ANIME: JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken // JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (2013)
Disclaimer: Spoilers of the first two parts of the anime JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency, but only after the warning. All of this is just my opinion based on my experiences watching it. I hope you enjoy!
- Studio: David Production
- Source: JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken part 1 and 2 (manga by Hirohiko Araki)
- Episodes: 26
- Genres: Action, Adventure, Supernatural, Vampire, Shounen
Summary: In 1868, Dario Brando saves the life of an English nobleman, George Joestar. By taking in Dario's son Dio when the boy becomes fatherless, George hopes to repay the debt he owes to his savior. However Dio, unsatisfied with his station in life, aspires to seize the Joestar house for his own. Wielding an Aztec stone mask with supernatural properties, he sets out to destroy George and his son, Jonathan "JoJo" Joestar, and triggers a chain of events that will continue to echo through the years to come.
Half a century later, in New York City, Jonathan's grandson Joseph Joestar discovers the legacy his grandfather left for him. When an archeological dig unearths the truth behind the stone mask, he realizes that he is the only one who can defeat the Pillar Men, mystical beings of immeasurable power who inadvertently began everything.
Adapted from the first two arcs of Hirohiko Araki's outlandish manga series, JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken follows the many thrilling expeditions of JoJo and his descendants. Whether it's facing off with the evil Dio, or combatting the sinister Pillar Men, there's always plenty of bizarre adventures in store.
(From MyAnimeList)
Intro and Short Review
Oh boy, I kind of didn't want to make this. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has been at the center of many discussions between my friends and I, so I was afraid to let things get more personal and end up venting my frustration instead of doing an actual review. Still, I don't think it's good to avoid topics just because they're polemic, so I will still do this and try to be as fair as possible.
I'll be very direct here: I hated it. And after seeing that most of my friends still had positive opinions a year later, I rewatched just to see if I was being unfair and I still hated it. A lot. Of course, like any other thing that exists, it did have appeal in some aspects and it's not like I loathed every single moment of this anime, but it just wasn't for me I guess. And don't get me wrong, this is not me hating anyone that actually enjoys JoJo, because it's completely fine to like things considered "trashy" by others. Not everything has to be rationalized and nobody should feel pressure to justify their personal taste.
The thing is, when we do analyze things from an objective point of view, even though it is impossible to be completely unbiased, we have to acknowledge when something is not well done. This is a very hard topic to discuss, and I'm sure people will disagree with me here, but when we have so little time and so many things to watch and read, we have to rely in something other than random people's personal taste to decide what to consume.
So I hate to break it to y'all, but JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is bad.
I had a lot of people say that I just "didn't get it" and that I was "taking it too seriously", and for those people I just have to say: it is you who didn't get what JoJo is about. It's not a satire about common shounen tropes, and even though it has "bizarre" in its name, it wants you to take it seriously with great desperation. As someone explained very well in a MyAnimeList review I've seen some time ago, JoJo started off as a safe cash grab inspired by the very popular genre of buff badass men beating the shit out of enemies, like Fist of The North Star, for example.
And this is very reflected in the entirety of the first part: a poor excuse of a plot, unidimensional characters with half-baked backgrounds and motivations and a weak-ass super power system. All of that just an excuse to watch people fight each other. That doesn't mean that battle anime are inherently bad, just that of course some people wouldn't create actually well thought stories when they could be more rich with less effort. All of that, combined with the fact that this genre didn't really stick with younger generations as much, made Phantom Blood the most hated JoJo part even by its own fans.
So Araki had to step up his game if he wanted this series to really take off, and step up he did. To be honest, the only reason that my score was so high was because Battle Tendency was so much better and balanced it out. It still has some very pressing issues in the same way as Phantom Blood, and even some others that Phantom Blood didn't have, but at least the main character was much more charismatic and the story was actually interesting, so I didn't die of boredom in the middle of it.
