Pretty sure nobody's made a JoJo thread in the TV board, so I'm opening this for discussion about JoJo's. I also opened a poll.

 

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Thread

My favourite parts are Phantom Blood up to Stardust Crusaders. Dio and the Stone Men really tied together each generation of that arc.

While the saga is not really my favourite, I really appreciate Hirohiko Araki's fabulous design concepts and the chessmaster strategies his characters think up.

Spoiler

I feel that from Diamond is Unbreakable and onwards trying to connect the family together and coming up with more bizarre set pieces was getting too difficult for Araki.

He made Josuke Joseph's illegitimate son, then gave Dio four kids, one of whom just chilled in Italy and the other three got killed off.

And he went from stopping time to time travel, multiple realities and altering reality. There's a Jojo now who's made out of different characters and has four testicles!

 

Spoiler

Yeah, coming from a place of loving Part 4's character and story, it is a huge stretch, and in some ways lessens Joseph because it means he had an affair after marrying Suzie Q, and didn't support his kid or the mother. Character flaws are nice, but I think Joseph could have done without it.

 

I've been marathoning the entire series since Netflix got Part 3 earlier this year. Just caught up with JoJolion #100 the other day.
My favorite parts are Battle Tendency and Steel Ball Run, particularly for Joseph's wit and Gyro and Johnny's camaraderie.

Part 4 kinda hurt. I mean I liked it in the end, but Joseph's my favorite character, so that reveal felt like a kick to the teeth.

 

Part 2, closely followed by part 4.

 

My favorite part is Part 4: Diamond is Not Crash

• It's a beautiful slice of life show with fun shonen action, some of the best stands in the series, and its only major flaw is I want to see all of the characters more often but they only get an episode or two then they go into the background or Morioh. It also easily has the best villain in the series, Kira Yoshikage who is terrifying in how both relatable and deranged he is. There is a reason my first SAS was:

My Parts Ranking (all parts are great, this is just my preference):

1. Diamond Is Unbreakable
2. Battle Tendency
3. Jojolion (haven't fully read)
4. Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan
5. Steel Ball Run (haven't fully read)
6. Stardust Crusaders
7. Purple Haze Feedback
8. Vento Aura
9. Phantom Blood
10. Stone Ocean

@ThatGuyCalledBlaster Get over here!

 

Jojolion started fantastically. Up through maybe the first 12 or so volumes, I might have considered it my third favorite after parts 2 and 4. But Araki should have ended it years ago now. It's been dragging on with very little point for a long time.

 

You have a point but I disagree. The problem is more the publishing time than the pace. It has much more of a part 4 style with each mini character arc slowly inching towards the big threat. Also, it so far is nowhere near as long as part 3 (152 chapters) or part 4 (174 chapters).

I'm just curious if you have been keeping up with Jojolion recently? The part seems to be coming close soon with the references to rock people reappearing and the ending of the "Wonder of U" arc coming to a close, I'd say Jojolion probably has about 2-3 more years. The problem is the publication speed as parts 1-6 were weekly while parts 7 & 8 are monthly. If this was weekly, it probably would have been done back in 2017.

 

I think it's more a problem with content. The interesting part was all the mystery revolving around the Higahikata family. Once they kind of dealt with that and started to transition to more unrelated outside threats, my interest kind of dried up.

I'm living in Japan and have been buying the volumes as they come out (haven't bought vol. 24 yet, though). And where once it was super mysterious and compelling, now it feels more like a rambling thing going nowhere, that Araki is just continuing so he doesn't have to come up with the next thing or retire. My wife was also super invested in this series at the beginning, but she finally started to get bored with it dragging out and she gave up on it about 4 volumes ago.

I agree to an extent that the monthly release schedule hurts the pace a little, but on the other hand, each monthly chapter is longer than the old weekly ones, so it balances out a little. I think what bothers me is that Jojolion started as a more adult series than parts 1-6, which was cool since those of us who have been reading Jojo since 1987 are now much older, but over the past several volumes, it's been devolving back to shonen manga.

 

Isn't JoJolion in its endgame, though? Everything since

Spoiler

Tooru was revealed to be the main villain

has been super fucking compelling.

I actually don't even think JoJolion will continue one for another year. I feel like we're in the final battle right now. It has gone on for a while but aside from maybe some of the early Rockhuman villains I never really felt it lost its momentum. It's also probably the biggest brick to the nuts for everyone who's joked "Araki forgot" given it's tying up plot points from fucking years ago.

