A while back Rollo T challenged me to review one of his favorite shows, a MANLY anime called Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures. 

Pictured: Jojo Logo stolen from Capcom website

This is an interactive article. Every time you see the words “MANLY anime” or “MANime”, please strike a MANLY pose, like Armstrong down there. If you are in the comfort of your own home, feel free to rip off your shirt or speak in a Schwarzenegger voice to increase the MANLY atmosphere. If you can, punch someone while yelling “I AM A MAN!” (but do remember to give Linkara a nickel every time you do). Whatever helps set the MANLY mood.

 
Pictured: MANLINESS

Now that the atmosphere has been arranged, let’s move on to the review.

Let me first say that I feel that the English title of the show is a little inappropriate. While a perfectly accurate translation, the word “adventure” doesn’t seem to fit the show very well. When I think “adventure” I think of brave sailors at sea, pioneers claiming the frontier, treks through the jungle to find a lost treasure or… Bill & Ted. To me, adventure = exploration and travel, usually in a positive, upbeat sort of way. So, something like One Piece. And while there is traveling in Jojo, it carries more of a feel of a death march for the characters rather than a spirited adventure. Jojo should have been named something more apropos, like “Jojo’s Blood-Spattering Battles” or “Watch People Explode.”

Jojo was unfortunately never made into an animated TV series. Perhaps because of its incredible length and unfinished nature, a short 6 episode OVA was made in 1993. Let’s call this Part A. This part jumps in the middle of the action and begins with Joseph Joestar, his grandson Jotaro and their comrades traveling to Cairo in hopes of defeating a vampire named Dio. Along the way they have to battle Dio’s minions using Stands, which are like super-powered familiars. A long intro during each episode attempts to fill the viewer in how the currents have events transpired, but really, without knowledge of the manga, it doesn’t make much sense. It feels strange for the OVA to jump right in with little to no background information. I find that it makes the characters hard to immediately connect with, since we learn almost nothing about their personal stories and what motivates them to fight Dio. It is, on the other hand, nice and bloody with really excellent fights. In MANLY anime, action is king.

In 2001, a Prequel OVA was made. Let’s call this Part B. Part B was made to take place before the start of Part A, and shows how the characters meet. It gives some background information on the characters and actually explains why they need to fight Dio. Because Part B is newer, the animation is much nicer. The lines are cleaner and the colors are a little more subdued, making the show feel darker. Despite the drastic changes in quality, the character designs change very little. Part A’s style isn’t as detailed, and the colors are distinctly brighter, but in a flat, one-tone kind of way I find a little too jarring to belong to such a dark show.

Despite being better animated, Part B of Jojo isn’t really considered the better of the two. Part A, with its poorer animation and its jarring entry into the story, remains the fan favorite. One might argue that fights of Part A are better (read: bloodier), or that the action is more intense, but I think its popularity in then fanbase endures out of shear nostalgia. It was the first animated taste fans got of the epic and expansive Jojo manga, and for many years, it seemed it would be the only animated Jojo they would ever get to see. I cannot attest to the accuracy of the anime to the manga since I have barely been able to tap into such a massive (and still ongoing) read as the Jojo manga, one of the longest running manga in history. But, from what I am told and what little of the manga I have read, the MANime skips over a lot of great fights, probably in order to give Dio more time to lurk in the shadows, order minions around, and generally act evil. And MANLY.

Parts A and B seem to flip-flop over the characters. Yes, the cast of characters is the same, but somehow the character personalities are ever so slightly different. Jotaro, who is the very definition of the “strong, silent type,” remains pretty stoic throughout Part B. He appears to have a strong sense of justice, and desires to protect the weak and spare lives, but he rarely expresses his feelings on his face or voices his thoughts, making him hard to connect to. But in Part A, he’s more expressive, and the anime goes out of its way to demonstrate his intelligence and caring for others. Part B better shows off the personalities and abilities of pretty much all the other characters, most of whom are seriously lacking screen time in Part A.

Speaking of characters, let’s talk about the character designs. The characters in Jojo are what I would guess to be pretty typical of such a MANime. All of the males in the show are incredibly, well, masculine - tall, broad shoulders, muscles like a body-builder. Even some of the women in the show (and there aren’t many) look a little masculine. Overall, I’d say the character designs are pretty normal, pretty cool, until the villains come in. Seriously, what’s with those heart-shaped accessories? It’s hard to take a villain seriously if he’s wearing a leotard and a big gold heart on his belt. As if being named Vanilla Ice wasn’t gay enough.

Seriously. I wish I were making that up.

There really is a character called Vanilla Ice, and no, he doesn’t look like that early 90’s hip-hop guy (another character, Polnereff kinda has that hair though). How this wasn’t a major lawsuit I’ll never understand, but just try watching his fight scene without thinking “Ice Ice Baby.” Bad guys aside, the rest of the cast accessorizes well. There are some cool earrings and hats, which, while trivial to most, I find to be thoughtful little details that help define the characters. Most recognizable is Jotaro, who wears a school uniform and cap that blends so well into his hair, it’s difficult to know where one ends and the other begins. Strange, some might say, but I’m inclined to think of it a cosplay challenge.

