Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

That's why I think it works. Jotaro manifesting this power doesn't put him on equal terms with DIO, it just gives him brief windows of opportunity, so the battle revolves around surprise and mind games.

Quite. Even after getting his Surprise, Out-Of-Nowhere Protagonist Power-Up, Jotaro still has to rely on a wits, lucks, and a number of asspulls to keep from just dying immediately.

The fight does lose steam in the final stretch, though- I feel like a lot of people kind of just block out everything that happened between Dio getting frozen in the stopped time and The World getting shattered. I certainly do.

Honestly, I never found how DIO died to be a big deal.

Jotaro explicitly aimed for DIO's current weak spot (the very leg that was damaged earlier), which DIO made easy by attacking with said leg. Damage to your Stand transfers to the user, so the damage to the World's Leg transfer to DIO, who was already injured there (and hadn't fully healed), thus exploding Vampire.

Not only that, but could Jotaro kill DIO without destroying his Stand? I mean, remember what Joseph did to Vampire Straizo. Shot him to pieces with a Tommy Gun, then blew him up with Grenades, both of which the latter recovered from. But destroying the World destroyed DIO's body in a way that he couldn't recover from, and left him helpless (since he was still alive at that point) long enough for them to wait for the sun to come up.

New Jojolion chapter out by the way. Things aren't going great for Yasuho.

DIO's right leg was the one that was injured and he kicked with, and got punched in, his left.

Edited by LordVatek on Aug 18th 2018 at 12:19:17 PM

I thought both of his legs got busted up.

I just watched it again and you're right. They only focus on the right leg and he's able to stand on the left by the end.

Some of those things lifted are not asspulls. When Jotaro punched DIO into that store and he had the lady get his leg, there was enough time for him to speak to her, for her to get his leg, and then kill her and reattach/heal the injury. We also see Jotaro next to a magazine kiosk by the time focus returns to him.

As far as where the steamroller was, presumably it was a bit further down the street than we were shown.

Really? I never caught that.

I think Part 3 while it does suffer from repetitiveness and asspulls gets more than a deserved unfair assessment of it.

Meanwhile I personally think Diamond is Unbreakable is bit overrated in fandom opinion and Battle Tendency extremely so.

Joseph's antics and clever ruses in Part 2 could only carry things so far in the face of the utter boringness of the Pillar Men, Lisa Lisa being set up as a real badass only to job to Kars and the damper that Von Stroheim the "good guy" Nazi, a concept that has only grown more distasteful with time puts on the fun.

And Part 4 while having the better first half compared to Stardust Crusaders kind of falls apart past Sheer Heart Attack due to faffing about with Stand battles that just feel like killing time for the finale and then have to really contrive things for the battle against Kira so that he even stands a chance which kind of ends up kneecapping much of the threat he got with Bites the Dust. I'd honestly take the Nine Egyptian Gods battles and the Jotaro vs Dio final fight over those.

Really the only Jo Jo arcs I'd call lacking in major flaws somewhere are Steel Ball Run and believe it or not, Phantom Blood which is very good at being Fist of the North Star meets Dracula meets a Victorian Morality Play with a deep subtext of Foe Yay and the real problem is that people expect more from it. (I haven't read Jo Jolion.)

Edited by Xeino on Aug 19th 2018 at 12:11:40 PM

That's kinda the thing, from a more critical standpoint a lot of the Jojo parts commit some kind of serious writing fumbles. It just doesn't ruin a lot of people's enjoyment since the series is consistently entertaining, unless it's super awful like in Vento Aureo.

I partly agree with you about Battle Tendency, Joseph is cool but he's really the only thing about BT that really stands out to me.

Oh. My. God.

Dub is sounding great so far. Josuke sounds exactly how I'd thought he would, koichi as well. I think it's funny how Jotaro got all pissy about the turtle.

I think people misunderstand stroheim as a good guy. He was never portrayed as a good person really, but someone who ended up respecting Joseph during his alliance against an evil greater enemy. He did some helpful things and showed some good qualities but never enough to make him seem like a "good guy."

