Funny Valentine
Also known as: Valentine, President
Funny Valentine is the final antagonist of Steel Ball Run and the alternate-universe President of the United States during the 1890 race. The first JoJo villain to operate from a national-level political office, he organises the entire Steel Ball Run as a covert mission to acquire the Saint's Corpse for American superpower. His Stand D4C (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap) lets him swap between parallel universes, replacing the version of himself in each parallel reality. Valentine is the franchise's first explicitly political villain, the first whose ideology is depicted with sympathetic detail, and the first whose narrative is left morally ambiguous.
Story
The Boy in the Cornfield
Part 7 · c. 1860Funny Valentine's origin sequence is one of the franchise's most affecting villain backstories. As a young boy during the American Civil War, he is captured along with his father by enemy soldiers. The soldiers force the elder Valentine to repeatedly insult the American flag in front of his son under threat of execution. When the father refuses, the soldiers execute him by hanging from a tall pole — explicitly so that the body remains visible from a distance, casting a long shadow across the cornfield where the young Funny is left tied to a stake.
Funny's psychological response is the foundational moment of Steel Ball Run's antagonist arc. He internalises the American flag as a sacred object whose dignity he will defend at any cost. He develops a personal ethic the manga calls "my country first" — a principle that any harm done to non-Americans is morally justified if it removes harm from Americans. By the time he is twenty Funny Valentine has decided that he will become President in order to bring the United States permanent superpower status. By forty-one he has succeeded.
The Steel Ball Run
Part 7 · 1890Valentine's plan is the Saint's Corpse — a relic rumoured to be scattered across the American West, carrying miraculous powers including (in the manga's strongest hint) the redistribution of misfortune between bodies. The Steel Ball Run race is engineered as cover for a covert national-asset mission to recover the Corpse and bring it under American government control. Valentine personally enters the race as a candidate, racing through the back legs alongside the actual sport competitors, with Diego Brando (the alternate-universe Dio) and various Stand-using bodyguards under presidential authority.
Johnny Joestar and Gyro Zeppeli are the only competitors who realise the race is a cover, and the final two hundred miles into New York City become a multi-faction war over the Corpse. Gyro is killed by Diego in the climactic chapters; Valentine is killed by Johnny's evolved Tusk ACT 4 — the Infinity Spin propagating through Valentine's rotating-symmetry body. The manga frames the death with unusual moral ambiguity: Valentine is killed reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance to the flag he believed himself to be defending. He is one of the only JoJo main antagonists whose final moments are written with the cadence of a tragedy rather than the cadence of a defeat.
Powers & Abilities
D4C (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap)
StandD4C is a humanoid Close-Range Stand with the unique ability to traverse between parallel universes. By passing himself and any object he is touching between two flat surfaces (a folded American flag, two photographs face-to-face, two walls), Valentine can transport his body into a parallel-reality version of the United States — instantly replacing the version of himself living in that universe. The receiving Valentine retains the source Valentine's memories; the displaced Valentine ceases to exist.
The combat application is the franchise's most editorially complex Stand power. Valentine can summon parallel-universe versions of himself, his bodyguards, even his enemies — and the parallel-self of a Stand User retains the Stand. The constraint is critical: only the version of a person who exists in only one universe can interact safely with a parallel double. If two versions of the same person touch in the same universe, both are obliterated. The mechanic makes Valentine functionally able to multiply himself, replace himself, and weaponise the destruction-rule against any opponent.
- Universe Swap
- Pass through two flat surfaces and emerge in a parallel-universe version of the location. The receiving universe's Valentine is replaced; the source Valentine arrives with full memories and combat readiness.
- Parallel Self Summon
- Summon parallel-universe doubles of Valentine, his bodyguards, or specific objects into the source universe. The doubles act as a personal Stand-user army during combat.
- Mutual Annihilation Rule
- If two versions of the same person come into physical contact in the same universe, both are obliterated. Valentine uses the rule as an offensive weapon — summoning a parallel-universe double of his opponent and arranging contact to eliminate both selves at once.
- Misfortune Transfer (with Saint's Corpse)
- When combined with the Saint's Corpse relic, D4C gains the ability to redistribute misfortune between bodies — moving incoming harm from Valentine to a substitute target. The combined toolkit is implied to be the franchise's final-form Stand-relic combination before Gold Experience Requiem and Tusk ACT 4.
Relationships
Allies
Cultural Impact
The Patriot Villain
Valentine is the franchise's first explicitly political villain and the first whose ideology is depicted with sympathetic detail. Where Dio Brando, DIO, Kars, Kira, Diavolo, and Pucci are personal-scale antagonists (vampires, serial killers, mafia bosses, religious zealots), Funny Valentine is a sitting head of state with a coherent if dangerous nationalist philosophy. He genuinely believes that any harm done to non-Americans is morally justified if it removes harm from Americans — the "my country first" ethic the manga formalises across his arc.
The reception has been one of the most-discussed in JoJo fandom. American readers have noted that Valentine's ideology reads almost verbatim like late-twentieth-century American foreign-policy rhetoric, despite being written in the early 2000s by a Japanese mangaka about an 1890 figure. Araki has discussed in interviews that the political resonance was intentional — Steel Ball Run was the franchise's first arc written explicitly about contemporary geopolitics, and Valentine was the structural argument.
The D4C Universe Mechanic
D4C's parallel-universe traversal ability is the franchise's clearest articulation of its multiverse worldbuilding. Where prior Parts had implied that JoJo's metaphysics included alternate timelines (DIO's Heaven plans in Part 3, Pucci's universe-reset in Part 6), Valentine's Stand is the first to mechanically deploy parallel-universe travel as a combat ability. The mechanic has been read by long-form JoJo critics as the franchise's structural transition from "one timeline with reset attempts" to "a multiverse with one-way travel between adjacent realities".
