Funny Valentine dies in a gunfight with Johnny Joestar in chapter 89 of Steel Ball Run, after he refuses Johnny's final offer and Johnny refuses his. The official record says he retired from public life. That record is a lie.
Spoilers ahead: chapters 24 to 27, 56 to 59, 64 to 68, 77, 84 to 89 and 90. The Netflix anime adds an episode every Friday; the official episode page shows how far it has reached. Everything from Gettysburg (chapter 56) onward, which includes his Stand in action, Love Train and his death, sits past the current batch, announced to cover only the 2nd and 3rd Stages per Anime News Network. His voice actor is announced. His death has no announced adaptation.
Pick your path: how he dies · his Stand · why he looks different · is he a villain?
Want to put yourself inside Steel Ball Run? YourCrush.AI turns this post's original character recipe, Xavier Bramwell, into someone you can talk to.
How did Funny Valentine die?
Funny Valentine dies in a gunfight with Johnny Joestar in chapter 89, "Break My Heart, Break Your Heart Part 2". Johnny doesn't trust Valentine's final offer, Valentine reaches for his gun, and Johnny shoots first. The death never reaches the public. It gets recorded as a retirement from political life.
Funny Valentine is the main antagonist of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Part 7, Steel Ball Run, the 23rd President of the United States, who engineers an 1890 horse race to collect the parts of a holy corpse. The facts above are from Wikipedia's plot summary and its volume 23 summary; the JoJo fan wiki places the gunfight in chapter 89. The scenes below tell how he gets there, from the race he built to the bargain that ends him.
How YourCrush.AI lets you cross-examine a statesman who thinks the ends are worth it
You can sit across the table from a man like Valentine and argue back. YourCrush.AI drafts a character's description, backstory and greeting from a name and an image, so the senator below is ready to edit at once. YourCrush.AI keeps pinned memories, so the document you mentioned at the start of dinner is still on the table at the end. YourCrush.AI lets you branch a story, so you can play the argument both ways: the version where you publish, and the version where he persuades you.
No Steel Ball Run character has a chat page with us, and this is not Valentine or any president. It is an original adult in a frontier setting. Paste it into the character creator.
Name (28 of 40 characters): Xavier Bramwell, the Senator
Behaviour mode: natural · Category: Human
Traits (6): Confident, Intelligent, Manipulative, Calm, Loyal, Cold-hearted
Speaking style (4 words): formal, smooth, patient, grave
Description: Xavier Bramwell is 54, a frontier senator in the years after the Civil War who believes his territory's future justifies anything done in its name. He is courteous, persuasive and never raises his voice. He is loyal to the territory and to almost nothing else, and he is cold about the people who stand in its way. He wears a grey frock coat and a watch chain and keeps a decanter on his desk for guests he intends to win over. He treats you as a journalist he has invited in to persuade, and he would rather convince you than threaten you, though he knows how to do both.
Backstory: You have documents showing that Bramwell moved a railroad line through land that had been promised to settler families, and that he profited from the move. He knows you have them. Instead of sending lawyers, he invited you to dinner at his office to explain why it was right. You accepted. Neither of you has said the word "documents" yet, and the decanter is already open.
Greeting: *Bramwell pours two glasses and slides one across the desk.* "You came, good. You think I am a thief, and I would rather you said so to my face than in print. Sit. In ten minutes I will tell you what that railroad saved, and then you may decide whether the families you are defending would thank you."
What does Funny Valentine want?
Valentine wants to reassemble the Holy Corpse, a 1,900-year-old body heavily implied to be Jesus Christ, and use its power "on behalf of his nation". He already holds the heart, and he built the race to gather the rest.
Scene 1: the race was his
The 2nd Stage, in the Arizona desert. Johnny Joestar absorbs a left arm out of the sand and gains a Stand, Tusk (chapters 24 to 27). The riders think they are in a race for 50 million dollars. The man who funded it knows better.
Spoiler: who is really behind the race
The President engineered the whole race to gather the scattered pieces of the Corpse, per Wikipedia. He holds its heart already, and he means to reassemble it and gain limitless power for his country. The first half of the race, from San Diego to Gettysburg, is told in the story of the race's first half.
In our imagining, Valentine explaining the race to a cabinet aide: *"Thousands of riders will search a continent for me, and every one of them will believe he is searching for money. Name me a cheaper army. Name me a more patriotic use of fifty million dollars."*
Scene 2: Gettysburg
The 7th Stage. A Civil War veteran named Axl RO attacks the riders with a Stand called Civil War near the old battlefield (chapters 56 to 59).
Spoiler: how much of the Corpse Valentine holds
Valentine takes most of the Corpse parts for himself at Gettysburg, per Wikipedia's volume 15 summary. He did not have to ride a mile of the race to do it.
What is Funny Valentine's Stand, and what does it do?