I'm not saying that part three and beyond are terrible like part one, and as shocking as it is, I respect Araki very much for his work. His art is amazing (the only mangaka to have an exposition at the Louvre, for fuck's sake) and he clearly improved a lot as the saga continued, which I'm really glad for because it sure has potential. JoJo undoubtedly had a huge impact in both eastern and western culture, and this is not something anything can achieve, but as we're talking just about the first two parts, unfortunately it still is pretty bad.
There are a ton of plot holes, the pacing is still very bad and I still had to turn my brain off completely to be able to enjoy JoJo. I actually continued watching just to understand the memes, which says a lot about how things progress lol (but to be fair, the memes really are great despite the community being annoying at times). I would totally not recommend it if you expect even a decent story with an ok logic, because you won't get that. Now if you are curious because of the status of "anime classic", or want to understand the memes, or just like ridiculously buff men punching the shit out of each other, then watch at your own risk I guess.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency)get a 4/10 from me.
Warning! Spoilers below!
Characters
To this day, I can't decide what I liked less about Phantom Blood. While I'm still frustrated to this day about the plot and the power system, I believe the deal breaker for me ended up being the characters and their actions.
They are all defined by basically two traits: Erina is sweet and caring, Dio is a vengeful prick, Speedwagon is a loyal friend, Jonathan is the goody two shoes with a heart of gold, so on and so forth. The characters end up being exaggerated caricatures of the most basic tropes, lacking the essential characteristics to make them interesting (let me remind you again that this isn't satire. We really are expected to take it seriously). Jonathan, specially, was such a pushover that I couldn't stand him most of the time, and his lack of an internal conflict transformed him into a very dull main character.
Dio ends up being also very disappointing. While I do understand the hype and the reason why he's so iconic, he just appeared ridiculous to me. He started off pretty okay, with a justifiable backstory and a clear goal, but then he turns into a vampire and decides to take over the world, because of course that's the logical sequence after destroying your adoptive father's family. Characters also kept saying he was "born evil" and that just sounded nonsensical to my ears. I think his whole good vs evil thing with Jonathan really gives off more appeal, because there's no way he would be an interesting villain in any other setting.
(Also, just as a side note, I still don't understand the hype around Speedwagon. I mean, I get the memes and I love them, but there are people that genuinely think he is an amazingly built character and this will forever weird me out. But that's more of a personal preference I guess, so back to the review.)
In the end, what was the nail on the coffin was the lack of development. I heard a lot of people saying that it didn't matter because "the characters were charming and easy to get attached to", and while I agree that this is very much possible and still enjoyable in anime, it's definitely not the case with JoJo. Baron Zeppelli appeared for two or three episodes, we learned his tragic past and then he was killed like he was nothing, and they expect me to feel emotional for that? The same happens to every other character, and I just couldn't care enough if they were having trouble because they didn't feel the least bit interesting to me.
Thankfully, things change at least a bit in part two. Joseph Joestar is a million times more charismatic (I loved the little quirks like predicting people and the petty things that made him more human) and even with every bad thing in this show I still rooted for him. And he charmed me exactly because he was so different from his perfect grandfather. He was a little shit, always trying to swindle people and be the smartest in the room, but when push came to shove he always did the best he could to help. There was a lot of room for Joseph to grow, and to see him do this along with Caesar was one of the main reasons I enjoyed Battle Tendency a lot more.
Caesar was so much better as a sidekick than Speedwagon during part one, butting heads with Joseph at every opportunity and just being a great character in general. Their friendship was an amazing way to make us care more about what was happening, and the way they slowly started to trust each other was very sweet — and also a lot more relatable than part one's "you kicked my ass and now I'll follow you around like a puppy". This made his death very impactful, and is still one of the best scenes I've ever seen in the saga. I was sad but I loved it.
The other side characters were alright, not very developed — which is fine considering the length and the focus of the anime — but still fun nonetheless. I enjoyed the recurrent characters and the changes made to them, and others like Lisa Lisa, Smokey and Suzy Q. are still very likeable. There are some parts that still felt very weird to me, though, specially Joseph's shenanigans with Lisa Lisa before discovering she was his mother and his friendship with a n4z1 soldier. Yikes.
