Manga of the Month: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure

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Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure (ジョジョの奇妙な冒険) by Hirohiko Araki

Lets just get this out-of-the-way. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure goes from a pretty ugly manga to a better drawn but very oddly stylized manga. If art and character designs are a high priority to you then you are not going to make it through more than a few chapters before you give up in disgust. But everyone else is going to get hooked by one of the best shonen fighting manga ever.

When you first get into shonen fighting manga you are usually wowed by the crazy characters, unique powers, and dramatic fights. But usually after a half a dozen series most people being to see that while a few shonen fighting shows stay fresh most seem to blend together in mediocrity. But even more the One Piece there is a manga that consistently stays fresh and absolutely insane even after 100+ volumes. That manga is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.

It starts off with a “simple” story. A young man in Victorian England must learn sunlight based kung fu to avenge the death of his father at the hands of an evil vampire. But after a few volumes that young man completes his quest and then subsequently dies. At that point we learn that Jojo’s is actually a generational tale that follows the exploits of the Joestar family. Every few volumes a piece of the grand narrative will come to a close and the story jumps to another member of the Joestar family and their equally strange adventures. There is everything from mob stories to cross continental horse back races.

There are just a laundry list of reason to love Jojo’s. While the manga uses many of the standard parts of the shonen fighting formula it wisely knows that the secret to using that blueprint it to keep the ingredients you use in every iteration fresh.  By constantly changing the cast, powers, and setting at regular intervals the story may have the same vibe but no individual piece stays around long enough to wear out its welcome. Also Hirohiko Araki has a totally eccentric style so the manga is made up of honorable cyborg nazi’s, super powered dogs, invisible babies, and the most powerful and holy magical zombie of all time. Also most of the characters and powers are musical references which give the manga a catchy feel. You really just have to read Jojo’s to understand. Only the third part is commercially available but it is a great introduction to the madness.

Completing a Series

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Everyone has their own various ways of watching anime and mine have changed over the years. Since I was introduced to it through a friend, I originally tended to watch in a group. But as my fandom grew I started to also watch things on my own. Up until perhaps the 2000s, in either of these scenarios I would watch anything and everything to the (sometimes bitter) end as long as I could find it. But I am not a completionist at heart.

So, as the availability of anime has grown, my tolerance for watching things that I’m not enjoying has dropped close to zero. That isn’t to say I won’t give a show a fair shake or the minute a show steps out of line I forget about it immediately, no, I’ve hung on from time to time. But my point is the minute I find myself complaining about a series too much, I let go. I’ve even been known to do this near the end. Afterall, the likelihood of someone else (whose opinion I trust) finishing it nowadays is great so I can find out if I should continue or not.

This is my entertainment after all, it seems silly to go too far in misery! The only real exception is if I’m watching with someone else, this can account for why I watched all of Banner of the Stars II and Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory among others.

So in general, when I finish a show it has a lot of meaning, personally. Something about the show was compelling enough to want to know how it ends; not merely want to say I finished it. With so many options, it only seems sensible for me.

What are your viewing habits?

Redline: Always Bet On JP

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For quite sometime I’d been hearing the life altering power of watching Redline so when the opportunity arose to finally see it, one does not waste time! Redline is one of those movies that reminds you of what anime is capable of beyond live action so consequently it also reminded me why I fell in love with anime in the first place. It isn’t hype, Redline is just that amazing a ride.

When only a handful of the English-speaking anime fans had seen Redline there was a good deal of contention about how much of its reputation was hype and how much of it was real. Tim Maughan was quite evangelical on the Internet which lead to a great deal of both extreme expectations and equally extreme skepticism (and often in the same people). People hoped that it was the perfection of an older and more extravagant form of animation. At the same time the long-delayed production schedule and strange release made people worried if it would be a bloated piece of retro nonsense. But now that everyone has a legitimate (and therefore less than legitimate) means to watch the film the general consensus is: it is awesome. All the promises made were true if not somewhat underplayed. Redline crossed the finish line in glorious form.

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