Downtown Khazan: Ice Cold Utopia

[Beadle]

This sentence is a bit wild to me as a fan of the series. Not that I'm like "the art style is unimpeachable," or anything but, because Jojo has been consistently in circulation since roughly as long as I've been alive, Hirohiko Araki's art style has shifted wildly over the years.

The anime had the very unenviable job of looking at the stuff done in the late 80s, which is very Fist of the North Star adjacent, and then looking at like Part 7 or 8, which is much more heavily influenced by fashion and glamour models and everyone is waaaay less cartoonishly buff, and going "Right, we have to keep the spirit of the original artwork but tweak it enough so when we get to Part 5, when the shift really kicks in, the anime still feels contiguous to previous series,"

And to their credit, they managed to make it feel consistent with some very clever concessions. But yeah, Jojo's art style is quite a wide thing on a spectrum haha.



I definitely don't think it's a show for everyone in the same way that like... One Piece or something like that is. Jojo is, as the name would suggest, very odd and is also very different from part to part. It's hard to recommend the show wholesale because it's a very mixed bag in terms of what it wants to do and what the style of it was like at the time it was written.

Like - do you like Fist of the North Star? In which case you will enjoy Part 1 because it's basically the same series but with vampire hunters. Big man learns sunshine kung fu to fight his adopted vampire brother. It's bouncy, very simple and 80s as hell.

Part 2 has some of that FotNS DNA put pivots into expanding what said sunshine kung fu can do and is more about the cleverness of the protagonist rather than the bigness of his muscles. There are also fewer squash matches as the opponents are, by and large, much more powerful than the hero. Big shift there but it's still a singular sort of story with the pillarmen as big bad, so far so shonen.

Part 3 is a monster-of-the-week road trip show with an entirely new and wildly variable battle system, much more complicated gimmick fights and a greater emphasis on comedy. Still quite standard shonen, especially when compared against today, but with interesting variants to it.

Part 4 pivots more to a mystery/thriller based model that is much more about "who is the bad guy/what is actually going on?" and you also start getting Araki being much more creative with his powersets. Again, very different feel to Part 3. It abandons the more globe-trotting elements of the previous entries and sets itself entirely in one locale. Also, aliens at one point for some reason.

Part 5 is a mafia drama with a ragtag crew of misfits getting in over their heads against the most dangerous psychic mafia in the world. It also, for the first time, has effectively zero characters or direct connections to the previous parts. It's also at this point that Araki fully transitions from "big muscle men," to "soft beautiful model boys," as his primary design aesthetic. Larger area covered but it's not a road trip in the same way Part 3 was.

Part 6 is a prison escape lockbox mystery so, ostensibly, an even smaller locale than Part 4 and a very disempowered protagonist who is set up for a crime she didn't commit (perhaps) for unknown reasons so there's a much larger question about who her allies are. Also, for the first time, girls can be the actual main characters now, huzzah!

Part 7 is a cowboy-themed horse race/treasure hunt caper and throws out a ton of pre-established lore due to circumstances. Back to the road movie sort of feel to it, smaller cast but it has the fun that pretty much all the antagonists are present from the offset due to the race setup.

Part 8... man, I still don't think I know how to sum up the current series in a single pithy way. Mystery... family drama... psychedelic... thriller? 8 is definitely the oddest iteration thus far and man... 6 and 7 also get really weird so that is quite an achievement.

So, all of that is to say, Jojo is a lot of different things at different points in it's life. It manages to... just about feel cohesive, but that's mostly through recurring characters (until Part 7) and the "feel" of it. Araki can write different genres but he's very talented at making them feel Jojo-ish. I'm not surprised that you, or anyone else, might bounce straight off it. It's hardly a consistent thing.

To be fair, Nik, it could just not be someone’s thing.

I mean if you bounce off something once, you’re not going to keep going back to it in the hope that; based on no knowledge that it might; it changes in content and style to something that does work for you. You’re certainly not going to go back to an earlier stage of that product in the hope it suits you better, when you know full well that eventually it will morph into something you definitely don’t like.

You’d just think “Welp, other people like it as it is, which is fine, but it’s not for me and there are plenty of other things that I do like, so I’ll just stick with those. No harm, no foul.”

Now the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum. And so on and so forth. Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout Willis?

