Caesar Zeppeli Quotes

2 quotes from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, each with commentary on what it means and why it stuck.

The source note records the wording check; the commentary is our interpretation. How to read the source links and their limits.

Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.

“I saw that, JoJo. Deal the cards right. Only cowards cheat.”

Caesar Zeppeli, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Source / locator: Battle Tendency episode 5 (Ultimate Warriors from Ancient Times), episode 14 of the 2012 season Wikiquote · Transcription

His grandfather died in Part 1 passing his Hamon to a Joestar, and his father walked out on him and then died in front of him in a Roman ruin without recognizing him. Caesar arrives in the story carrying a family name that has so far meant dying for somebody else's cause, and the first thing the series has him police is whether Joseph is stacking a deck. It looks like a throwaway. It is the whole man in miniature: a Zeppeli treats the rules as the one inheritance that cannot be taken from him, because everything else already has been. Joseph, who cheats at cards with a dozen up his sleeve and cheats at fights the same way, is the exact opposite temperament, and the arc is about which of the two survives Wamuu. It is not the one who plays straight.

Spoiler — from the ending. Tap to reveal.

“Jojo, a bit of advice: Stop screwing around and grow up!”

Caesar Zeppeli, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Source / locator: Battle Tendency episode 7 (Lisa Lisa, Hamon Coach), episode 16 of the 2012 season Wikiquote · Transcription

There is nothing in this sentence. It is the line any straight man says to any clown in any partnership, and quoted alone it could belong to a hundred shows. Its afterlife on fan pages comes entirely from what the story does to the person who says it a few episodes later: Caesar goes into Wamuu's hotel alone, precisely because he could not stand to wait, and dies there with his headband in a bubble of his own blood. So the rebuke to Joseph's immaturity is delivered by the character whose own impatience gets him killed, and the series is aware of the irony. That is a good structural joke. It does not make the line good. What people are quoting is the scene they remember, and the scene is the one where he stops talking.

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