Daniel J. D'Arby

"My name is D'Arby, D-A-R-B-Y. The "D" has an apostrophe. (̺わたしの名はダービー.  . の上にダッシュがつく.)"

- D'Arby introducing himself,

Daniel J. D'Arby (ダニエル・J・ダービー) is a tertiary antagonist featured in the third part of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders, specifically the "D'Arby the Gambler" story arc.

D'Arby is an expert and inveterate gambler, and his Stand, Osiris of the Egypt 9 Glory Gods, can steal souls. He meets the Joestar group in Cairo and tricks them into wagering their souls in various gambles. D'Arby is also Telence T. D'Arby's older brother.

Appearance
D'Arby is a man of average to above-average height and slim to middling build.

He wears dark hair of middling volume, flowing slightly back and apart from his face, and a trim mustache of medium length. A light surface trails from the bottom of his eyes to points aside his mouth; scored by thin, black, horizontal lines.

He wears a light shirt, dark tie, and a vest of a medium color, printed with spirals.

Personality
"I think gambling is the same as social relations... it's a game of fakes and cheats. The one who cries first is the loser."

- Daniel J. D'Arby,

Daniel J. D'Arby exhibits an affable but sly, knowing character. D'Arby first and foremost character trait is his love of gambling. He states that he lives for the thrill of gambling (which he recognizes as worthless). This love of gambling is complemented by his enjoyment for cheating, and he proudly admits that cheating is one of his greatest skills shamelessly rigging every game he's seen participating to while justifying himself by claiming that if the cheat isn't exposed, it is "fair" game.

His addiction to gambling is such that he can remember specific instances of when he gambled on one. Moreover, D'Arby developed a philosophy comparing gambling to social life, claiming that like gambling, it revolves around fakes and cheats. According to him, those who are stupid enough to be cheated simply deserve it and have no right to complain, exhibiting a belief in a form of social Darwinism. In contrast, D'Arby readily accepts that Jotaro Kujo broke his finger when the student saw through one of his tricks as his punishment.Therefore, D'Arby has also great pride and confidence in his ability, as he calls himself the greatest gambler in the world. D'Arby reveals himself as soon as he wins Polnareff's soul and openly challenges Jotaro's group. When his pride is on the line, D'Arby outright states that he isn't battling the Joestar Group for his master DIO but for his pride as a gambler. During their poker game, D'Arby didn't hesitate to taunt Jotaro through harmless commentaries during their poker to better rub his first victory in his face. However, when the pressure of having to gamble information on The World while Jotaro erased any certainty about his hand proved too much to handle, D'Arby went mad as his fear for DIO’s wrath was proven greater than his mental fortitude. D'Arby's pride in his skills also translates in him amassing the souls of his victims as poker chips and collecting them in a book to admire them later.

D'Arby seems to hold some pride in his family name, making the effort of spelling it to the Joestar group and being angered when Joseph Joestar persists in calling him by the wrong name (which would be perceived as a grave insult to Japanese audiences), though this may have been part of his plan.

Stand
D'Arby's Stand is Osiris, of the power to extract a target's soul when they sense defeat, typically after a game or bet with him; after which it is compressed as one or more.

Gambling
Gambling and cheating: With a flair for deception, D'Arby is a skilled professional gambler, confident in his ability to prevail in any type of game, with his forte being poker. D'Arby has an exceptionally keen mind when it comes to cheating. He not only made sure that a whole bar was rigged in his favor when he played against the Joestar Group, but could also think of a way to cheat on the spot when playing against Joseph.

Sleight of Hand: D'Arby has exceptionally fine motor skills and sense of touch, enabling him to perform cardistry. He is nimble and precise to the point that he can figure out which page of a book he is on just by touching it with his fingers, and he's able to recall the exact order of cards in a deck after shuffling it. D'Arby performs card tricks masterfully, with Jotaro being able to spot his second dealing only through Star Platinum's enhanced perception.

Background
Daniel J. D'Arby was born around 1958 and grew up alongside his brother Telence T. D'Arby.

D'Arby is a man who seems to have a predatory desire for tricking people into his seemingly innocuous games just to steal their souls with his Stand. He then begins goading the loser's friends and family to try winning back the soul, giving him even larger winnings. With this, he has collected several souls, including those of the Moor Family. He shares this interest in collecting souls with his younger brother, Telence, though D'Arby has no interest in keeping the souls conscious in captivity, instead of having them in a deep sleep inside his collection. In addition, his collection is meticulously detailed, with every soul's name listed, as well as area and date of capture.

At some point in the past, D'Arby had tried to hit on his brother's girlfriend, prompting Telence to savagely beat him up. D'Arby would never challenge Telence due to his ability to read minds.

When Daniel and his brother met DIO, Telence was the first to become his devoted servant. However, Daniel would rather remain as DIO's equal unless they gambled in a one-on-one game and thus DIO challenged him to a game of poker. At first, DIO brought up that he heard Daniel was called "Danny" when he was a kid. Thinking of the name made DIO feel like he wanted to find someone with the name "Danny", tie them up with wires, throw them into a box, and then watch them burn alive in a furnace. He threateningly asked Daniel whether this was really his childhood nickname, but Daniel hesitantly denied saying he was always called D'Arby. Afraid but regaining his composure, D'Arby agreed to DIO's challenge and thought to himself that it would be an easy win for him since he had rigged the cards he dealt to place five aces and a joker in front of him, whereas DIO was given a worthless hand.

