Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
 

So I noticed that there was no general manga thread for Araki Hirohiko's masterpiece of a series..... well, time to change that! ;) Here we can discuss anything Jojo, whether it's your favorite Stand and/or user, favorite fights, etc. Maybe you're one of those folks who're still sore about Araki abandoning Hamon in favor of Stands (although it does sort of return in Steel Ball Run....). Heck, maybe you're even one of those wackos like me who prefers the name "Duwang" over "Morioh"! :p



Anyway, I mentioned this in the anime section, but in case you missed it, SBR has ended this month (and it's a hell of an ending, too. If you want a summary of it there's one here). However, the series shall continue in its eighth installment: JOJOLION!



http://img3.imageshack.us/img3/8592/jojolion.jpg



Yes, this is quite a nice way to celebrate the series' upcoming 25th anniversary indeed. :) I shall return later to further discuss Jojo stuff, but feel free to share your thoughts here first!

Thanks for making this thread! :)

I'm quite fond of this series, and I think it has the best fight scenes of any manga I've read, particularly its emphasis on clever tactics and applications of powers.

Even though this series is popular and influential within Japan (quite a few fighting game characters are inspired by Jojo's cast) A lot of anime/manga fans I've met don't seem to know about this series probably because of its age, the fact that only part 3 was licensed, and the lack of any strong anime adaptations and I would love to see a good anime adaptation of this series. I can imagine how awesome some scenes like the motorcycle chase in part 4 would look animated, and it's already awesome in the manga.

Haven't finished Steel Ball Run yet and I can't read Japanese so I'll have to wait for people to finish translating it, but I enjoy it a lot so far.

^Yeah, it's sad that Jojo isn't that well-known in the west (not to say it hasn't had some recognition outside of Japan, though.... I mean, Araki even had the honor of contributing some of his work to the Louvre after all ;)). Still, even if the rest of the parts were localized to English, they're guaranteed to undergo heavy edits (mainly as far as Stand names are concerned, but there may also be art edits like the dog being changed to a rat during the Death 13 fight as well).....




I also very highly doubt that a decent anime adaption of any Jojo saga past part 3 is possible (and considering how much the Phantom Blood movie bombed, it doesn't look like pre-part 3 adaptions would work, either). While there are several awesome moments that would certainly look awesome animated, much of the series' content is so darned obtuse that I don't think it would flow very well in animated form. However, I'm all for seeing another Jojo videogame being made (there should totally be one for SBR now that the series is over)! :)

I loved Hamon, but Stands allow for more diverse and interesting fights, so I wasn't too disappointed about Araki abandoning hamon. Quite the contrary in fact. Stands are awesome! I was however quite butthurt Joseph (the best Jojo ever!) got shafted in part 3 (why did he give him the worst stand ever and make his hamon completely useless!?), and I'm not even talking about what happened to him in part 4...

About the new Jojo, I'm guessing he'll simply be either the son or grandson of Johnny. He has the star shaped birthmark on his shoulder, so he's definitely a real Jojo.

I guess we can use this thread to discuss SBR too? I didn't even know there was already a thread (which had only 3 posts...).

The series has always been good, but I think that the introduction of Stands was when the series really distinguished itself from other shonen series.

haven't had time to check up on steel ball run yet. time to remedy that soon!

Didn't know Dio is back. that means there is a new type of skill? The last time Dio appeared, stand was introduced.

^There's the spin now, which is more or less a counterpart to hamon. Stands are still very much present of course.

Yeah, I agree that it's disappointing that Joseph got so little action after part 2 (though to be honest I actually rather like Hermit Purple, despite it being one of the weaker Stands). Still, he at least got an awesome catchphrase (OH! MY! GOD!), and there was a particular scene involving him that's one of my all-time favorite Jojo moments, period (I'm referring to his haggling match with Steely Dan).


But then there's part 4 Joseph..... ugh. :(




Yeah, Dio's back in SBR, but he's not the same one from the previous 6 sagas (since SBR takes place in an alternate universe that resulted from the final battle in Stone Ocean). However, despite him being an alternate Dio, he's pretty much the same in personality. In fact, you can pretty much think of SBR as a total re-imagining of Phantom Blood (takes place around the same time period, and the two main characters are even a Joestar/Zeppeli combo)!



And yes, as Kanon said, Stands still exist in SBR (though their origins obviously differ from that of the "core" Jojoverse, due to the setting). However, there's another power known as the "spin", which is this saga's take on hamon/ripple. And while there's a lot of awesome characters here, I'd definitely say that SBR's worth reading just for Funny Valentine alone. I can guaran-damn-tee you that his "napkin" speech will make you believe...... ;)

Fixed. Nyohoho~!

Valentine's cool too, but Gyro's on another level IMO. He's definitely my favorite character in SBR, and one of my favorite Jojo character of all time.

New chapter came out...

Oh, don't get me wrong.... I love Gyro (one of my top fave Jojo characters ever), but Funny just has a certain.... charisma about him that makes him so memorable (though again, you'd have to wait until his napkin speech to realize this). And sure, his Stand may be all kinds of broken, but D4C's still awesome, as well (and despite how overpowered it is, it still doesn't quite come off as being as cheap as goddamn GER.....).


