causing Hot Pants to hallucinate her dead brother. Probably the nun outfit too.

The Stand User has assembled most of the Corpse already. Wait, I thought Hot Pants left some of these with Lucy back in Chicago because she couldn't escape with all of them. Oh well.

What's missing are the Skull (hasn't turned up yet), the eyes (Diego and Lucy each have one), the legs (currently inside Johnny's body) and one of the vertebrae (also still inside Johnny).

Let's take a look at the race results so far. The 7th Stage ends at Philadelphia, and the 8th and 9th Stages are considerably shorter. So this is an important Stage to win, because whoever's in the lead in Philly has a strong chance of taking the lead in the final two stages as well. For the race leaders, this could be an opportunity to secure an insurmountable lead in points, but for the guys in the back, this is a chance to come back from behind and win the whole thing.

I've never understood the way the points system works. I think the idea is that even if Baba Yaga crosses the finish line of the last stage before anyone else, he might still lose the race because Pocoloco has more points. And yet, the race time seems to be important as well, which is why the winner of each stage receives a one-hour time bonus. But it kind of doesn't matter. This arc features Hot Pants, who retired from the race during the 6th Stage. Meanwhile, Sloop John B has been slowly working his way up the top ten and I'm pretty sure he hasn't appeared in this manga at all.

What I find more fascinating is that there were something like 3800 contestants back in Sandiego, and now we're down to just 61. Part of what's kept Sloop John B in the hunt is that 98% of the competition is just gone. He doesn't have to outride the others, he just has to outlast them.

Let's get back to Hot Pants. As a child, she took her little brother out to gather nuts when they were attacked by a bear. I guess this confirms that Hot Pants really is from the U.S., since I'm pretty sure they don't have bears in Italy. Anyway Hot Pants didn't even know there were bears in the area, so she had no idea that she needed to bring a pic-a-nic basket to distract any hungry woodland-type forest creatures.

Hot Pants survived, but her brother did not. What only she knows was that she pushed her brother toward the bear, sacrificing him to save herself. I... kind of don't believe that. Even if Hot Pants really did this, I'd chalk it up to an act of extreme panic, and it's hard to imagine anyone holding her responsible for her actions.

But I'd say it's more likely that she created this memory in her mind to process the trauma of it all. She saw her little brother mauled by a bear. That's messed up. The survivors' guilt must have been tremendous, and it's possible that Hot Pants couldn't come to grips with the bear killing him and sparing her, so her subconscious invented an simple explanation for it all: "I pushed him."

She never told her family this, and no one would have suspected in the first place, because they were all so supportive of her after what she went through. But Hot Pants lived with the guilt, and became a nun in an attempt to find absolution. That's why she sought out the Corpse Parts for the Vatican during this race. She thought if she succeeded in this mission and recovered "his" corpse, then "he" would forgive her.

Okay, I'm really saving this for Chapter 67, but.... Arrgh, I don't like how this is laid out. The survivors guilt is fine. HP becoming a cool secret-agent/nun is also cool. HP being a fine foxy lady is very cool, thank you very much.

What I don't like is that she clearly has thrown herself into the Christian faith to assuage her guilt, but no one in the convent ever bothered to explain to her how Christ's forgiveness works. You don't go on a fetch quest like some JRPG character. You confess your sins and receive absolution. This is like Christianity 101. The reader might not be expected to know this, but Hot Pants should have had this conversation with at least four or five clergymen by now.

I can appreciate that Hot Pants' guilt runs so deep that she might not be able to accept such a simple arrangement. It feels "too easy" at times, and that's the point. Christ did the hard part when he died on the cross. His grace is vastly greater than our sins. And yet, Hot Pants might not be able to handle this, and she feels like she needs to go on some sort of mission to "earn" forgiveness. Fair enough. That's good character work.

The problem I have is that the mission Hot Pants has undertaken is to recover the dead body of Jesus Christ. This is a wild idea in its own right, which I'll get into when we get to Chapter 67. Right now, I just want to focus on these two contradictory ideas that Hot Pants seems to be clinging to.

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who died on the cross and was resurrected, will forgive me for feeding my little brother from a bear.

This same Jesus Christ has been dead for centuries, and his corpse has been scattered across North America.

How is Jesus going to forgive you, Sister Hot Pants, when he's dead? She seems to think that there's a still living Jesus somewhere out there, who is still capable of forgiving Hot Pants. And yet, this still-living Jesus apparently cares a lot about the Corpse he discarded over 1800 years ago?

I gotta get back on track. My point is that a nun should have a very, very strong reaction to the idea of Jesus Christ leaving a corpse behind, and Hot Pants doesn't come anywhere close to that. She's not even in the same ballpark. She's not even on the same state as the ballpark. This is like "I picked the wrong religion," stuff, and she just feels bad that she failed to complete her mission.

As for Gyro, he's being plagued by similar memories of his past, like botched executions he performed while training in Naples. Apparently when he would screw up, he'd discard the Steel Ball he was using at the time. So now he sees all these discarded Steel Balls, which he got rid of a long time ago, but they're definitely here, and he's sure they're all his.

