Angie explains: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

hot damn is Dio Brando a bastard.

Also, is the translation terribad or is the original japanese just as fucking insane?

PART 3: STARDUST CRUSADERS

Here we jump forward again in time, to the 1980s if I remember correctly. This time we have two Jojos! We have the aged but still lively Joseph now playing support to his teenage grandson, Jotaro. Jotaro is probably the most popular Jojo; he definitely is the iconic character for the series in Japan. We've had the gentlemanly Jonathan, Joseph the trickster, and in contrast to both Jotaro is stoic. When he does crack a joke, it's often very cutting, but despite his bad attitude he still has a noble and self-sacrificing nature.

This part is considered a good jumping on part because it is the introduction of Stands. In the previous parts, people had powers from controlling their breathing and blood, or because of their otherworldly nature. Starting in part 3, people instead develop a power called a Stand. Each Stand is unique to their user and reflects some part of their personality. They are generally (but not always) anthropomorphic and can be summoned and unsummoned at will. This is where battles start to get really weird and really clever, because you are dealing with known, unique powersets and figuring out what someone can do and what you have in your arsenal or the setting around you becomes more important than power levels.

This part is a globe-trotting adventure to hunt down and kill Dio, because if he doesn't die in 70 days then Joseph's daughter, Jotaro's mother Holly, will die. It starts in Japan but goes all through Asia, the Middle East, and ends up in Egypt. Araki actually goes out of his way to try to make these areas feel distinct from one another. This part also follows the shounen fighting plotflow more than the previous parts. Dio has amassed a great number of followers, like the incredibly vile J. Giels and the crafty witch Enya, and so pretty much anywhere the main cast goes there's bound to be a fight.

Warning: there is an animal character. Bad things do happen to him, but he is a protagonist in his own right so it's not like he is passively being abused for the sake of hurting someone else. He owns his own story.

Things you will get from reading this part

• Stands! All those marvelous stands!
• Friendship! Broship! Family! The main cast has really goddamn awesome interactions.
• The return of Dio, now with hearts and even more posing!
• POLNAREFF
• More western music references than you thought were possible!
• The variety of villains is really amazing
• ROAD ROLLER-DA
• Seriously the final fight is fucking incredible

• Old man Joseph is still incredible
• Sorry the scans are small and yellow, but they work!

• Seriously, old man Joseph.
• It really is just a ton of fun to read, but still has some really heartwrenching moments.

If you are on part 1, it's just that insane. There's two parts that have sketchy to meme-worthy bad translations, and I'll cover those coming up.

My favourite dialogue is the repeated vocalisation of Jonathan's exact body measurements by the other characters.

Get used to hearing that someone is 195 cm tall, for a long time that's one of the Defining Joestar Family Traits. It dies off eventually.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT. The power!

Mother of god. All kinds of things.

I weep at the sheer existential grandeur.

"Ability to see things from far away" is not quite accurate. Joseph can smash a camera to take a picture of whatever it is he wants to see, he can check on his enemies that way no matter where they are actually located. It's a pretty expensive hobby though.

I have an uncommon fondness for this series ever since discovering it about half a year ago and reading through everything I could find in way too few sittings. It successfully avoids everything that I usually find dumb about shounen manga and I have read way too much of that stuff. If you have ever felt the temptation to dismiss Japanese comics on the basis of how stupid Dragonball got after a certain point, Jojo's is the perfect counterpoint.

I never did warm up to that damn dog, though.

Of course she will!

I did a whole series of edits turning Dio into an internet douchebag.



The things I do to amuse myself.

So...that's what Stands are, huh?

That one arc from Gintama just became twice as funny.

Yeah, Gintama was one of the things I was thinking of when I said that you really notice just how many references there are in things after you've picked up Jojo. The haunted hot springs inn arc was the biggest reference they had, but far from the only one.

PART 4: DIAMOND IS NOT CRASH

Some people prefer to call it Diamond is Unbreakable but this is the way Araki writes it in English, so that is what I go for. Diamond is not Crash takes place in the 1990s and the star Jojo of this part is Josuke! His background and connection to the Joestar family is somewhat spoilery, so I am going to leave it out. We also see an older Jotaro (he's become a marine biologist, which brings me no end of amusement) and an even old and well into decline Joseph.

Josuke's Stand is Crazy Diamond, a short-range fighter that can restore things to their original condition by punching them. He's had his Stand since he was 4, so there's no element of figuring out his new powers or anything, he is entirely confident in his ability to heal people and put stuff back together. He's always seen with his heart and peace sign pins because he is, at heart, a sweet and gentle guy who wants to protect people. However that doesn't mean he can't be quite dangerous when riled up.

