Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

Those sounds good to me.

Oh, and by the way, is Jolyne the first character in this series to more or less fuse with the Stand?

I mean, the Stand and its user, they are pretty much the same thing, the former's damage being inflicted on the latter and everything, but it always felt as if in most cases, Stands are something that just stands by their user (I'm not sorry), you know?

edited 29th Aug '14 5:37:09 PM by dRoy

That's a bit of a semantics question when you get right down to it. Like, where's the line there? There are plenty of people who never manifest their Stand as a separate entity at all; they're just able to use some kind of magical ability.

In a very real way, the first person we saw who 'fused' with their stand was Holly. Well, no, actually, we saw Joseph's Stand before that.

edited 29th Aug '14 5:45:49 PM by Gilphon

I think she's the first one to "fuse" with her stand that way.

Seeing Jolyne fight is always a blast, since unlike most stand users, she actually punches and kicks in tandem with the stands.

reading through the last 2 volumes of part 4 is reminding of why I liked Jojo so much in the first place. The entire idea behind Cheap Trick sounds like a complete joke but they actually pull it off. in jojo, anything goes.

Indeed it is.

Say, is there any work, Japanese or otherwise, that features ability that is like Stands, but the entities have personality of their own and can be fused and separated with the user at any times?

Shaman King comes to mind.

Yeah, I heard that it draws a lot from the Stand.

I'm not sure about giving it a try, apparently it has a shoddy ending. I can't stand bad ending.

iirc hiroyuki takei went back years later and did a proper ending.

it's worth a look anyway; it has one of the best protagonists in shounen and is generally pretty solid.

I heard they came up with a better ending for it

BTW anyone like the idea of Stands named after video games?

Artillery? Killer Queen + Stray Cat. Long range, controllable, invisible bombs.

Shaman King did get a second (better) ending, and has a sequel series running now. Shaman King Flowers. Yoh's kid does things.

edited 29th Aug '14 7:21:21 PM by zeromaeus

Good enough that he can forget about Sheer Heart Attack.

He didn't forget about Sheer Heart Attack, it's just that it's particularly ineffective against Josuke (since he can 'heal' it and make the bomb go back to his hand), so he didn't use it against him.

Caught up after not watching the show for a while. Polnareff being attacked by his own wishes was actually a fairly good bit of character development.

It's really weird to say this, but during Part 3, Polnareff has the most development out of all the Crusaders. You wouldn't really expect it because he's the goofiest of them, the comic relief one, but somehow that's how it is. Funny how the world turns.

I finished part 4 just now. It pretty much just solidified my opinion that part 4 was the best part up until that point. The writing overall was much more emotionally powerful with a much more colorful cast, and the beginning of the transition to araki's current fab style was great to see.

I'm guessing vento aureo is still not fully translated, but i guess i can just go read sbr instead lol

outside of joseph he's the best character in SC to me.

edited 29th Aug '14 8:05:48 PM by wehrmacht

Oh yeah, Part 4 is my favorite too!

You know how so many males in this series are fabulous?

I think Kars out-fabulous them all.

Vento Aureo is fully translated, but not with really good scans. Recently a group started re-translating some parts, and they did a great job, but Part 5's still missing a large amount of the newer scans. I wouldn't suggest skipping anything.

Just a warning:

Compared to Part 4 (and pretty much all the parts before), Part 5 is pretty darn complicated when it comes to battle.

Yeah I was talking about the new translation project.

It's kind of a shame it's not done, I was really enjoying it up to the part the new translation was at.

On the other hand at least that's the only Jojo part that's not available in good quality now. I just checked and Stardust Crusaders' new scanlation project has been done for a while (it wasn't finished back when I was reading it before its anime adaptation premiered).

edited 29th Aug '14 8:19:04 PM by wehrmacht

I wonder what would have happened if Kars was shot by the Arrow.

Polnareff also gets like the second most fights, IIRC. He's also the only non-Joestar to live.

Polnareff does have the best character development in part 3, but that has a lot more to do with the other characters being pretty static than anything else.

Avdol was already a pretty mature adult. Same with Joseph. Iggy got a fair amount. Jotaro and Kakyoin were definitely more static. Kakyoin didn't really have much of a reason for doing anything, actually.

I'd say go ahead and skip parts all you want if you think others sound more interesting. Most of them don't require having read previous parts, and there's nothing stopping you from going back to them later.

yeah, i've already read some of both stone ocean and steel ball run even before i was done with part 4. for now sbr is holding my attention more and it's an alternate universe anyway with most of the references being to the first 3 parts, so i just went ahead and read it. i don't really want to read part 5 with bad scans so i'm fine with just waiting it out or at least finishing the other parts first.