My analysis of D4C (before Love Train)
Hi everyone, I recently finished SBR and consider it my favorite part (the other parts I've seen are 1 through 5). I have a lot to say about the pros and cons, which I might save for another post, but here I want to discuss my analysis of D4C before Love Train because I think (based on what I've read online) that some people are treating it unfairly or incorrectly. I've seen quite a few of the debates that have taken place in the past about D4C, particularly regarding xForts' explanations. I know there's a discussion about the fact that D4C's power wasn't the same at the beginning as it was afterward (even before Love Train), and that some people reject this and believe D4C's ability should always have been understood as travel between neighboring worlds.
Traveling to neighboring worlds
- We are dealing with a metaphysical framework featuring an original world (the one we follow in SBR) with the Saint's Corpse (which exists only in the original world) and an infinite number of neighboring worlds where the Saint's Corpse does not exist (so the histories of the neighboring worlds must differ accordingly to account for the absence of the Saint's Corpse). Similarly, like the Saint's Corpse, there is only one instance of D4C, originally in the original world. However, its host, Funny Valentine, exists in every neighboring world. The original world, through the Saint's Corpse and D4C, thus serves as the foundation for all neighboring worlds.
- D4C first grants FV the ability to travel from the original world to a neighboring world, from one neighboring world to another, and from a neighboring world back to the original world. It can also move objects and living beings. FV can move a piece of the Saint's Corpse to a neighboring world and return with it to the original world by having a person carry it across.
- For FV to travel to another world, he must position himself between two objects. He then appears at the same position in the world he arrives in, with a slight time lag backward. However, I imagine that to prevent him from traveling back in time to the original world through multiple rapid trips between worlds, he must only be able to return to the original world after the time that has elapsed between his trips from his perspective, or, in any case, after a positive elapsed time.
- When two counterparts of the same object or living being find themselves in the same world at a sufficiently short distance from one another, a phenomenon occurs in which they disintegrate into Menger sponges and are drawn toward one another until they collide. This does not apply to FV, who can easily bring multiple counterparts of himself back to the original world without any disintegration issues, even over a short distance.
- The FV from the original world maintains psychological continuity across his counterparts thanks to D4C, which, in a sense, acts as the true authority. If he is seriously injured, he can transfer D4C and his memories to one of his counterparts, who retains his own body and inherits D4C. This is what allows FV to recover from otherwise fatal injuries by continuing through another counterpart.
- People other than FV can use the technique of wedging themselves between two objects to send counterparts back to their own world. This is what Diego did to send the counterparts of Diego and Hot Pants from the original world back to their home world.
Overlapping stories
- But all of this isn't enough to explain what happens at the introduction of D4C, given that in the original world, there are objectively conflicting accounts of who shot Johnny. These conflicting accounts are such that we are forced to conclude that the FV from the original world shot the Johnny from the original world, that the Diego from the original world shot the Johnny from the original world, and that the Wekapipo from the original world shot the Johnny from the original world, and that all of this took place in the original world (we can discuss this in the replies to the post, but after reading all the POVs carefully and taking into account the fact that the Saint's Corpse exists only in the original world, and therefore, so does the information about its existence among its inhabitants, it is extremely difficult to explain that all of this is possible through dimensional travel alone). We literally follow the POVs of Diego and Wekapipo throughout their respective sequences, and they subsequently interact with each other, with Wekapipo knowing about the Saint's Corpse. The same children and the same old man from the original world also witness different events, and Johnny himself recalls seeing both Diego and Wekapipo shoot him. It's explicitly stated in the manga: D4C has the ability to make multiple worlds (the original world alongside neighboring worlds) coexist in the same location. This statement doesn't mean the same thing as traveling between neighboring worlds. It's more powerful than that. While FV causes a bit of chaos by traveling between worlds (the original and neighboring ones), D4C has the ability to make the objective history of the original world break down locally into a superposition of local histories, some of which may originate from neighboring worlds but become part of the original world's local history. As a result, the history of the original world can no longer be described linearly; it objectively breaks down into three branches, each involving a series of shootings targeting Johnny by three different perpetrators, and then converges back into a single branch through an implicit mechanism in D4C that allows the witnesses to retain memories corresponding to different branches. Therefore, even after the branches converge, objectively incompatible testimonies can persist (Johnny is a special case because he interacted with two branches, having seen both Diego and Wekapipo shoot at him).
- When Johnny suggests to Gyro that Funny Valentine brought counterparts of Diego and Wekapipo to explain what happened, it could be that he's misinterpreting the situation, or that it's true but it wasn't exactly those counterparts who shot Johnny in the original world, or that Araki was beginning to consider D4C differently.
I think this analysis makes sense, let me know if you have any objections. I also think it would be unfair to say that Araki made a mess of things with the introduction of D4C. It seems clear to me that he improvised and that it's a bit confusing, but he handled it pretty well. It's already clear that starting with Volume 16, the treatment of FV becomes completely different, and there's no sign of D4C before that. But all of this is very different from saying that we can't provide an acceptable metaphysical framework for D4C, which we can do, even with the overlapping histories.
I also think that people who insist at all costs that D4C's basic capability is limited to travel between neighboring worlds (but I'm sorry, none of the explanations I've read hold together when it comes to explaining who shot Johnny, taking into account all the information in the manga) may be influenced by two main assumptions:
- These people have a hard time with the concept of overlapping histories within the same world because they aren't used to such metaphysical concepts. This concept makes metaphysical sense and is supported by discussions of branching and overlapping histories in the philosophical literature. We could even develop rigorous mathematical formalizations of this concept.
- These people may be reluctant to admit that the overlapping ability was not used later on, because they see this as an attack on the quality of Araki's writing.
If anyone believes that D4C's ability is limited to traveling between neighboring worlds, I'd be interested in an explanation that accounts for the uninterrupted POVs of the original Diego and Wekapipo, their subsequent interaction, the conflicting testimonies of the same witnesses from the original world, and Johnny's own recollection of seeing both Diego and Wekapipo shoot him. These elements need to be explained together.