Part 4 is actually a slice of life story about the small Japanese town Josuke has grown up in. In Part 3 we learn that Stand-users are attracted to each other, and Part 4 explores the idea of having multiple Stand-users living in the same area and the wide range of personalities and abilities that would attract. As such, talking at all about villains would be rather spoilery as well.

So now I have to address the Duwang in the room. You see, many moons ago only the first three parts of Jojo were in English. A chinese man offered to translate from his chinese scans of Part 4, and the then tiny community of English Jojo fans were delighted. Even more so with how incredibly quickly he was able to put out releases. There was only one problem.



He didn't really know what the fuck he was doing with any of the languages involved, he even mistranslated the name of the town from Morioh to Duwang. Now this has led to a ton of memes in the Jojo fanbase. From using ABAJ (啊) as a generic exclamation of surprise since he left it untranslated so often, to having a feeling so complicated or even



People tend to hate Duwang at first but come around eventually. Now the good news is that more than half of Part 4 has been re-scanned and translated properly, and the group that did it is still actively working on it. By the time you run out of the new translations and have to switch over to Duwang you have a feel for what the dialog should sound like and he's not getting things just outright wrong as often.

What you get from reading this part:

• A super adorable and sweet Jojo with a glorious pompadour
• Amazing friendships, seriously
• A lot more downtime between fights, not every Stand user is a hostile and so you get more breathing space
• A whole new side to Jotaro!
• A whole new side to Joseph!
• YANDERES
• Araki's self-insert character with his dream Stand!
• 啊!!
• Some incredibly creative Stand powers!
• THE MOST PANTS-SHITTINGLY TERRIFYING JOJO ANTAGONIST
• More Queen references than you will know what to do with!
• You thought Polnareff was as cute as stupid gets? You ain't met Okuyasu yet!

In all seriousness, despite the terrible translation that you suffer through at the end, part 4 is one of the favorite parts of the English fandom because the pacing is so much better than the previous parts. There's one or two fights that go on a bit long, but it's generally really well done. You also get the protagonists cooperating and coordinating their Stand powers more often, making the fights more interesting. It's good. There's just the suffering of the Duwang to wrangle with.

The answer to "Is (thing from Jojo) a music reference?" is yes. The character Polnareff is actually french in the manga too.

Capcom did release a JoJo's Bizarre Adventure game in the US for the PSX (I think?) back in the late 90s. I owned it and it was bizarre as fuck.

That game has recently gotten a re-release on PSN and Xbox Live to hype up the release of the new fighting game. They are even looking at releasing the new one in the west, even though they would have to change some names to avoid Prince's lawyers.

I'm fuck deep in Battle Tendency when I hit this:



And I knew it must be posted.

Later bonus image edit:

I think someone needs a new avatar!

I tried to get into JoJo's a while back on a friend's recommendation but had a hard time getting past the first part, especially when they started with the whole breathing power things and it just started to feel like a bog standard Shonen battle manga.

Maybe I should just suck it up and try again to just finish it so I can get to Part 3 already which seems to be where the majority of the enthusiasm comes from.

Same with me. I tried a few chapters, just couldn't get into it, but this thread is making me want to pick it up again. Quick question: Is the currently airing anime a good place for getting into the series? As in, is it a decent substitute for the manga? Or should I just suck it up and start at the very beginning of the manga itself?

The anime is very, very loyal to the manga. You won't be missing anything vital if you go with it, and you have an excuse to listen to Roundabout.

I will try to get to my Part 7 write-up tonight, because that is going to describe the jumping-on point that I recommend IF you can't stomach the growing pains in Part 1 and 2.

Someone needs to make a Lisa Lisa version of the deal with it .gif stat.

PART 5: VENTO AUREO


Part 5 takes place in about the same time period as Part 4, but on the otherside of the globe, in Italy. The Jojo this time around is actually a Giogio, Giorno Giovanna. His Stand is Gold Experience, which is why Prince hates Jojo. It has a couple of abilities beyond being a short range fighter, the primary ability being that it can turn inanimate matter into living things. Giorno himself is actually the son of Dio, but since he was conceived when Dio's head was riding Jonathan's body he has also inherited the Joestar bloodline. Even though he never met his father, his personality is an interesting blend of Dio's drive for power and Jonathan's nobility. His quest is to climb the ranks in the underworld to become a Gang Star.

Araki's art has evolved pretty far away from its origins by Part 5, I actually find many of the characters in this part to be terrifyingly skinny (LOOKING AT YOU NARANCIA) particularly since Araki still likes to shade in muscles. The Giogio crew is also pretty different from previous parts. While they are tight-knit, they are significantly more immoral than previous protagonists. I can't go into the central conflict because it's revealed over the course of the story, but the final battles are a complete headtrip and have actually required diagrams to explain for some people.