....Though as much as I love Funny, he's still not quite my top favorite post-part 3 villain (that would be Kira ;)).


And hey, since we were talking about Gyro, why don't I post one of his best moments:







^Scenes like the above are pretty much one of the main reasons why I love Jojo in general. :p

Nothing is as cheap as GER :p

The main villain's stand being broken is pretty much a given. I'm always looking forward to finding out how the heroes will manage to defeat those invincible stands. That's why the end of part 5 was so disappointing. I expected the gang to beat King Crimson with their smarts, not thanks to some goddamn Deus Ex Machina...

Yeah, seriously. I just can't help but feel that Araki handled the final battle way too sloppily. The only part I really liked about Diavolo's defeat was the whole INFINITE DEATH LOOP thing, but that was about it. And GER's existence is all the more ironic considering that Araki wrote Fugo out of the story because he considered his Stand (which was awesome) to be way too overpowered.... :rolleyes:



Actually, to be honest...... I found part 5 as a whole to be pretty disappointing. When I first heard about it I was actually looking forward to it a lot because of the whole mafia theme. But I dunno..... I just wasn't really feeling it. I didn't really care for most of the characters (the only good guys I really liked were Bucciarati and Mista), I found a bunch of the Stands uninteresting, and even the villains were for the most part boring (ESPECIALLY Diavolo...... ye gods, even his crazy polka-dotted hair can't save him from his total vapidness....). The plot wasn't really doing it for me either, since I was expecting to see Giorno go on a bunch of dirty "jobs" during his stint in Passione (while secretly doing good deeds using his Stand powers), but..... for some reason, most of the series ended up being some wacky escort mission involving a semi-useless character (Trish was literally useful for just ONE fight). And then there's Polnareff's return, which was just..... bleh (though I find it kind of hilarious that he now has to be a turtle for the rest of his life). *Sigh*, just a huge, huge, disappointment (though it still had a few awesome moments here and there). And sadly, this wouldn't be the last time a mafia-themed manga disappointed me (*coughhackreborncough*).....



But funny thing: Stone Ocean had pretty much the opposite effect on me. See, part 5's blunders pretty much lowered my expectations for part 6 (and I will sorta kinda admit that the protagonists' being a female had a bit of a hand in that too (insert cries of "OMG SEXIST" here)), but.... the whole saga turned out to be so dang surreal and (at least to me) fun that it instantly shot up to one of my top fave Jojo sagas. The fact that it was part prison-drama helped too (I'm kind of a sucker for those), and I really liked the characters and enemies a lot (Dio's 3 "lost" sons were way more interesting than Giorno ever was throughout the whole of part 5, IMO). Personally, I'm kinda hoping that the upcoming Jojolion will be as wacky and surreal as Stone Ocean was...... :p

Well, the whole series is pretty crazy and surreal, I mean, it is called Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. :)

I also think Part 6 is one of the better arcs. Female characters for every arc until part 6 have mostly been underrepresented or never given much chance to actually shine. Part 6 remedies that with Jolyne (who I think is a pretty badass heroine), Hermes, and a few more female antagonists compared to previous arcs. And the final battle is one of the more surprising ones I've seen in fiction. It goes against storytelling convention in that

True, but Stone Ocean pretty much ups the ante in the weirdness factor severalfold. ;) Sadly, it's also for that very reason that a lot of people don't like that particular saga...... :(




Yeah, I kinda alluded to this in my previous post, but I really like Jolyne. She turned out to be surprisingly badass and just a plain likeable character in general (though you probably wouldn't think so at first since the very first scene of the saga literally involves her complaining about a prison guard watching her masturbate.....). Hermes is cool too (though I'm like 95% certain that she's actually a man :p). Actually, the only protagonist character that I have mixed feelings about is Anasui. It's one thing that Araki magically switched his gender (and even how his Stand power works), but his obsession with marrying Jolyne was kinda..... disturbing, to say the least (especially when you remember the reason why he was incarcerated in the first place.....). But hey, I'm still amused by his wacky attempts to woo Jolyne, and Diver Down's a pretty damn cool power (which he used in many creative ways!).



As for the final battle.... as with the rest of the series, I love it because it's so out of left field. It's also pretty cool that the ending wasn't exactly "happy" or "sad", but somewhat bittersweet. Truly memorable, indeed.....

Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora Ora!!

Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda Muda!!

This is one series that I have to get around to reading someday. I've only seen the OVA for part 3 which I greatly enjoyed.

Favorite character would have to be Joseph Joestar (OH MY GOD! :D). As an old man he was badass, so I can just imagine how powerful he was back in his prime in part 2. In general, part 3 had such a likeable cast.

Joseph doesn't have a stand in part 2 (stands are first introduced in part 3), but Joseph's really awesome in part 2 as he comes up with some clever and creative strategies to win. He can even predict what his opponent's going to say next, and any time he does this means epic ass kicking ensues. He's my favorite Jojo male lead for this reason.

Well, just bumping the thread to remind everyone that Jojolion (part 8) is coming out next week! :D Definitely can't wait to see how this one starts off! There is one particular thing I'm curious about, though:

^^



Is there any info on what time period Jojolion will take place? I wonder what kind of role

I'm excited, and I'd like to share with everyone something special to honor this moment.

Jojolion's first chapter (raw) is out. It's confusing as hell...