Any thoughts on JoJo's ? I've read the first two parts and watched 5 parts years ago and was mostly angry and disappointed with the series. Especially since it got hyped and popular and people were pretending it's amazing and smart and whatnot.
It's certainly imaginative, has a distinctive art style and quite outlandish and maybe even flamboyant with the constant fashion posing. But the often paper thin characterization and especially the two battle systems have various issues, not to mention the constant ass pulls as protagonists and enemies either fall for the most obvious nonsense or suddenly know exactly how to solve a problem or defeat an enemy.
I intend to read through the manga "again" to see if anime adaptations are making everything worse through the pacing or if the source material is just not that good. Finished rereading Part 1 today and it was okay. The art is fine, sometimes looks great, but there are issues with proportions and there are scenes where it is hard to distinguish what exactly is going on. Hamon would be fine if there was more time devoted to it, since both Jonathan and Zeppeli tend to pull techniques just out of their ass when it is convenient. Characters are also whatever, Dio is obnoxiously arrogant, which makes him somewhat interesting. The ending was fine.
Part 1 is fine I guess, it at least didn't make me fucking livid like Stardust Crusaders or Golden Wind did when I watched the anime. Probably going to star with Part 2 tomorrow, which I remember liking the most out of all the parts that I've read and/or watched.
Yeah honestly Jojo's a wild fucking ride but the big advantage is no matter what you like you can find something you like in it.
Imo Part I is the odd one out, with its Dracula-esque setting and extremely short narrative. It's really a shame because you can feel how much the author just wanted to get over it to introduce more fun stuff to the series, and it could have been nice if he actually took his time to properly flesh out the characters. Johnathan is probably one of the weakest Jojos since his only real personality trait is being a goody two-shoes. But props to Araki for actually killing his first protagonist like this, it did suprise me quite a lot.
Most of what makes the series fun (the stands and other supernatural mechanics) are introduced later on, and i think are why a lot of people consider Jojo to be "smart" ; most combats rely on the characters exploiting the different possibilities offered by their abilities and often pushing it to their limits by playing around the different rules established for them, which actually limits a lot the kind of asspull the author is allowed to use. I'm rewatching Part II with a friend and at some point, there's a specific scene involving a cactus whose outcome we were able to predict because it fit within the rules established for the character's abilities. You don't see that much in most shonen where it's just "oh this guy hits him really hard but this time it defeats him", especially in the earlier parts which tend to have actually pretty underpowered protagonists.
If i had to give you a quick heads up on the next parts, it'll be this :
II/Battle Tendency is probably the most fun, definitely over the top but still "classic" Jojo with probably the best protagonist of the series. Pure kino
III/Stardust Crusaders introduces stands, for the better and for the worse, it does start straying away from the earlier parts by introducing the infamous 1 stand 1 chapter format that can make it a bit formulaic but it's still pretty fun. You start getting some interesting characters here and there but it's mostly very underexploited
IV/Diamond is Unbreakable is more of a slice of life kinda thing and where there is i think a noticeable drop in quality ; the overall plot is excessively meandering but there's some interesting tidbits here and there, and the antagonist is actually really solid even if it ends with a bit of an asspull (Bites the Dust, what the fuck was that and where did it fucking come from ????)
V/Golden Wind is where i think the series takes a turn and becomes extremely formulaic ; the characters aren't really interesting, there's a lot of gimmicks for the sake of gimmicks (King Crimson is bull-fucking-shit) and the protagonist is the worst the series has to offer. Giorno's existence also fundamentally doesn't make a lick of sense.
VI/Stone Ocean has a meh protagonist, a meh storyline and a meh setting ; overall very mediocre, and the animated adaptation is probably one of the shittest i've ever seen with 3d CGI and the abomination that is twink Jotaro and twink Dio. Plus it does hurt formerly established characters unnecessarily and also COMPLETELY IGNORES 3 OF THE FORMERLY ESTABLISHED MAIN CHARACTERS to have its payoff work. Like seriously wtf these guys are STILL OUT THERE.
After this, it's reboot time !
VII/Steel Ball Run starts a bit slow but is PURE UNADULTERATED KINO. Good characters, good storyline, good setting and some damn impressive writing that manages to make sense of goddamn parallel universes. Also it's a remake of Part I, so you get a new Johnathan that is actually interesting and a new Zeppeli that actually fucks
VIII/JojoLion is a remake of... Part IV, and honestly just kinda sucks. There's some good ideas here and there but like Part IV it meanders a lot although without having a strong villain to make up for it. The ending fight especially sucks since what little stakes are built up are immediately defused and the main conflict of the arc is left entirely unresolved
IX/JojoLands is STILL WIP but so far it doesn't seem really good ; it's a remake of Part V so that's to be expected.
Sadly a lot of people's point of reference for Jojo is the heavily memed Part V which is one of the worst, and i think that's also where the "Jojo is gay" thing comes from since that's when every character starts looking like a twink
