Jojo's Bizarre Adventure- Part 1-4

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is an Anime that takes place over multiple generations of the Joestar family line. Starting with Jonathan, the family is in an eternal war with the man Dio Brando and the various sources his power comes from. Either dealing with him directly, the source of his powers, or the aftermath of his actions, the four parts (Each Part is a new lead character) so far of the Anime have shown themselves to be one of the strangest things I have ever seen, or at the very least strange in a way that I've never come across before.

See, the actual story being presented isn't a joke in the slightest. It's actually a very unique idea to base an anime or manga on. It's not just watching the story of a member of a family fated to do battle with their enemy, but you actually get to follow along with this story from the very first, Jonathan, and then on to his Grandson, and his Grandson after, and all of these are treated as their own stories.

So that leaves the question of why this show is so strange. Every character is a sort of exaggeration that you would expect to see in a comedy. The first story with Jonathan, for example, you see Jonathan always saying and doing the manliest things. Everything out of his mouth is some great proclamation. Dio, the villain, is seen almost immediately as kicking a dog. And not just a light kick to the side, the foot goes from the ground to well overhead. Robert E. O. Speedwagon exists throughout the first two story arcs as the hype man for everything going on. And I mean everything. But at the same time, the show doesn't treat these hugely exaggerated things as a joke.

Despite how strange that is, the show still manages to do a fantastic job and pulling you in and making you care about what's going on. Jojo is a great example that so long as you are taking your own premise seriously, no matter how strange, you can get an audience to take it seriously if it's written well.

And, for the most part, the show is written very well. There are some issues that come up, like how after season one Hamon energy (An energy that is created by controlling ones breathing and blood flow), a central focus, largely disappears in favor of the Stands (A mental projection of the user with unique powers based on their users). Then comes the fourth part, where one of the stands named 'The Hand' could have been used to get around several major issues that come up, but I guess the user just forgot he could use it to advance forward at an incredible speed. Otherwise, the show has a lot of very clever fights and makes great use of everyone’s unique abilities. It's helped by how good the show looks purely from a visual standpoint.

And while this won't be a big deal for everyone, if your a fan of old school music you will catch a huge amount of references. From the aforementioned Robert E. O. Speedwagon, you have a Stand that makes use of bombs named Killer Queen, an enemy named Billie Jean shows up, and the ending theme for season 2 is Walk like an Egyptian. Not a cover, but the original Bangles song. The creator of Jojo is obviously a huge music nerd. The references are too great to count, and I love it.

Where the show falters is when it tries to do more typical comedy. Part 2 ends up doing it well, and is my favorite part of the series, but the later half of part 3 spends a lot of time being more lighthearted than the rest of the show. Once you drop the serious and exaggerated tone, it becomes harder to take the more exaggerated characters seriously and that whole bizarre nature of the show starts to disappear. During these times you end up having characters acting like complete idiots in order to move the story along as well. I get why the final fight of part 4, for example, was limited to the main villain vs. Joske for a good stretch of it. The problem is that only happened because everyone who heard Joske Scream, even though they all knew the villain was after them, just assumed they were hearing things even though it was only a block away.

Despite those flaws, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure is one of the more original anime's not only of the modern era but in general. The fights are fantastic, the characters are great, and no other show I have seen is strange in the same way that Jojo is. Definitely give the show a watch, because even if you don't like it a few episodes will give you an entirely unique experience.

---

Easiest way to talk to me outside of the Steemit is over on Twitter: https://twitter.com/The_Mad_Monarch