But JoJo starts really simple in terms of wild matchups. Before I go into it, I'd like to say the following two things. First, JoJo is a series that can be digested in any order you want. It is split by parts and each part has an individual and selfconcluding story that of course ties together with every part and has some repercussions later, but you can watch JoJo in any order you want if you don't mind spoilers for the previous part and you could watch the former parts as flashbacks of what formerly happened if you'd choose to do so. I personally find the idea interesting, but I did watch/read them in the chronological order, so I can't guarantee the way you'll enjoy it if you were to watch them in an out of order fashion. Secondly I wanna say that this anime is formed of two parts out of the 8 JoJo has, which I'll talk about separately rather than together, but I'll tie it all together eventually. In the case of these two parts however, although I said they can be consumed in any order, I strongly advice you to always watch the first part, Phantom Blood, before you move on to the second, Battle Tendency, because you'll see the type of progress JoJo will be having during its lifetime and its constant desire to improve and differentiate from not only its previous parts but general action series conventions set within its time.
I'll talk about each part's strengths and weaknesses, and then give more details on the overall JoJo experience, as in, what to expect going onwards into the future parts and what you should expect from JoJo.
• Part 1, Phantom Blood.
To be completely honest, Phantom Blood is nothing special. By itself, in terms of anything except one specific thing, it is quite average in most aspects that are prevalent elements of its own part. As I've said, the main character wins because he's honorable and strong, he's a manly man, he's traditional, his opponents are evil, he is not an interesting character on his own and the fights aren't that interesting either. The over the top elements aren't as prevalent, (at least not if intended) they're there, but they're not as ridiculous as they are to become, overall, Part 1 would be almost a botch if it wasn't directed well by the studio. But there's one thing, that is very interesting in Phantom Blood. Jonathan's relationship with Dio. And the studio, David Production, agreed with me on this one since out of the manga's content, they mostly focused on the moments crucial to the story and on displaying Jonathan's relationship with his adopted brother, Dio.
Their relationship starts like this: Dio is adopted by a rich family after living through poverty and abuse and now he wants to inherit the money of the Joestar family. Due to his social status and overall demeanor, Dio despises Jonathan, seeing him as a weak person who doesn't deserve what he has, this leaving Jonathan completely oblivious to why Dio would hate him, since all he knew in his life is a comfortable life. It isn't a relationship that can be characterized as just good vs evil, as most of everything in this part seems to boil down to, but rather its core drive seems to be the people Jonathan and Dio are at their core, the aristrocrat vs the slums. Dio only knew abuse and ruthlessness from other people while Jonathan was raised to be a gentleman. Their relationship is really complex because two really fundamentally different people collide with each other.
That's what David Production tried to polish out of Phantom Blood. A complex relationship about the man who was raised right against the man who was raised wrong. They skipped most random fights between vampires and ghouls and only focused on things that display things about Dio, Jonathan and the core story that envelops during it. And this made Phantom Blood very interesting and a worthwhile watch for me. Even if it was mostly executed in a safe for its time way in the manga, the fact that I saw exactly what differentiated it from the other stories of its type due to the clever direction chosen by the studio, I had a worthwhile experience from this part.
But I wanna speak about the flaws of Phantom Blood. Outside the relationship of the protagonist and antagonist, and the over the top nature of the series with some of its moments, there's nothing inherently interesting or memorable about it. Like, there are some weird anatomical impossibilities or things that clearly don't work that way or are impossible that you can consider flaws too, but considering the over the top nature of JoJo, those things entertain me rather than dissapoint me. Doesn't mean that they're not there and other people would not hate noticing those, and there's no real need for examples here, because honestly, there's at least one every episode. Just expect being like "humans can't do that". Nowhere in any part is as ridiculous as in Phantom Blood. The amount of times I was like "STUDY BASIC HUMAN ANATOMY" due to the sheer amount of things that just don't work as rudimentary biology is significantly higher than it should've been, but eventually I got over it and was like, fuck it, it's hilarious. My favorite one has to be one of the first where the series goes into a first person perspective of the main character and he jumps over a gigantic fountain. Note there are no supernatural powers at this point.
The main flaw of Phantom Blood is that every fight is forgettable, as well as its opponents, which is a fucking terrible thing in an action series. There's just never really anything unique about most characters except for a few side characters that help the protagonist and there's also Dio. The power of the characters is a basic poorly explained power where you create energy through inhaling air right, and sent it into something and manipulate it in a way for practical use and cleansing vampires... well, it doesn't really sound as anything noteworthy, especially when your main character uses it to punch stronk. If only there was someone who could use the power properly... The villains are vampires or ghouls that are... best described as weaker than the protagonist.
What makes it fine is that the main focus, like 60%+ of the actual episodes allocated for this part, are spent on detailing and giving depth to the relationship between the protagonist and antagonist, and if you're interested in the type of relationship I've described, you will enjoy it, even if you're likely to find everything else about this part mostly mediocre. Unfortunately, if you're only looking forward for the interesting action bits of the series, you'll have to wait if you start in chronological order.
• Part 2, Battle Tendency
It's pretty much the polar opposite of its preceding part. While its story isn't really anything to write home about, the action of this part is solid, the main character is a breath of fresh air, being the complete opposite of Jonathan and this part has a bunch of memorable characters due to both their story and some ridiculous facts about them.
The main character is Joseph Joestar, who is a highly disrespectful guy who often gets himself involved into an altercation with anyone around deserving of it. He isn't a traditional gentleman like Jonathan and will exploit any opportunity to trick anyone into gaining an advantage over them in a fight. But what's more important is that Joseph, unlike Jonathan, never wins his fights due to brawn and instead always outwits his opponents.