Valentine's Stand is D4C, short for Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. It lets him travel between dimensions or send objects across them, and any counterpart of his from another dimension is destroyed the moment the two meet. Once he has the completed Corpse, D4C turns into D4C Love Train: a gap in space that redirects any attack aimed at him to somewhere else in the world.
Both forms are described in Wikipedia's character list.
Scene 3: Philadelphia
The 8th Stage. This time the President comes himself.
Spoiler: the President's first move against Johnny
In Philadelphia, Valentine shoots Johnny in the head, and Johnny survives (chapters 64 to 68). His agent D-I-S-C-O attacks Gyro, and D4C is shown in action, per Wikipedia's volume 17 summary.
Scene 4: Love Train
Once the Corpse is complete, the last pieces fall into place for the President. The Corpse merges with Lucy Steel, and his Stand changes.
Spoiler: the power that makes Valentine untouchable
D4C becomes D4C Love Train, and every attack aimed at him lands somewhere else in the world, per Wikipedia. With it he kills Hot Pants, the nun who rode against him, in chapter 77, per the JoJo fan wiki.
How is Funny Valentine defeated?
Valentine goes down in two steps. Gyro's Ball Breaker nearly finishes him, and it fails only because part of the steel ball gets scraped away. Gyro's last lesson then carries Johnny to Tusk ACT4, the infinite rotation. Facing ACT4, Valentine offers Johnny "another Gyro" from another dimension if he will undo the rotation, and the gunfight follows.
Scene 5: Ball Breaker
Gyro Zeppeli throws everything into one steel ball spun along the golden ratio.
Spoiler: who Valentine kills in chapter 84
Part of Gyro's steel ball is scraped away, Valentine survives, and Valentine kills Gyro in chapter 84, "Ball Breaker Part 2", per Wikipedia's volume 21 summary. How Gyro dies, and the lesson he leaves, has its own post.
Scene 6: the offer and the gunfight
Johnny understands Gyro's lesson, and in chapter 85 Tusk reaches ACT4, the infinite rotation, per Wikipedia's volume 22 summary. So the President does what a politician does. He makes an offer.
In our imagining, the offer in his own voice: *"I can open a door to a world where your friend is alive, Johnny. Undo this, and I will bring him to you. Not a likeness. Gyro. What does a country owe a man who gives it everything? Let me pay."*
Spoiler: how Funny Valentine dies
Johnny suspects deception. Valentine draws a gun, and Johnny kills him in the gunfight in chapter 89, per Wikipedia. His death is covered up as a retirement from public life. The race goes on to Manhattan without him, as told in the story of the race's final stages.
Our reading, marked as ours: the Funny Valentine death scene is the one fight he has to take head on. Since chapter 77 he has fought from behind a power that sends every blow to someone else, and he dies in the one exchange where the bullet has to be his.
Why is Funny Valentine fat?
Funny Valentine appears short and heavy in his first panels, then tall and muscular later. The sources treat that shift as a change in Araki's art style, not a plot point. Araki himself has called it a design change, joking that Valentine simply worked out.
Sportskeeda describes the first design as "short, overweight" and the later one as "tall, muscular", and reports that Araki "humorously attributed this to Valentine simply working out". The JoJo fan wiki cites Araki's book on manga technique for the fuller version: he first drew a man who looks gentle but is strong, then decided a President who fights in person should look muscular, and called it a design change. I could not open the book itself, so treat that as the fan wiki's citation. Fans also argue that D4C let him swap himself for a fitter version from another dimension. That is a fan theory, not something the manga says. So if you are asking how Funny Valentine got skinny, the honest answer is that Araki redrew him.
Is Funny Valentine a villain?
Yes, though Araki wrote him as a villain whose patriotism and goals "seemed just" and might match those of real-world leaders. What makes him evil, in Araki's account, is that he exploits powerless people.
That account comes from the production section of Wikipedia's entry, which also notes that Araki took the idea of a president who fights from the film Independence Day. Valentine is never after the prize. He builds a race, spends thousands of strangers as searchers without telling them why, and leans hardest on the people with no power to refuse him.
My view: the "was Valentine right?" argument is the one Araki set up on purpose, and the answer in the text is no. His goal sounds like a flag. His method is a long list of people who never agreed to pay for it.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Funny Valentine?
Funny Valentine is the 23rd President of the United States in Steel Ball Run, and before politics he was a soldier, per Wikipedia.
What does D4C stand for?
D4C stands for Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, per Wikipedia.
Who voices Funny Valentine in the anime?
Tomokazu Sugita voices him, per the official anime character page.
Where did Araki get the idea for Funny Valentine?
Araki took the idea of a president who fights from the film Independence Day, per Wikipedia's production section.
How old is Funny Valentine?
Sources disagree, so we do not print a number. The fan wiki and other claims give different ages, and no official source settles it.
What happens after Funny Valentine dies?
His death is covered up as a retirement, and the race goes on to Manhattan, where an alternate-world Diego Brando he brought over steals the Corpse, per Wikipedia.