So it should come as no surprise that Civil War would have similar effects on Johnny, because we already know he's got guilt from the death of his older brother Nicholas. Johnny believes the mouse that startled Nicholas' horse into throwing him was the same mouse that Johnny released into the woods. Later, he and his dad had a fight over Nicholas's old boots, and his dad disowned him.

Johnny is also haunted by his pet mouse, Danny, the one he thinks caused the accident that started it all. Johnny tries to shoot it, but then he hears a voice speaking in red-letter text. This is "strongly implied" to be Jesus, the same way Hot Pants' breasts and nun outfit strongly imply that she's a woman.

I for one am kind of offended that Araki, a man known to have visited Italy more than once in his life, a man with an appreciation for religious art produced during the Rennaissance, has depicted Jesus without a full beard. Did he run out of ink on this page? Does Araki think the Romans gave him a shave before the crucifixion? He was up there for hours. The stubble would have grown back anyway.

I hope the anime fixes this. None of this mustache crap.

Oh, right. So Jesus tells Johnny that if his hear wavers, he shouldn't shoot. This is repeated a few more times during the arc.

Johnny thinks it's another one of Civil War's hallucinations, and yet this one is different. Jesus promises that a new path will be opened for him if he refrains from shooting.

You know, the other thing I don't like is how the nail holes in Jesus' hands are like cartoon holes an inch-wide. I will give Araki some credit for depicting the lean, rangy physique seen in religious artwork. I can't quite find the spot in his side where the Roman soldier pierced him with his spear. But it might be obscured by the shadow. But I can see plenty of clean-shaven skin on his jawline. This is really annoying.

All right, so Johnny finally pulls himself together and draws a bead on his true target, which is Axel Ro, the Stand User. Unfortunately, this plays right into his hands. The only way to escape the power of Civil War is to wash away the illusions with water, or to sacrifice something. Johnny choosing to sacrifice Axel Ro himself might seem like a clever solution, but it actually just moves the problem. Now Axel is the one who is freed, and Johnny has to assume the burden of Axel's own sins.

What sins, you ask? Well Axel Ro served in the US American Civil War. He was assigned to serve as a lookout, but he quickly turned to drinking to cope with the isolation and dread. When the Confederate troops arrived, he overslept during his watch, and he also failed to light his lantern to alert the nearby town. So lots of soldiers and civilians were killed because the Union Army didn't find out about the attack until later.

Some issues with this tale: I think Axel is describing the Battle of Gettysburg, since this arc takes place in the town itself, and it would just make sense. I'm not a Civil War buff or anything, but I'm looking over the Wikipedia article and I'm not finding anything about a civilian massacre in the town. Then again, the SBR-verse is clearly different from the real world, so maybe in the real world some other Union soldier stayed sober during his watch.

Also, it's goofy how Axel Ro is wearing a World War II helmet. Whatever, man.

Anyway, the point is that by killing Axel Ro, Johnny has only doomed himself to be torn to shreds by the ghosts of the people who died because of Axel's negligence. Axel himself is restored to life, and now he's finally free of his curse, and can sieze the Corpse Legs from Johnny's body.

Johnny desperately prepares another nail bullet, and Jesus appears again, warning him not to shoot if his heart is wavering. Johnny replies that his heart is not wavering, and he knows exactly what to do and whom to shoot.

That's right, he shoots himself. It's a bold choice, but let's see how it works for him.

Surprisingly, this works out pretty well. Remember, Johnny recently upgraded his Stand powers to move the holes created by the things that he shoots. By shooting himself, he has now gained the ability to move through the hole. This is Tusk Act III, as evidenced by how much bigger and beefier the Stand has gotten.

Johnny shoots down Axel again, then makes short work mowing down all of the ghosts. But that doesn't matter. Axel comes to life again and congratulates Johnny for evolving his Stand Ability, but he's still in the same trap. He's still burdened by Axel's sins, and Axel is free to leave with the Corpse Parts.

Except not quite, because Johnny uses his portable hole power to reach through the Civil War dimension and out of the building. He drags the Saint Corpse back through, and Axel can't stop him.

Even Gyro is worried about this. No one is sure if the Corpse will survive in tact if Johnny pulls it through the hole. Gyro thinks he should just let it go, but Johnny is sure of himself and he's locked into this course of action. He'll destroy the Coprse before letting Axel Ro have it.

Desperate, Axel pulls out a knife and stabs through the hole, getting Johnny right in the neck. Axel loses an arm this way, perhaps because the hole collapsed upon Johnny's death?

Turns out this was exactly what Johnny wanted. By killing Johnny, Axel brought the curse of Civil War back upon himself, and now Johnny is the one restored to life. So I guess they're just gonna keep doing this all night, huh?

Well, no. Someone shoots Axel from the doorway, and that takes the fight out of him.

Turns out it's President Valentine himself. He learned of Johnny and Gyro heading off the race course, so he knew they were closing on a new Corpse Part, so he's come to collect them all for himself. It seems like he shot Axel just to eliminate him as a potential threat. He purposely aimed away from his vital organs to as not to kill him right away. And he shot Axel to stop him from attacking Johnny, so there's no sin in that. This means Valentine won't fall under the influence of Civil War, allowing him to flee with the Corpse Parts before Johnny can stop him.