Also, to answer the thread title my favourite is Part 4, easily. Best JoJo, best villain, best main Stands, best story, best personality. I do feel the anime greatly improves on it, though, specifically in pacing and story order. (like having Aya show up before she's used as a plot device, making her feel slightly less hi-and-die) But the big thing for me is that Part 4 is also where you feel Araki finally feels confident in his storytelling. Part 1 was the original, clumsy and experimental, with a flat protagonists and uneven pacing but still filled with that style and emotion. Part 2 fixed the protagonist with the infinitely boisterous and entertaining Joseph, but felt like it had the weakest overall story and villains that weren't a satisfying follow-up to Dio. Part 3 is, well, Part 3: bold, exciting, well-rounded, and introducing Stands. Part 4, however, just feels like everything at its peak. I don't really enjoy comparing JoJo parts because it always becomes a fight over which did things worse, which is a disservice to the strengths and vision each part has. I also find they're hard to compare given how each part feels entirely different from the other, but Part 4 is the part I feel like Araki didn't struggle at all conceiving. It's clear, consistent, and doesn't at all feel uncertain of what it's doing.

My second favourite part, and what I almost picked because I feel like nobody else will, is the forever misunderstood Part 6. It was the perfect conclusion to the original universe, and has one of the strongest casts IMO. I can't wait to see David Productions give it the same treatment as Part 5, because while I liked Part 5 I didn't feel like I really appreciated its story and characters until the anime. (TBF I started reading the bad scanlations before switching to more recent ones, and after re-reading it I like it a lot more) If they can do that to a part I liked, I can't wait to see what they do with a part I love. Also, they should get "It's a Hard Knock Life" as the outro.

My rankings for each part would be:

Diamond is Unbreakable
Stone Ocean
Steel Ball Run
Stardust Crusaders
JoJolion
Battle Tendancy
Vento Aurero
Phantom Blood

But that makes it sound like I don't like virtually all of them to nearly the same degree. Each part stands on its own as a distinct entry that feels difficult to compare. The only one I genuinely feel is weakest is Phantom Blood, and that's not because it's bad, but simply because it's the first part and thus still feels like its discovering itself in many ways the later parts don't.

And yet, I really appreciate the fact that Araki has the confidence to age and change his characters over time. Yeah, people get old, even ones who seem ageless in their youth. It's an unfortunate eventuality of life.

I've seen few series that believably age and rotate out characters like JoJo's. I've seen too many anime, cartoons, TV shows, and comics that are seemingly afraid to dispose of characters once they've served their purpose. I can't remember if it was in the Gundam thread or somewhere else, but I saw it discussed that in season 2 of Iron Blooded Orphans several of the villains became too "well liked' among the production staff, so they kept them around even once they've long overstayed their welcome, and the series (for me at least) became virtually unwatchable because I was waiting for these useless people to die like everyone else and they just wouldn't go away. JoJo's has never had this problem, in fact more often than not I'm sad to see characters go. And yet the brilliant thing is they're always replaced by new characters I inevitably fall in love with.

As someone who's written and consumed a shitload of media, I really admire that ability to know when a character has served their purpose and move on. It's so easy to just ride popular characters you've grown attached to, but it's really hard and probably pretty scary to have to write brand new characters and sell audience members on them over and over again. The closest character I feel Araki has come to with that is Jotaro, but even he took a major backseat in Part 4 and is barely in parts 5 and 6, despite him being a focal plot point in the latter.

 

By "that reveal" I mean

Spoiler

Joseph cheated on Suzie Q and abandoned his second family, who were also affected by Dio's return. It's a hell of a flaw to add off-screen between parts. (and stuff like the Joestar Secret Technique and Bastet's Mariah hit way differently now)

 

Joseph cheats more than just death.  

Though honestly, is it really out of character for the guy? When I first read it I only sighed and said to myself “why am I not surprised?”

 

Look at part 2 where he and Suzie Q get together. Is their bond really that deep? Is it even anything? And they were both still just kids.

 

Exactly. I’m sure they loved each other, I mean they were married for sixty years, but it’s less surprising than, say, if Jonathan had ever cheated on Erina or something. Joseph was a... lively individual, it’s not hard to imagine him making that kind of short-sighted mistake even as an old man.

 

But that's also what people did back in the 1930s/1940s. Got together too young and just stayed together for the rest of their lives without ever really giving it any more thought. I don't know if love even ever entered into it. I want to hold this girl's hand. Oh well, I guess we better get married!

 

No, he's not the main villain, they haven't been revealed yet. The theory with the most evidence is

Spoiler

Kaato Higashikata is secretly a rock human and the main villain

 

Unpopular Opinion:

Purple Haze Feedback is Better than Vento Aureo.

 

In development.

 

Yeah baby!!!

Stone Ocean time  

 

That event was fucking turbulent. Also the live subtitles will be providing us with memes for years.



The war, the nightmares, they’re finally over. Now comes the agonizing wait for the first episode.