Edited by Vertigo_High on Aug 19th 2018 at 12:44:29 PM

Wow, Matthew Mercer's Jotaro really is spot on.

"Cruel Angel's Thesis" Writers Reunite for New JoJo Theme

But...

How. If somebody fires a machine gun at your leg sure the leg probably comes off. But you don't die instantly. You bleed out first. The brain, the heart, the cartoid, there's a lot of places to get hit and die instantly. The femur/knee/thigh, to my knowledge, aren't any of those places.

Further, it was a punch. Jotaro hit Dio in the skull with a punch before and Dio was weaker and he didn't die from that. So how does hitting Dio at full strength in the shin cause an explosion? Dio's head was severed from his body at one point and that didn't kill him. Jotaro punched him in the head so hard it made him lose motor functions - but it didn't kill him.

Further still - how does punching someone in the leg transmit enough force/energy to literally blow up the rest of the body?

But ignoring all of that - this is a vampire. Vampires have stupid regen to the point where splitting Dio in half doesn't work. Polnareff stabbed a sword through Vanilla Ice's face. If anybody should be able to survive Stand destruction it should be a vampire - damage to the Stand is transferred to the user, sure, but the damage a human can take is far lesser than the damage a vampire can take.

And the icing on the cake is Araki had an easy solution to this - just have the sun kill Dio, a fitting end. It'd be a little ironic too - here we have a fight where the hero and the villain have been learning to stop time for greater periods. Dio, the supposed "master of time," defeated because he ran out of time.

But no, a punch to the knee. That is how this legendary villain was defeated. I have every single problem with this and I find it to be the biggest of deals! So take that!

Indeed.

Edited by Soble on Aug 19th 2018 at 5:43:50 AM

He wasn't really hitting DIO's shin, though. He hit The World's shin. It broke his Stand. So Jotaro basically shattered DIO's soul by hitting it really hard with his own soul. That's why the defeat makes some sense. Whether or not you are OK with that is up to you.

The sun did kill DIO. His flesh pile was still alive.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Aug 19th 2018 at 10:42:09 AM

Honestly, when remembering to the "Joseph's severed hand being blasted out of a volcano at exactly the right moment" asspull, I find it really hard to be concerned about this sort of thing where Jojo is concerned.

For me, things get weird, sit back and enjoy it.

Edited by sgamer82 on Aug 19th 2018 at 9:41:01 AM

^^This actually makes the gang freaking out when they thought Death 13 sliced Kakyoin in half make more sense in retrospect.

I've always kind of assumed The World was effectively composed of something that's more brittle than flesh; like the supernatural equivalent of marble or something else that would shattered if you hit any part of it hard enough.

I just figured that The World's massive strength and crazy ability cost it in durability and range. There's usually a trade-off like that with Stands.

I just assumed that since injuries inflicted on Stands carry over to the user, the same goes for if a user is hurt on it's own. The World had a bad leg, and Jotaro hitting it in that spot at full power caused a ripple (hah!) effect, and since DIO's real body was already hurt there, it did even more damage to him, hence broken to pieces.

Though to be honest, I never gave it that much thought. I mean, with Hamon, Jotaro needed some way to damage DIO long enough for the sun to do the rest (as he wasn't actually dead even in that state), and that's what happened.

Quite honestly, I found the "Star Platinum can stop time, too" so BS that I honestly wasn't really caring about the punch in the leg. Even though my headcanon is that Jotaro was figuring that out during the older D'Arby game.

But yeah, Araki is full of those writing fumbles. He loves to introduce stuff that he doesn't really think through until later, or just changes his mind and alters things. I mean, Part 5 gives us Purple Haze and King Crimson, Part 6 gives us Annasui, some Stands change names upon tankohon publishing, etc. I wouldn't find it surprising if anyone got desensitized to all this craziness and stopped caring by then.

Stands always display an ability the first time we see them that is never seen again.

Josuke has a pretty good voice so far, but Mercer is still the highlight.

Also, regarding DIO, I think that it's interesting how DIO only ever used his Stand for sucker punches. He almost never tried to fight head on with it.

Think Johnathan left some scars about it?