The major improvement in my opinion was definitely the villains. Araki didn't even bother making a complex backstory for the Pillarmen, but because they are basically perfect humans we don't need that relatability to find them interesting; and this was something that fit a lot better than the mess that was Dio's motivation in part one. The Pillarmen were intimidating, powerful and brutal, the perfect match for Joseph's intelligence and improvisation.
The character design also took big improvements from Phantom Blood to Battle Tendency. While I found the designs from part one pretty okay, Joseph and Caesar's styles were way more iconic, along with the Pillarmen. I feel like part one tried to stay too close to the reality, and everything felt more dull, while Battle Tendency was a lot more bolder. And even if sometimes it clashed with the location's style, it fit a lot better with the overall vibe of JoJo.
Story and Worldbuilding
Now, it's no secret that Araki's work has tons of plot holes and conveniences. It's even another meme in the community, and it's already something I expected when starting to watch JoJo. It doesn't mean it wasn't any less annoying. The lack of logic doesn't help the fact that parts one and two still want us to take everything seriously, and because of that a lot of the potential emotional weight of many scenes is just lost. I do have to admit that the sheer stupidity of everything made me crack up sometimes, and I'm glad that the saga embraced more this bizarreness and transformed it into better comedy later on, because it was way better than whatever Araki was trying to do in Phantom Blood.
Another thing that really dampened the mood during important moments were the infodumps. Specially during part one, every single decision and piece of narrative was described to us extensively by some side character, so much that it became their only role during the anime. And if you know me, you also know that I loathe infodumps. The fights extended themselves endlessly and I honestly watched the entirety of Phantom Blood in 1.5x speed because I couldn't stand it.
And the battles in this part are so, so boring that I can't even begin to explain it. If the dialogue was actually interesting I would forgive the infodump, but the characters and the reason they were fighting were so fucking lame that I rolled my eyes at everything. Every aspect of the final fight with Dio was unoriginal and done better in a lot of other titles I've already seen; how people managed to actually enjoy this in its entirety is a mystery to this day.
Besides the action, the plot of Phantom Blood is pretty generic and even more boring than the fights. There are many time skips that make the story feel too loose and the characters too dull, and the shock of those years-long skips with the quickness of the action scenes turned the whole thing into a complete mess. There are some amazing moments, though; Dio walking up the wall in the first fight against Jonathan is one of my favorites, but the rest continues lacking much needed development.
Luckily, again Battle Tendency comes to our rescue with a much more engaging — even though still fairly simple — plot to follow. In spite of the repetition of the villains' motivation, which is still terrible, the timeline feels way more solid and we can keep track of the events with much more ease. Because of that, the characters and their motivations also felt a lot more grounded and easier to relate to, which kept the plot going even outside the fights. Unfortunately, the conveniences and the annoying infodump is still very much present during part two, and this interferes with the pacing of action scenes all the same.
The special moves were also very formulaic, so much that I don't remember the name of any of them. God knows how on Earth Jonathan managed to win that main fight. And don't even get me started on Dio's powers, because I still don't know the extent of a vampire's capacities in this show. Every other appearance Dio has a new completely random trick up his sleeve. He can control people. He can freeze things. He has a fucking laser beam. I actually quit watching that part right after the first laser beam because I just couldn't believe I was seeing that with my own two eyes.
And Dio's powers make the fights in Phantom Blood even more stupid, if that's even possible. In Battle Tendency, I was curious because while the Pillarmen were already superior beings, they had very clear abilities that made me wonder how Joseph would use his intelligence to win against them. But Dio has no apparent bounds to his powers and is basically immortal, going up against that raggedy bitch that Jonathan Joestar is, and even so he still looses because that's how the story is supposed go?
