Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

The art of the manga has never been bad, but he definitely toned down the wonky proportions and camera angles around mid-part 4. Part 6 has great art, and Parts 7 and 8 have downright gorgeous, beautiful art.

I don't think the main problem with the manga was ever the art style per se - that's subject more to personal taste unless you're talking about parts 1-2- but the fact the manga panels could be a bit busy could make it hard to tell what was going on in the fights sometimes.

And rarely there was something that just was difficult to convey well in manga format to begin with like King Crimson.

I'd known about Jojo through bits and pieces of exposure (memes, people talking about it, the odd clip here and there), but it wasn't until I was skimming the Tvtropes pages for some of the earlier parts that I buckled down and speed read the manga. It was a trip, especially since I forgot some of the spoilers, misinterpreted them, or missed them entirely.

Also, given the fact I still refer to Hamon as "Ripple" sometimes, you can tell which version of the manga I read.

Apologies if this is a random question, but I'm making my way through Stone Ocean, I'm on Chapter 58 now, and I was wondering, when does Jolyne eventually leave the prison?

Around 2/3rds of the way through.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jan 17th 2021 at 7:20:29 AM

Thank you!

Aaaand Kei's dead. Sucks. At least Josuke seems to be figuring out his spin.

I don't know if her or Rai are fully dead. Yeah, it seems like Rai's spirit is talking to Josuke, but that might just be his own internal monologue figuring everything out, and we've seen something like that before with Joseph in Part 3. Also, Kei fell down with her hand by her side, and the next panel had her arm up to grab at the cane shard in her eye, I think it's possible that she'll survive this just missing the use of an eye, just like Josuke is. Also, her stand didn't fully disintegrate.

Also, I freaked the fuck out when I realized that Josuke was going to shoot his soap bubble the same way Johnny shoots his nails.

Edited by PushoverMediaCritic on Jan 18th 2021 at 10:55:22 AM

I apologize for being judgmental then. Truthfully I haven't consumed the manga either and got into the anime because of TV Tropes. I'd heard about it, seen some of the memes, finally sat down and was bored out of my mind in the first episode and remained that way until Jonathan leapt through a flaming building to piledrive Dio. Yeah that was about when I was hooked. Then it was the knowledge that "there are six more versions of this guy/family members just like this guy" that kept me going.

I plan to pick up the manga at some point as well, if just to see Stone Ocean sooner rather than later.

Ive been catching up on Jojolion. Whoo, man. Wonder of U is a trip. Its topped Vitamin C, for sure. May even be my favorite villain Stand now. That its a near direct opposite of Love Train is brilliant.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Jan 19th 2021 at 1:41:14 PM

Spoiler tag that shit. And yeah, Wonder of U being the opposite of Love Train, and needing to be defeated in the same manner, is some big-brain writing shit from Araki.

Chess, according to Jojo.

Like Jojo means anything without context. But fine. Fair enough.

I've read first dozen chapters of Jojolion and yeah, that post is completely incomprehensible.

I read a post theorycrafting how Wonder of U could work in a video game, and it sounds really neat. Like, Tooru has a meter that he can use for big attacks, and it fills up every time the opponent approaches him.

Mark battles Battle Tendency this week. And as most people, he's absolutely in love with it and Joseph.

Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jan 21st 2021 at 3:46:12 PM

And thanks to Mark's own observations of Araki's writing using his manual, it's easier to see how he came to the conclusions he did about the improvements Battle Tendency made as a story compared to Phantom Blood's shortcomings. The relationships with and deaths of each part's Zeppeli highlight this well.

Being said, it's also fair to not be as onboard with how Ultimate Kars is defeated or even as emotionally invested in his fight with Joseph to begin with. The set-up with and defeat of Wammi was that good.

Edited by VeryMelon on Jan 21st 2021 at 4:00:15 AM

I'm really curious on how he's gonna feel about Stardust Crusaders, because it marks the paradigm shift to what the series would generally be most known for. And as a result, Stardust Crusaders is probably the most divisive part.

Particularly, Jotaro was the one who turned him off from continuing the first time around.

Oh, I already know it's going to take him until part 6 to really care about Jotaro.

Edited by VeryMelon on Jan 21st 2021 at 4:24:05 AM

That's usually how it works.

That is when he actually has a compelling character arc.

Yeah, Jotaro has a few interesting nuances in SDC but they're all very underplayed and not really meaningful to the story at large. SDC in general is the weakest part to me because it has some nice fights here and there but it drags a lot and there isn't really much in the way of compelling character beats for...pretty much the entire thing.

Part 3 is when Araki gets really good at writing side characters, Polnareff, Koichi, and Bruno feel like the main characters of the part at times because they're written with so much nuance and depth, even more so than their respective Jojo at points. Part 6 is when Araki decided to take that quality of writing side characters and apply it to the Part's Jojo.

Yeah Araki really did the sidekick who gains a lot of development and courage after following the static MC for several parts.

Its interesting analyzing that.

Edited by slimcoder on Jan 21st 2021 at 10:04:40 AM

Sadly, Part 6's Jojo also suffers the fate of several Jojo sidekicks too.