~The fate of that blood~
JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOJO!!!!!!"
Destiny of That Blood - TOMMY
Last month I finished watching a series that I've known of for many years now and with Diamond is Unbreakable coming up and all the hype surrounding it, I decided to tell my thoughts on what I've seen so far. The series, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken by Hirohiko Araki) is well known for having a cast of muscular men doing fabulous-looking poses while in tight and serious situations, is an animated series adapted from a comic book series (started in 1986) of the same name by the animation studio David Production. There are older versions from other studios but I didn't watch those in particular.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure tells us a story that spans throughout generation after generation and the story of those generation's main characters is told in their own "parts" that the overall story is split into. In each part the main characters share two identical things in particular; they have the nickname JoJo and they have the Joestar bloodline. I mainly wanted to talk about normal novels instead of graphic novels in this blog, but JoJo gave me alot of inspiration on how to build up tense situations and how a story can always become better and perfected with experience, and in some parts worse.
I decided to split each part to a separate post as I need to figure out something to say for Stardust Crusaders...
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part 1: Phantom Blood
JoJo part 1 spans the first 9 episodes of season 1 of JoJo (2012). It sets up the groundwork for later parts and introduces us to an overarching villain whose presence in the story doesn't waver even when he's buried in the sea for a century, and ofcourse we're introduced to the Joestar family. The original JoJo and the main character of part 1 is known as Jonathan Joestar. Jonathan comes from a wealthy family and is a prideful person with a great father. The other side of the coin of the story belongs to a characters called Dio Brando, whose father is a drunkard, jobless bum and who dies in the beginning of the story, giving Dio a letter that lets him join the Joestar family if he were to die as Dio's father "saved" Jonathan's father in the past. The first three episodes of the nine that belong to part one of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure are spent in fleshing out the rivalry between JoJo and Dio. After certain events happen, the last six or so episodes are spent in running after Dio who had become massively more powerful than before. The hunt is very bloody and basic shounen-esq that might make you rip your hair off if you hate that type of thing.
Phantom Blood is definitely a very average and a cheesy series overall that feels like a cheap college movie they churn out constantly these days. I felt like it was hard to watch at times, but never did I think it was bad in any way. Aside from the great presentation, it simply used alot of ideas that aren't really anything but cliches these days. The reason for this is because it's done almost 30 years ago. Phantom Blood is definitely a 5/10 in my book when I compare it to other [better] works of fiction in this current era we live in, but in the 1980's the plot wasn't as old in the world because we didn't get information on writing styles and other such things in the blink of an eye like we do these days, so JoJo part 1 seems to me like an experimental work from a guy that wanted to create something original (nigh impossible nowadays if not completely, in my opinion). The opening of part 1 is great, and it condenses the story and shows subtle hints just like all 4 openings for JoJo, that were made by David Production atleast, do. Overall part 1 looked pretty stunning, the artwork was consistently great and Araki's style is very appealing in this modern era of sameface. The ending song and video is also great and it's used perfectly to set the mood up for the next episode. The ending song has also become a world-wide meme, #tobecontinued.
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