This is another part that suffers from bad translation. Sadly it's not bad in the fun way like the Duwang translation, it just doesn't keep the flavor of some of the subtler personalities. There is a re-translation project working on Vento Aureo, but they haven't gotten too far in just yet.

This part is extremely popular in Japan, a huge amount of the fan works that come out for Jojo are about Part 5. In the American fandom it seems to either be your favorite part, or your least favorite, and I fall in the latter catagory. It's not that it's bad. There are some incredibly inventive fights and stands, and some characters I really like, it just never clicked with me the way other parts of Jojo have.

What you get from reading this part:

• Laughing at Giorno because the only picture he has of his daddy is the Sexy Back Pose picture
• Sticky Fingers is, visually, the most interesting Stand in the entire series. ZIPPERS, ZIPPERS EVERYWHERE
• Whoa shit some dark as hell humor
• Sex Pistols is the cutest Stand ever

• There is a Stand named Notorious B.I.G.
• There is a Stand named Spice Girl and she shouts WANNABEEEEEEEEE while attacking
• For some reason it always looks like Gold Experience is trying to make out with Giorno

• While I am showing it, DONUT HAIR GIORNO WHY
• Mista's horrible sandals
• Doppio answering the phone
• King Crimson WHAT DOES YOUR POWER EVEN DO
• WAIT WHAT JUST HAPPENED
• SERIOUSLY THIS FIGHT
• AND NOW THEY ARE DOING WHAT
• THE
• FUCK

It can be fun, but it's so not appropriate for a jumping-on point.

PART 6: STONE OCEAN

Oh my god I love this part.

So the Jojo of Part 6 is Jolyne, and her theme is growth and determination. She is Jotaro's daughter. Her story is set in 2011, in a women's prison in Florida.

Oh my god, so I have to tell you that she has the best girl friends. Like I don't fangirl out for many things, but the three ladies up there? I LOVE THEM SO MUCH. As Nebty has noticed from my tumblr spam.

So anyway, yes, this part is set in a women's prison. And there's the kind of fanservice you might expect from that setting. But Jolyne owns it, and over time she becomes so determined and fierce and

excuse me, I have to take a moment because JOLYNE



Anyway, Jolyne's stand is the ability to turn her body into strings. She can also form those strings into a humanoid form to use a short-range fighter, but unlike most Jojo protagonists she has to get in there and throw punches herself. Her Stand truly delivers on the body horror.



Another thing I love about this part is the complex family relations. Jolyne is actually very damaged by how distant her father has been in her life, and Jotaro doesn't know how to handle it at all. Actually, I love pretty much all the interpersonal relationships here.

This part also has some wild and inventive Stand fights. The finale is definitely the most far-reaching and unexpected. I actually stopped reading Jojo for about a week after I finished this just to let everything that had happened process. But goddamn did I love it.

What you will get from reading this part:

• BADASS PRISON BABES
• A whole new side to Jotaro!
• Why Jolyne is envious of snails
• Daddy issues!
• YANDERES
• Appropriate responses to yanderes!

• A baby made of vegetables!
• BONDS OF FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN AWESOME LADIES
• Weather Report!
• The world's fingers for fuck off!

• A flashback of Dio lounging in bed with a priest with his pants falling down while he reads an art book!

I know I am not doing a good job explaining the appeal of this part. That's because a lot of what I would explain would be extremely spoilery. Just know that it's sexy and gorey and fun and features some really amazing ladies. This arc is the LEAST appropriate to start with, it really relies on past context and if you haven't read the previous stuff, at least from part 3, you won't really get the full impact of the events in this part.
JOLYNE~

PART 7: RAD BROMANCE STEEL BALL RUN

Due to SPOILERS this part takes place in the United States in the 1880s. This time our Jojo is Johnny "Joe Kid" Joestar! Once a genius jockey, a terrible accident has taken away the use of his legs and all his hopes and dreams. That is until he decides to see the start of the Steel Ball Run, a coast-to-coast horse race with a $50,000,000 pot for the winner. There he meets Gyro Zeppeli, an eccentric foreigner that uses mysterious spinning steel balls for weapons. When Johnny manages to grab one of those balls while it is spinning he feels his legs move for a moment, and he ends up joining the race himself in order to learn more about Gyro and his techniques. Along the way they face many hardships and antagonists, including Britain's famous jockey, Diego Brando.

Part 7 is deliberately set up to be a new starting point for people who do not know Jojo. All the concepts surrounding Stands that experienced readers are used to are reintroduced slowly, and Part 7 has the most world building of any part. It also has the cutest man turning into a dinosaur and ruining my entire life and goddamnit Johnny just give him the coffee

Sorry.