[Guy1]

Now the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum. And so on and so forth. Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout Willis?

[Nik Hasta]

To be fair, Nik, it could just not be someone’s thing.

I mean if you bounce off something once, you’re not going to keep going back to it in the hope that; based on no knowledge that it might; it changes in content and style to something that does work for you. You’re certainly not going to go back to an earlier stage of that product in the hope it suits you better, when you know full well that eventually it will morph into something you definitely don’t like.

You’d just think “Welp, other people like it as it is, which is fine, but it’s not for me and there are plenty of other things that I do like, so I’ll just stick with those. No harm, no foul.”

Now the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum. And so on and so forth. Whatchoo talkin’ ‘bout Willis?

Yeah, that was my point.

That's why I literally said at the end:

I'm not surprised that you, or anyone else, might bounce straight off it. It's hardly a consistent thing.

My point was that Jojo is /hard to recommend/ because it's pretty wildly diverse and has been written over the course of ~30 years.

[Hiromi]

The obvious winner won.

Also, next time is Geese Howard vs. Heihachi Mishima.

this was amusing, for one I'd completely forgotten about the Ovoid mind transfer, and it used to get brought up a lot around here back in the day

[Beadle]

Yeah, that was my point.

That's why I literally said at the end:



My point was that Jojo is /hard to recommend/ because it's pretty wildly diverse and has been written over the course of ~30 years.

Ah, sorry. I may have skim-read.

^_^

From the opening couple of paragraphs I kinda (wrongly) felt you were going in a “It’s wild to me that this could not be your thing because it’s changed so much that it’s actually a bunch of things, so surely one of them would be your vibe.” kinda direction.

[Cthulhu_of_R'lyeh]

To be fair, Nik, it could just not be someone’s thing.

I mean if you bounce off something once, you’re not going to keep going back to it in the hope that; based on no knowledge that it might; it changes in content and style to something that does work for you. You’re certainly not going to go back to an earlier stage of that product in the hope it suits you better, when you know full well that eventually it will morph into something you definitely don’t like.

I disagree with this fundamentally, as there's people who kept watching Arrow, and people who keep watching other non-Animated DC shows and films

[Postmania]

Looks fun.

[Beadle]

Looks fun.

Looks friggin’ genius.

[Nik Hasta]

Ah, sorry. I may have skim-read.

^_^

From the opening couple of paragraphs I kinda (wrongly) felt you were going in a “It’s wild to me that this could not be your thing because it’s changed so much that it’s actually a bunch of things, so surely one of them would be your vibe.” kinda direction.

Your error must have been the work of an enemy stand. O_O

(This is a Jojo reference that you will not get)

[Nik Hasta]

In other news, finished my One Piece reread.

Yeah... um... it's really good? Almost annoyingly consistent in how fresh and creatively open it is. The characters are well written, entertaining and engaging. The art and the design of everything is powerfully unique and striking. The incidental worldbuilding is crazy strong.

Yeah, sometimes the popular thing is popular because it's actually really, really good.

Would recommend One Piece but I'm sure anyone on here who reads manga is probably reading it already.

Now... to do an analysis of post-timeskip Luffy's strength as a yardstick for figuring out how strong/durable some of the supporting cast and antagonists are.

[Farealmer]

Lawful: I follow the rules ...
Neutral: Whatever helps me ...
Chaotic: I break the rules ...

Good: ... to benefit as many as possible.
Neutral: ... to do my own thing.
Evil: ... to benefit myself.

[Tami]

Looks fun.

I think that the thanks should go to Tom Hiddleston, he is fantastic as Loki.

[bruceleegreyhulk]

[Nik Hasta]

Hajime no Ippo - that was a brilliantly intense chapter. Morikawa can really do stellar choreography that feels fresh, even after all these years.

Man, I do like it when this series actually gets to the boxing. I feel like it's been a while since we had a really serious match to get into. There's only so much hijinks I can take before I want to see some punching.

[Beadle]

Lawful: I follow the rules ...
Neutral: Whatever helps me ...
Chaotic: I break the rules ...

Good: ... to benefit as many as possible.
Neutral: ... to do my own thing.
Evil: ... to benefit myself.

Chaotic Neutral: I do whatever I want whenever I want because reasons and my DM really hates me.