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The Philosophy of JoJo’s Rock Humans
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is home to many great villains and villainous factions. Easily the most controversial is JoJolion’s Rock Humans. This article will contain heavy spoilers for JoJolion, so I don’t recommend you read this if you have not finished it yet.
Many fans love them, however, an equal amount despise them. A main reason for this is that many do not understand the goal of the Rock Humans, and why they committed the atrocities they committed over the course of JoJolion’s story. In this article, I will attempt to make clear what the Rock Human’s true motive was and how their minds work, so hopefully more people will appreciate them.
Before I get into anything, it’s vital to explain what the Rock Humans actually are.
The Rock Humans are a species of human, (Like a Neanderthal or Denisovan). What sets them apart from homo sapiens is that they are silicon based lifeforms, not carbon based ones. They have the ability to transform into stone statues to hibernate, (which is where their name comes from), and every single member of the Rock Human population carries a Stand ability, the main power system of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
Another key difference between us and the Rock Humans is not biological, but mental. Rock Humans completely lack the ability to feel love or empathy. The closest thing they feel to love is either sexual attraction or a connection to a person so they can further their own goals.
JoJolion doesn’t exactly explain the motivation of the enigmatic species, but once you piece together context clues and a speech from the part’s main Rock Human villain, Toru, the overall motivation and goals for the Rock Humans is as follows:
The Rock Humans are a solitary species, often living like wild animals do, naked and alone in the wilderness, hunting and gathering. As a result of this primitive style of living, many Rock Humans do not like technology. The natural affinity regular humans had for innovation and technology allowed their species to grow exponentially, eventually causing them to push into Rock Human territory, stripping them of their habitats and driving them towards extinction.
Rock Humans began to become spiteful and hate humanity with all of their being, and things were about to change with a mystical wish-granting fruit discovered by the Rock Humans: the Locacaca.
With the mystical powers of the Locacaca, the Rock Humans could take back power from humanity, establishing themselves as the superior species and pushing humans out of their land just as humans had done to the Rock Humans. In summary, world domination.
This is when the Locacaca Organization was founded by the Rock Human Toru. He managed to infiltrate a hospital, where he set up shop to experiment and grow the Locacaca to fully maximize it’s potential, funneling money and gaining power as a renowned scientist in the human world. He began to gather employees and other scientist Rock Humans to help him with his research and domination plan, marking the first time the Rock Humans were able to organize as a group.
However, when Josefumi Kujo and Yoshikage Kira created a new, more powerful type of Locacaca, this leads the Locacaca Organization to want it, putting them in conflict with the main protagonists of JoJolion.
Now, Toru, and the Locacaca Organization as a whole, pit themselves against Josuke and the rest of the Higashikata family. This is not out of a personal grudge or feud. Toru’s motives are not purely selfish. He wants to ensure the survival of his species as a whole. He places the survival and success of the Rock Humans above everything else, leaving Josuke and the rest of the protagonists as collateral for his grand plan, which many don’t understand. He views JoJolion’s protagonists as stepping stones, pawns to be used and discarded. It’s nothing personal. He has nothing against them. He simply could not care less for their survival or the survival of humans as a whole.
And that is the basis of the Rock Humans’ entire philosophy: Survival at all costs. The empathy that they lack allows them to commit atrocities like extortion, torture, and murder to ensure that they get to live another day or to better their personal lives. Years of struggle have essentially backed the Rock Humans into a corner, forcing them to adopt a “trust no one” philosophy just to get by.
This lack of any tangible emotion is what makes the Rock Humans so effective as villains. They have no qualms about committing horrors that most humans wouldn’t even consider. In short, all Rock Humans are sociopaths or have sociopathic tendencies.
While some fans hate them and some love them, JoJo’s Rock Humans are here to stay. While some may object to this notion, they are fleshed out and do make sense as villains. It just takes a bit of thinking to understand them.