If you have ever fallen down in your life and had to scratch and claw and struggle and fail and sometimes not been a great person just to get back to what you once thought of as normal, well, Johnny's your favorite Jojo now. Lord knows that he is mine. In fact, I am deeply attached to a lot of Part 7 characters, and not in the squeeing because they are so badass and fierce kind of way like I am with the Stone Ocean ladies. No, I love the Part 7 characters in the over-analyzing and feeling far too much empathy sort of way. As you may have intuited from the names, Johnny and Diego are deliberately mirrors of Jonathan and Dio, but with key things in their pasts changed so that neither one is at all a copy of those characters. One of my favorite things is talking about comparisons and contrasts between the mirrored characters.

Now I mentioned before that the story takes its time to get around to introducing Stands. This is true, but once it does you get some of the most interesting and inventive sets of powers in the entire series. You generally get more time to see who the antagonists are as people before it becomes a fight to the death. In fact, Part 7 is the longest part so far, which means there's more time to flesh out the entire story, and Araki uses this time wisely. There's also a thousand callbacks to previous parts, both small and large, that make reading Part 7 a richer experience if you have read the previous material but that do not harm the experience for new readers. That's why I suggest that people start HERE instead of Part 3 if they can't make it through the growing pains of Parts 1 and 2.

The friendship between Gyro and Johnny, the struggles and strengths of the other protagonists, the complex and layered motivations of the antagonists all make this really a fulfilling read. I loved Jojo before I read this part, but this is where I really lost my mind and my life to Jojo.

What you get from reading this part:

• SO MANY MANLY TEARS HOLY SHIT
• Wanting to go from negative to zero
• He just wants some coffee

• Gyro's amazing grill!
• More balls jokes than you can throw a ball at!
• Why the Mormons were right all along!
• Gyro can't hear with his ass

• So much old west you won't know what to do with yourself
• Hot Pants is not who he says he is!
• Nyo ho!
• A man who lectures the protagonists on a True Man's Road while firing his gun like this!

• Incredibly precious characters
• Don't let anyone take your napkin
• If the girl who just gave you a ton of things is telling you that they come with a condition you probably want to hear what that condition is
• Lesbians!
• Me losing my mind over a cute dinosaur!
• And then Johnny breaking my heart over and over

Seriously, it's very, very good. Like, I made myself a life-size DIODIODIODIO tail and then had to make a tail for my daughter so she would stop stealing it good.

I have a problem. A Jojo problem.

Now I have an excuse!

Ok I'm now somewhere in the midst of Stardust Crusaders and...

also this:

I'm loving this page, especially that top frame.

There's actually a whole lot of that in Parts 5-7. I mentioned Sticky Fingers before and said something about zippers.. that is actually Sticky Finger's power, to create zippers on surfaces. Including people. You get a ton of amazing terrain and body deformation out of it, and you can tell how much Araki enjoyed playing with the power. I'll throw some examples up later in the day.

PART 8: JOJOLION

Jojolion has just started and is being translated month by month as Ultra Jump comes out in Japan! This story is set in modern time, in a Morioh that has been changed by the tsunami. Now strange structures called Wall-Eyes have sprung up around town, and next to one the delightful girl above, Yasuho, finds the guy next to her naked in a hole. He remembers nothing of who he is, so she names him Josuke after her dog (the fandom calls him Gappy because of the gap in his teeth) and pretty much everything at this point is still extremely mysterious. There are definitely forces that don't want him to discover who he is.

Gappy's Stand is named Soft and Wet, and it has the ability to steal a property from something, like the fur from a cat, or the sound from a door closing. It has been a pretty fascinating power so far, and Gappy's fights have been suitably weird. As for Gappy himself, he's definitely a weird guy. He recognizes people by their dimensions and can calculate exact sizes and distances at a glance. He is extremely attached to Yasuho and feels like she's the only one in the world he can trust.

And the reveal immediately after he has found is pretty spectacular.

Also, while other parts have been sexy at times in the past, Jojolion is lewd beyond all previous expectation. It feels like a deliberate theme, not like fanservice though.

What you get from reading this part:

• Join in an fandom speculation while the story is still incomplete and there's no spoilers!
• Gappy and Yasuho are FREAKIN CUTIES
• Sailor suits!

• My favorite dirty old lady!
• So many mysteries that the mysteries have mysteries!
• GAPPY IS LEWD

• MORIOH YOU ARE DRUNK

Much like the Part 4 it is mirroring, the structure of the story is definitely slice-of-life but holy shit the life we're seeing slices of is weird.

Another reason for Prince to hate Jojo, I guess.

Prince – Soft And Wet

Yeah, and Yasuho's Stand is named Paisley Park. Araki gives zero fucks.