Unfortunately, due to the rushed nature of the OVA, even with the character backgrounds explained in Part B, the characters’ personalities aren’t terribly well defined. Rather, most of the characters seem sort of the same. Most of them are strong but reasonable, physically and mentally tough. They all have their reasons for hunting Dio, generating a certain camaraderie which makes the good guys seem almost identical. And the bad guys have a similar problem; they’re all arrogant bastards. The main difference in the villains is that some of them are justified in their arrogance, and some aren’t (some die faster than others).

While I’m talking about villains, Dio has a surprisingly boring Japanese seiyuu. In fact, Dio is one instance where I like the English voice actor more than the Japanese seiyuu. For once I’m not going to name drop all the great English VAs in the show, because honestly, the cast is full of VAs with only one or two roles. But the Japanese cast is pretty nice, although Tanaka Nobuo (Sosai X in Gatchaman, Cardinal Richelieu in Anime Sanjushi) as Dio is a little… flat and effeminate… not befitting of the bid baddy of the show. Continuing the theme of Jotaru looking way too old, he also kind of sounds too old. His seiyuu is Kosugi Juurouta, who tends to play imposing characters like Zagato in Magic Knight Rayearth, Arlong in One Piece, Tenkou in Fushigi Yuugi, and Fernand de Morcerf in Gankutsuou. In both the English and Japanese tracks, his voice is so deep it increases the inability to believe that Jotaro is still a high school student. But, since anime has nothing to do with logic, the voice works for Jotaro and makes his character sound rougher and tougher. Joseph Joestar’s rough and fatherly voice is provided by Ohtsuka Chikao (Goemon Ishikawa XIII in Lupin III, TaoPaiPai in Dragon Ball, Rikudo Shougo in RahXephon, and Dr. Eggman in the Sonic video games and anime series). Also gracing the cast of MANLY men are Kobayashi Kiyoshi (Watari in Death Note, Jigen in Lupin III), Suzuoki Hirotaka (Tenshinhan in DragonBall, Dextera in Kiddy Grade, Bright Noah in Mobile Suit Gundam, Kuno Tatewaki in Ranma 1/2, Dragon Shiryuu in Saint Seiya), and Mori Katsuji best known for his roles as Ken the Eagle in Gatchaman, Garma Zabi in Mobile Suit Gundam, Nephrite in Sailor Moon, and Mifune Go (Speed Racer) in Speed Racer.  Mori isn’t quite as well known for playing Peter van Daan in The Diary of Anne Frank anime movie, which I do believe exists just to prove that the Japanese will make anime out of anything.

It’s amazing that the English cast is full of small names with one or two roles to their name if they’re lucky, and the Japanese cast is full of glorious actors, most of whom graced the casts of mega-hits Lupin III, DragonBall, MSGundam, or all three. This is pretty much all the evidence one needs of just how little the American audience knows or cares about the oddity that is Jojo; a fact that I’m sure brings many fans much sadness.

The music of Jojo is surprising. I say surprising not in that it’s outstandingly good or unique, but it’s surprising since not many anime have soundtracks designed by Western composers. The music in both parts of Jojo were done by Marc d’Ambrosio or MarcoCo, whose clients include Lucasfilm Ltd., Sony Pictures Classics, Dolby Laboratories, Dreamworks, PBS, etc. MarcoCo’s sound designer, Tim Myers, has worked on major motion pictures like Mission Impossible, Armageddon, Toy Story, and Monsters Inc. This incredible variety of music design is found in Jojo. Ranging from tribal drums to rock ballads to gentle orchestrations, the music of Jojo covers a whole range. The music generally adds to the atmosphere of the scene, though some of the most dramatic parts of the show have little or no music, letting sound effects and dialog make the scene.

There was also a Jojo movie, entitled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood, which served as a prequel to the adventures of the OVA. It was essentially the origin story of Dio and the Joestar family (basically the first several volumes of the manga). But, there were apparently some serious issues with the film, and it was never released on DVD, making it nearly - if not completely - impossible to find. So once again, Jojo fans are screwed.

All in all Jojo is a strange show. It deserves so much more animation than it got, but, for the manga fans, it’s a nice little opportunity to see their favorite characters in action. I can’t say that the show stands (oh look, a pun) on its own; it really requires knowledge of the manga to understand everything that’s going on. Still, if you’re looking for a nice short show and you like watching people get dismembered, Jojo is definitely a worthwhile watch. On the other hand, since the company that was distributing it has pretty much disappeared, it might be a little difficult to find. DVDs can still be found on Amazon.com, and I’m sure you pirates will have no difficulty finding the show somewhere for illegal download (not that I’m encouraging you to break the law, I’m just saying…)

Last thoughts: ORAORAORAORAORA! and WRYYYYYYYY!