Every battle in Battle Tendency is Joseph bullshitting his way through the whole thing, trying to outsmart everyone. If he runs out of ideas he just runs away or tries to bullshit a way to make the enemy let him run away. Anytime Joseph has a confrontation with anyone it is pure entertainment value as you have no idea how he's gonna get out of an unfavorable situation and through what bullshit, but you know that he will. Be it he does it through a way that feels overwhelmingly ridiculous and over the top or through a way that does seem tactically sound, I couldn't help but chuckle at the times he turned a situation his way. If you enjoy seeing a character constantly outsmart other people, you'll have a lot of fun with Battle Tendency. While I'd like to give an example that would make you understand what I mean, the best I can give you is suggest you to look for Joseph vs Cops on youtube. While it is not the most sound example of what I've explained, it does highlight the personality of the main character and his overall demeanor, as well as his craftiness, in a way that's very easy to compare with Jonathan.
And the fact the writer, Hirohiko Araki, made this decision is really impressive, as it shows that he was willing to experiment to improve and he was trying his best to create an unique work. Not only did he go against the expectations of the overall average consumer at the time, but he also went against the expectations of the fans of the series to date. He took a risk because he thought it would be interesting, which is something to be respected, a risk that payed off and created a highly entertaining action series. That's what I wanted to show about JoJo as a series. It constantly tries to top itself off, become more interesting and unique and improve. That's how JoJo became one of the most influential series to date. It constantly challenged itself. And Araki, the writer, is well deserving of the praise.
As far as the characters go, what's more interesting about them is that now they have actual roles and powers that differentiate them from the other characters, unlike the former where only a few characters stood out. While not every character is memorable, there's a lot of them that bring some personality of their own into the story. While I think this didn't necesarily help the overarching story, since the focus of the story wasn't as concise as before, it gave the fights more immersion and us more reasons to immerse ourselves with them. They don't really influence the overall flow of things when you really think about it, and this becomes a larger problem in the following part, but this is not the review I'll talk about that.
It topped its preceding storyline in almost every aspect. While there's no relationship as strongly displayed as Jonathan's & Dio's, everything else is completely better. I'd say it's a very good and entertaining action series. Some of the over top bits of it might be a high or a low for you, depending on what you want from action series, but it worked out great for me, as I enjoy a character going against opponents that are supposed to be significantly superior to them in every aspect and then outwitting them, and considering the gap of power between them, I am willing to accept some things.
The story now is about a race of people who are sensitive to sunlight but are the top of the foodchain awakening and their leader wants to become the perfect being, and Joseph and his team have to stop them. Doesn't really sound like anything noteworthy storywise and I'd say it is mostly fine in that department. It isn't exactly cliche, but it doesn't really stand out too much in sheer storytelling value. That's the one aspect it didn't top. While I do regret there wasn't really anything to create a strong conflict or animosity between the characters and create a relationship as complex as Dio's and Jonathan's, I was really impressed by how everything else improved. And at its core, it succeeds in being a really interesting action series.
• What's the overall JoJo experience?
Bluntly put, gorey, over the top and composed of well thought action.
There's plenty of moments where characters get very grotesque wounds, censored if not watching the BD version, so you can opt for what you prefer. The censorship style isn't one to really take away from what's happening in the moment. The wounds are just black as to remove the level of detail while still leaving enough detail to understand exactly what happened, so there's no need to be too afraid of what you might actually see.
It's over the top in the sense that, well... the characters take random poses, some homoerotic, some dress homoerotic, some do hilariously dumb shit that can barely be taken seriously, yet, somehow, it still ties together into something that can be taken seriously. In all honesty, I don't think I can make a list long enough where the show just simply does something incredibly ridiculous, you'll notice it, you'll shrug or chuckle, and then carry on.
And the action... well... it's hard to describe in a short way. The first two parts of JoJo start with a power that has virtually infinite uses if you really think about it, but it has some limits because it can't be used on real humans, so eventually the writer developed a concept called stands, which are basically a manifestation of their spirits, which are meant to protect the user and all have different powers. It all gets really diverse later on with plenty of different powers and situations thrown into the mix, rather than having one character who outwits everyone, which as I've said, was entertaining, now every fight has an inner logic and some rules based on the limitations of each power, as each is unique. It's basically confrontations happening in a lot of varying situations, this creating great action, so the formula works.
The artstyle of the first 3 JoJo's is almost consistently GAR, which basically means it is an artstyle that features overlymasculine men. Afterwards, the artstyle seems to become more homoerotic and weird as fuck with its designs, but David Production does seem to want to take this into a direction of their own, for example, Part 4's backgrounds is mostly a blend of like 3 colors. It will also feature SFX effects written in katakana on screen, trait taken after the manga, giving JoJo a distinct visual feeling. Not to say they're gonna change Araki's character designs, just that they might take some liberties with some of the animation's style.
If you're interested in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, the only reason you should check it out is if you're interested in action series. It constantly develops and tries to top itself off in terms of unique setups and it often does really well. I enjoy a good action series, and the action in JoJo is what I aspire to see in a series. I suggest checking out Part 3 or Part 4's fights to make an informed decision if you're interested in all of what JoJo has to offer, because that's the routine it will adopt.
Ultimately, I still stand by to something I said in another JoJo review:
You will most likely enjoy any JoJo if you're looking for a series with over the top action where they can be either downright silly, (intentionally) really hype or really unsettling. You will most likely dislike any JoJo if you're not gonna be willing to treat its story or its universe as somewhat senseless to some extent and aren't willing to enjoy its ridiculousness when it serves it.