Battle Tendency really improves Hamon, and I really like the different techniques of Joseph and Caesar. It feels a lot more incorporated to the personality of the characters and the story, but it still has its downsides. If Araki hadn't created Stands and changed everything, it was only a matter of time until the possibilities for exciting battles ended, just like it happened to other titles (looking at you, Dragon Ball).
But alright, I guess that's enough of me whining. Some might argue that everything I just said doesn't matter because it's shounen, but I can't really enjoy an anime that doesn't give a shit about good worldbuilding and power balance. I guess I just don't like watching people fight for the sake of it.
Technical Details and Final Thoughts
I was honestly expecting a bit more of the animation. After the disaster that was the first attempt at an adaptation, I imagined they would take a lot of care to make it much more clean, but it was still very wacky in a lot of times. Of course, it was 2013, the technology wasn't thaaat much advanced yet so it wouldn't be like what we have currently, but still there were some parts that could've been a lot more polished. Specially in traditional 2D shots where the key frames ended up lacking detail, the proportions or facial expressions were weird, and the consistency of both style and quality wavered a lot along the way.
But I do have to give credit to some aspects: JoJo's aesthetic is very iconic. The color scheme changes on characters were very unusual to me at first, but they helped to set the mood in a way I wasn't expecting at all, and at this point became recurrent. The big onomatopoeias that are worldwide famous, the strikingly weird poses, the whole absurdity of it all really made everything more bearable to watch. Because even when I became frustrated by other stuff, I could always laugh a little and get distracted by the colorful things happening on-screen.
But this is something more characteristic of part two, which is another reason why I liked it more. The aesthetic of the first part is very dull and tried too hard to emulate England, which just didn't fit with the whole "bizarreness" that JoJo embraced later. Even so, like I said before, I respect Araki's art a lot, and the upgrade from part one to two was a relief.
Another important thing that I actually loved about JoJo is that the openings and endings are SO. COOL. Whoever was behind the making of them clearly knew what they were doing, and to this day I don't think I've ever seen another anime top JoJo on this.
The first opening, Sono Chi no Sadame, is truly a homage to the impact and history of Araki's creation, full of significant moments from the anime and symbolism hidden into the shots. I'm not a big fan of the 3D style, but they make it work somehow and now it just is part of the charm for me. But my favorite is by far the second one, Bloody Stream. Everything fits together so perfectly that sometimes I come back just to watch it again, because I love it so much. The jazzy, upbeat song is a complete banger (I love Coda) and fits perfectly with Joseph Joestar, and the animation is the cherry on top. While the 3D style still appears, there are a lot of other nice elements like the silhouettes of Joseph and Caesar fighting and the colorful patterns to represent Hamon.
The ending for both parts is the same, with just some changes in the animation, and despite fitting way better with the second part, I enjoyed listening to it every episode. With the soundtrack being the classic Roundabout by Yes and the animation of Mayan carvings on a wall, we get an ending impossible to skip. The soundtrack was also pretty good, with different styles to differentiate Battle Tendency from Phantom Blood. The music helped to set the tone of the scene, and because of that we got some pretty memorable moments, like the Pillarmen introduction in part two.
But while I do love a lot the whole aesthetic and impact JoJo's Bizarre Adventure caused, it's still a small part compared to the actual plot and characters, so that didn't end up adding much to my final score. After all, there were still many disappointing things that occupied much more of my time watching it, and that contributed way more to my poor experience. Good visuals are always a plus, but they don't define if a story is well made or not.
To wrap things up, this review ended up so positive mostly because of part two. I can understand why people like this series so much and why it became so famous worldwide, but I can't just ignore all of the terrible writing and basic storytelling in parts one and two. And even if I did ignore it, the anime still lacks interesting events to keep us excited to watch, which could've been a huge redeeming quality. But instead, I was bored, annoyed and just overall tired of JoJo by the time I finished the first two parts. With the anime adaptation of part seven now announced, I'll try to catch up with the rest and see if Araki did improve or if the rest of his work is as bland as this one.
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