Battle Tendency - Plot

Plot

The second arc takes place in 1938 and follows Joseph Joestar, the grandson of Jonathan Joestar, as he fights vampires and ancient super beings with some help from a cybernetically enhanced Nazi and the Italian grandson of Will A. Zeppeli.

Joseph moves to New York with his grandmother Erina and seems to have inherited the power of the Ripple, as he has a natural ability to use it. When old family friend Robert E. O. Speedwagon is reported dead in Mexico, Joseph takes it on himself to go check it out. His curiosity is piqued when he is attacked in New York City by Speedwagon's former ally-turned-foe Straizo, who has used the stone mask upon himself to become a vampire. After an intense battle, Straizo reveals to Joseph that a mysterious "Man in the Pillar" is about to be awakened before proceeding to kill himself by creating a Ripple within his own body. When he goes to Mexico he discovers a secret underground facility where the Nazis are trying to revive a man who seems to have been trapped in a stone pillar for 2,000 years. Here Joseph meets the Nazi Rudol von Stroheim.

The Nazis are successful in awakening the man, who is christened "Santana" before he kills most of them. Joseph and Stroheim battle Santana and manage to defeat him, though Stroheim is fatally wounded.

Joseph then heads to Rome, where three more "sleeping pillar men" have been discovered. There, he meets Caesar A. Zeppeli, a trained Ripple user near his age and who is a descendant of Will A. Zeppeli, who was the mentor of Jonathan Joestar. Caesar blames Jonathan Joestar for killing his grandfather with his incompetence. They find themselves present when the three sleeping men awaken after their 2,000 year sleep. These creatures are something like vampire gods; that created the stone mask that turned Dio into a vampire in Part 1. They are named Wamuu, Esidisi, and Kars, and their goal is to find the "Red Stone of Aja", which, when used with a stone mask, will allow them to become ultimate life forms.

As they are extremely powerful, Joseph talks them out of killing him. Wamuu and Esidisi both give him "wedding rings" which are internal time bombs set to release poison into his blood if he doesn't defeat them within a month. Joseph realizes that he'll have to train and so Caesar introduces him to his master, Lisa Lisa. She and her servants, Messina and Loggins, began to train Joseph.

However, before the month is up, Esidisi finds out that Lisa Lisa has the Red Stone of Aja and comes to take it. Joseph uses his new skills to defeat Esidisi, thus earning the wrath of Wamuu and Kars (who previously thought of him as an amusement rather than a threat). While retreating Joseph is reunited with the supposedly deceased Stroheim, who has been rebuilt by Nazi science as a powerful cyborg, but Stroheim's machine body is quickly cut in half by Kars, who uses the "light mode" (a blade that extends from his arm spins so fast that it reflects light in irregular fashion giving the illusion of a glowing sword).

In Switzerland the group discovers the location of Wamuu and Kars. Knowing their vulnerability to sunlight, everyone is eager to face them during the day except Joseph. Caesar can't accept this and he and Joseph fight. Caesar's father disappeared during his youth, growing up hating his father, he later finds him. Caesar is eager to kill his father who has abandoned him, but when following his father to the base of the Colosseum where the three monsters slept, Caesar tries to touch a gem that is embedded in the wall. His father pushes him out of the way and saves Caesar from the wall's trap. Caesar's father is quickly consumed by the flesh of the monsters in their dormant form and leaves a final message to him, telling him to inform Lisa Lisa that the three monsters in the wall will awaken soon.

Going to where Wamuu and Kars are, Caesar is soon greeted by Wamuu and they fight. It appears that Caesar has the advantage as he nearly kills Wamuu with Ripple and refracted sun light, but Wamuu quickly counters with his "holy sand storm" and Caesar loses his ability to use the Ripple. When Wamuu, satisfied with the victory, tries to leave, Caesar jumps up and tears out his lip piercing that contains the antidote to Joseph's poison ring. Before he dies from being crushed by a stone slab, Caesar uses his final Ripple to make a bubble out of his blood containing the antidote ring. Wamuu sees this but, respecting Caesar as a valiant warrior, lets the bubble float away. When Joseph and Lisa Lisa arrive too-late, Joseph finds the bubble and vows not to drink the antidote until he personally has beaten Wamuu.

Joseph then defeats Wamuu in a deadly chariot race and the final showdown against Kars begins. First keeping his promise, Kars fights Lisa Lisa and though he promised to fight her one-on-one, he sacrifices one of his weaker vampires and is able to defeat her. Angered by Kars' trickery, Joseph challenges him as looks upon Joseph as a weak Ripple user and not even worth fighting seriously. All seems lost against Kars until Stroheim (who has been repaired) and a specially trained SS kommando equipped with ultraviolet projectors which mimic the effect of sunlight on vampires arrive to help Joseph, along with the-presumed dead Speedwagon and a similarly equipped team of Speedwagon Foundation men. It is here that the reader finds out that Lisa Lisa is the biological mother of Joseph. After using the powers of ultra violet rays of light it seems that Kars has been killed. But Kars was not only able to put on a stone mask that he had been hiding on his person, but also fused with the powers of the Red Stone of Aja and becomes the ultimate life form: able to shapeshift at will, to mimic the powers and capabilities of every known life form (be it plant or animal) and even to detach parts of his body using them a remotely controlled drones. After quick-thinking, Joseph devises a plan and sends Kars into an active southern Italian volcano. But Kars was able to cover himself in a mineralized shell-like armor and protect himself from the molten lava. It once again looks like the end, until the sicilian volcano erupts and sends both Joseph and Kars flying. Kars is sent into space and before he can assume a form capable of returning, a defense mechanism of his kicks in, freezing his body solid, making him unable to travel back to Earth.

Weeks later the group of Erina, Lisa Lisa, Messina, and Speedwagon hold a funeral service for Joseph Joestar, but Joseph arrives interrupting their mourning. He explains that after falling back down from the sky he ended up in the Mediterranean where he has been helped by some local fishermen. After finding and marrying Lisa Lisa's assistant, Suzi Q, he returned to America to find his friends. He is annoyed to find out that Suzi had not sent them the message informing that he was still alive. Fifty years later, in 1989, an aging Joseph hurries onto a flight to Japan from John F. Kennedy International Airport in order to visit his daughter and grandson.