always this
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what a mortal error
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in the 70s and 80s, the main thing children in island nations that were once imperial powers wanted in their comics wasunpleasantness
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it had to be the right kind of unpleasantness
unpleasantness is way worse now
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haibane renmei might be the best melancholy anime
i remember trying to watch magical nyan nyan taruto when it came out because i really like nekomimi characters when i was 14, but it was so boring i donāt think i even made it all the way through the first episode
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Hey I donāt like jjba either! There are certainly queer people besides me who donāt dig it
I stand corrected
Anyway, instead of watching JJBA, watch desi action movies that know how to do bombastic āpeople vogueing each otherā fight scenes right.
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tubi has lily c.a.t.
also a spanish dub of space adventure cobra
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upload it and set a date! I want to watch it so bad!
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i love jjba but i also canāt really blame anyone who isnāt into it.
my litmus test for people with that show is the two-part āDarby the Gamblerā episodes. like you donāt really need much from before the show to get whatās going on and i think those really encapsulate what makes the show enjoyable to watch.
but yeah Haibane Renmei rules
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yeah imo jjba isnāt realy the right fit if youāre looking for deep developed characters. arakiās character design does eventually transcend the 80s shonen tropes in part 1 but writing convincing humans isnāt really his bag ā theyāre always aesthetic over everything else.
as far as relatability goes, joseph (the protag of part 2 and member of the gang in part 3) sticks out as kind of an anti-shonen protag in that heās an extremely lazy + horny jackoff who hates studying or training and spends most of his arc scamming his way to victory (all of his braincells are dedicated to scamming) against supernatural world-dominance obsessed naked weirdos much more powerful than him
part 4 is maybe the arc with the most grounded stakes? it largely concerns itself with a supernatural murder mystery in a smaller japanese town (as opposed to the globetrotting road trips of other arcs.) the antagonist is a patrick bateman-esque salaryman serial killer with an obsessive fixation on not being noticed by anyone, ever. this is also the arc where arakiās style abandons giant fist of the north star physiques for lean, more fashion model inspired builds, and the androgyny really ramps up. the protag and his pals are adorable high school delinquents (plus arakiās fashion weirdo self-insert character Rohan) and this arc is where the superpowers start getting extremely specific and arcane, making the fighting bits less of a āletās see whoās strongerā shonen thing and more Absurd Vogue Puzzle. think less āthis guy has a stand that controls fireā and more āthis guy has a stand that opens up someoneās face like a book and flips through the pages of their memory and personality, allowing him to write new memories or beliefs inā
if you asked me āiām going to watch one arc of jojo, which would it beā iād recommend part 4. it does have a few callbacks and characters from previous arcs, but itās nothing you couldnāt get through with a quick trip to the jojo wiki (and honestly, this series isnāt ruined by spoilers at all ā imo jojo is squarely about the journey and the vibe, not the destination) with the caveat that it does focus on a serial killer who hunts women and araki leans a bit too hard into sexual violence exploitation sleaze w/ an early arc minor antagonist
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also, just to put this out front: araki is at minimum confused by and occasionally seems disgusted by the idea of women. it isnāt until part 5 that a woman exists as something other than eye candy to be immediately sidelined plotwise. his men are genderfucky as hell, especially later on, but do not come into jjba expecting anything other than Gorgeous Dudes Being Bros
i say this while also absolutely loving Trish (member of the gang in part 5, and the first woman he incorporates into the core entourage of any arc) because sheās hot, largely doesnāt give a shit about what any of the boys think about her, and as a trans woman, i really vibed with her mini-arc where she discovers her stand ability and its whole theme of finding strength through softness (her stand lets her make any material stretchy and elastic, drastically boosting its resilience to force.) i also find arakiās post-part 4 woman character designs v. affirming because of his tendency to give them a lot of stereotypically AMAB features (which i assume is a quirk of habit + style more than anything) without treating those features as a joke or anything other than Extremely Hot and Cool, something i rarely see in big pop culture productions, especially anime
(sorry this wasnāt supposed to be a Gender Feelings post but my enjoyment of jjba is kind of inseparable from them)
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between Rohan Kishibe and Junji Itoās memoir focused stuff I think I tend to assume that manga artists all view themselves as like, the village eccentrics
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I have been a huge fan of Jojo since as long as I could remember, mainly because the protagonists from 2 and on win primarily by being clever and confident and less through raw strength. Perhaps I enjoy that in particular because of the systems brain snake that I nurture in my grey matter. But itās so fun and refreshing to watch cool fights that arenāt about learning a technique or feeling full of willpower. Sometimes I just wanna see some guy do some absolute bullshit and then another guy do something even MORE bullshit and enjoy it.
Plus I like that Araki gets fixated on particular things and then just HAS to include them in his comics. He feels like a man driven by compulsion sometimes, and Jojo has that sort of impulsive energy, narrative fits and starts as each twist propels you forwards until the ending barely resembles the beginning.
All of this on top of everything else people have described already here! Lots of layers to peel apart as you sink into the morass that is the anime/OVA/comic differences and the influence it has had on American and Japanese culture, even before the anime.
I used to read Jojo in the bath with the first American paperbacks (the part 3 ones) and eat Shin Ramyun and the combination is literally so powerful now in my memory that I cannot do one without thinking of the other. That is the power of Jojo.
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Iāve watched almost every episode of that Manben documentary (where the Junji Ito episode comes from) and one thing I learned is that every single manga artist is a village eccentric in their own unique way.
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OK, inspired by all your great JoJo posts, my gf and I went back to it and watched up through episode 7. For some reason, the 4th episode was way more entertaining than any of the others so far.
Once we saw this guy punch a frog, we were hooked:
That episode helped us both get on the showās idiotic wavelength and weāre now kind of into it. Looking forward to the second season where it supposedly really gets going!
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This is in line with many other peopleās experience. This is where Jojo really starts to cook with gas.
Watched Castle of Cagliostro cause itās on Netflix. I never watched a Lupin III thing before. Looks like I have to watch every Lupin III thing possible now
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