At first he thought of DIO as an amateur, letting his disappointment with his cards show. However, when he took a look at his cards, D'Arby was shocked to see a worthless combination of random cards. He then saw bloody fingerprints on the back of DIO's cards and discovered it was his own blood, with each of his fingernails being thinly vertically sliced. D'Arby realized that somehow DIO managed to switch their cards right in front of him. Worse, DIO then showed his cards, which were the worthless ones right in D'Arby's hand. DIO had switched their cards again mid-speech without D'Arby having any idea of DIO's methods. Appreciating how composed D'Arby looked while he was cheating, DIO took pity on him and lets him win. However, he told D'Arby to consider this victory a loan, ordering him to never lose a match again with a sinister, murderous look. D'Arby severely panicked upon seeing DIO's otherworldly power, realizing anything he could do was useless. Thus, he was frightened into servitude by DIO.

Stardust Crusaders (1989)
The Joestar group encounter D'Arby while searching Cairo for DIO's mansion. Initially, the heroes come to a bar he is sitting in to ask the barman about DIO's Mansion shown on one of Joseph's Spirit Photographs, without success. D'Arby tells them he knows the location of the mansion but refuses to share the information for money. Instead, he suggests that the win the information from him in games of chance. He first quickly sets up a game to see which one of two pieces of beef a nearby cat would take first. An impatient Polnareff accepts his bet, as well as the condition that Polnareff bets his soul in return, thinking it is all nonsense. D'Arby wins the bet and takes Polnareff's soul with his Stand, Osiris, as well as revealing himself to be one of DIO's men and the owner of the cat involved in the game.

Because of his Stand's nature, the Joestar group had to beat him at his own game to win back their friend's soul. Joseph tries outsmarting D'Arby in a game where they put coins in a glass of liquor until someone loses by causing the glass to spill over, but D'Arby turns out to be the better cheater thanks to a piece of melted chocolate under the glass. Jotaro then challenges D'Arby at poker, which the gambler comments on is his strongest game. After Jotaro foils his attempt at second dealing by breaking his finger, D'Arby is visibly shaken and declares that he is no longer fighting for DIO, but for his pride as a gambler. He splits Polnareff's and Joseph's souls into five chips each for them to use. They then get a nearby boy to deal the cards for them. Jotaro loses with his pairs of eights and nines to D'Arby's queens and jacks. As it turns out, D'Arby has the entire café and "everyone within a stone's throw of it" on his payroll. He confidently tells himself that no matter who Jotaro picks to deal the cards, he will only get bad hands. In the second round of the game, Jotaro refuses to look at his cards, saying he will play with the ones he has. D'Arby is disturbed, but dismisses Jotaro's decision as a cheap bluff. However, Jotaro then keeps D'Arby with his remaining "soul chips", as well as Avdol's and Kakyoin's souls, without a single twitch. This, along with Star Platinum fetching Jotaro a cigarette and a drink without D'Arby noticing at first. D'Arby's thus begins to wonder if Jotaro could have used his Star Platinum to cheat and switch the card. Despite his own four of a kind, kings, D'Arby is nervous about the outcome of the game.D'Arby decides to accept Jotaro's challenge and tries to call, but then Jotaro raises his mother's soul, demanding D'Arby meet his raise with information on DIO's Stand. This causes D'Arby to panic, knowing that if he were to tell, DIO would have him killed for betraying him. D'Arby tries to force himself to call Jotaro's bet, but he falls apart completely and becomes a hysteric mess, admitting defeat in his heart. Polnareff, Joseph and the hundreds of other souls D'Arby had collected over the years are freed from his collection.

After D'Arby's defeat, Jotaro mentions how strong of an opponent he was, and that they were lucky to defeat him as he could've beaten all four of them.

Creation and Development
Hirohiko Araki wanted to include battles that didn't just boil down to fistfights, given the evolution from Ripple to Stands. He needed to add some variance to Stand abilities, as he wanted to keep the battles between the Joestar party and DIO's minions fresh by switching between one-on-one and team battles. Although he previously included a gambling battle in Cool Shock B.T., one of his earlier works, he wanted to include one again in the form of a Stand battle. He also mentions that he created Daniel J. D'Arby's character to have a showdown between a well-established cheater like Joseph Joestar and someone else who could be his equal. The coin game D'Arby plays against Joseph is inspired by the 1968 movie Farewell Friend / Adieu l'ami by Jean Hermin where it is used multiple times by Charles Bronson's character.

Araki thinks of gambling as a game where people bet on their own soul and pride, and that the money and chips used are representations of souls. He says that one can only win or lose in a gamble, and with D'Arby as the sole challenger he wanted to give him the mental fortitude and cunning to serve as a challenge to Jotaro as well as instill some fear. He also likes coming up with ideas for gambling because people can turn almost anything into a bet.

Araki enjoyed drawing the D'Arby battle, and also liked the character, so he reused the character's concept in the form of Telence T. D'Arby. He didn't want to reuse the poker concept, so he decided to make Telence play video games instead. The gambling battle also led to Josuke and Rohan's dice battle in Part 4, and Josuke and Jobin's beetle battle in Part 8. Overall, Araki thinks that introducing the D'Arby brothers and Oingo Boingo brothers in Part 3 separated the series from other manga as it allowed him to add more variation to battles.

In the TV anime, the animation for his hand movements was motion captured from an actual magician.

Gallery
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