The post-Steel Ball Run continuity (JoJolion, The JOJOLands) operates explicitly inside this multiverse framework — the Joestars of JoJolion are alternate-universe variants of the post-reset Joestars, not direct descendants of Johnny. D4C is the mechanism the franchise uses to explain why this is canonically coherent rather than a soft retcon.
The Father's Hanging
Valentine's childhood origin — the Civil War sequence in which his father is hanged from a tall pole after refusing to insult the American flag — is one of the franchise's most-discussed villain backstories. The scene is depicted with unusual restraint for JoJo: no dialogue from the soldiers, no Stand-user interventions, just a long visual sequence of a young boy tied to a stake watching his father's body cast a long shadow across a cornfield.
The sequence is structurally analogous to Dio Brando's London-slum childhood backstory in Phantom Blood, but the moral register is the opposite. Dio Brando's poverty is depicted as producing a calculating predator; Funny Valentine's childhood is depicted as producing a genuinely earnest patriot. The two opposing backstory framings have been read as Araki's most explicit statement that villainy in JoJo is a question of ideological scale rather than personal evil — Dio's villainy is small and personal, Valentine's villainy is large and political, and both are products of formative trauma.
Appearances
- Manga debut
- Steel Ball Run Chapter 39 (2006)
- Manga final
- Steel Ball Run Chapter 95 (2011)
- Anime debut
- No anime adaptation as of 2025 — Steel Ball Run animation confirmed in production
- Anime episodes
- Pending
Trivia
- Funny Valentine is the 23rd US President in Steel Ball Run's alternate-universe continuity. The real-world 23rd US President was Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893); Araki has stated in interviews that he deliberately chose a real presidential office number to ground Valentine's political authority in the period reader's recognition rather than invent a fictional rank.
- His Stand D4C is named after the AC/DC track *Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap* (1976) — making Valentine the only main JoJo antagonist whose Stand is named after a Western song the manga's protagonist explicitly references in dialogue. Johnny mentions the song's title during a Tusk-vs-D4C combat scene.
- Steel Ball Run's manga was originally serialised in Shōnen Jump in 2004 with the Joestar branding absent — the early chapters present Steel Ball Run as a separate Araki manga rather than a JoJo Part. The Joestar branding was restored when the series moved to Ultra Jump in 2005, and Valentine's reveal as the principal antagonist came after the migration.
- Diego Brando — the alternate-universe Dio — is technically Valentine's bodyguard rather than an independent villain across most of the arc. The relationship inverts the prior six Parts' protagonist-vs-Dio template: in Steel Ball Run, Diego is a Valentine henchman; in Parts 1-3, Dio is the principal villain.
- The Saint's Corpse relic that Valentine pursues has no clear analogue in real-world religious history — Araki has stated in interviews that the Corpse is a deliberate fictional invention designed to function as the saga's first non-Stand-Mask MacGuffin. Subsequent post-reset Parts have not reintroduced the Corpse.
- Valentine's family-name reference to the calendar holiday is one of the franchise's most-cited deliberate name puns. The combination of "Funny Valentine" — a beloved 1937 jazz standard — and the explicit American-flag-defender ideology has been read as Araki's most-pointed cultural-naming joke across the entire saga.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Funny Valentine?
Funny Valentine is the final antagonist of Steel Ball Run, the seventh Part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (and the first Part of the alternate-universe post-reset continuity). The 23rd President of the United States in the alternate 1890, he organises the entire Steel Ball Run race as a covert national-asset mission to acquire the Saint's Corpse for American superpower. His Stand D4C can traverse between parallel universes.
What is D4C's ability?
D4C (Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap) lets Funny Valentine traverse between parallel universes by passing through two flat surfaces. He can replace himself between realities, summon parallel-self doubles, and weaponise the mutual-annihilation rule that prevents two versions of the same person from coexisting in the same universe. Combined with the Saint's Corpse relic, D4C gains the additional ability to transfer misfortune between bodies.
Is Funny Valentine a villain?
Yes, but a sympathetic one. Valentine is the franchise's first explicitly political villain — a sitting head of state with a coherent nationalist ideology rather than a personal-scale antagonist like Dio Brando or Yoshikage Kira. His "my country first" ethic justifies harm done to non-Americans as morally acceptable if it benefits American interests. The manga depicts the ideology as both genuinely held and dangerous.
How does Funny Valentine die?
Valentine is killed by Johnny Joestar's evolved Tusk ACT 4 — the Infinity Spin propagating through Valentine's rotating-symmetry body during the final New York City confrontation. The manga frames the death with unusual moral ambiguity: Valentine is killed reciting the American Pledge of Allegiance, and the sequence reads as a tragedy rather than a defeat. He is one of the franchise's only main villains whose final moments are written with explicit dignity.
What is the Saint's Corpse?
The Saint's Corpse is a holy relic that Steel Ball Run is structured around. Rumoured to be scattered across the American West during the 1890 race, the Corpse carries miraculous powers — the manga's strongest hint is that it can redistribute misfortune between bodies (moving incoming harm from one target to another). Valentine pursues it to weaponise it for permanent American superpower; Johnny Joestar pursues it because he believes it can restore his ability to walk.
Who is the 23rd President of the United States in real life?
Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893). Araki deliberately chose a real presidential office number to ground Funny Valentine's political authority in period-reader recognition, but Valentine is a wholly fictional alternate-history Valentine rather than a Harrison stand-in — the manga's political details are fictional and intended as commentary on twentieth-century American nationalism rather than nineteenth-century history.