The show loves exposition and obviousness, I can't tell you enough. Literally almost everything that happens will be repeated. While I found it annoying af in other anime, it's sort of ok and even funny here. The anime remains fast-paced anyway, so they just make sure you're never lost on what's happening, no biggie here. The battles are rather interesting and are filled with twists and strategies.
The first episode sucks ass, I'll be honest. The second episode too, mostly. I know they are set-ups for bigger things but they were terrible. People shouldn't have to tolerate something until it gets better. The characters have good designs but their personalities are weak. The struggles of Jonathan and Dio can be summed up as good gentleman vs evil gentleman and they are perhaps the most fleshed out characters of part 1.
Jonathan is a super good guy but first and foremost he's a gentleman. But he's not only nice, he's also fierce, hard to topple and he will never give up. It's better than triumphing simply because you are a goodie-goodie nice guy. Dio is pretty much a bully for no reason. He hates his dad so he wants to be rich and powerful and steal that status from Jonathan. Then he becomes a vampire and want to rule the world, for some reason. I think a good villain is important and that is rather weak villain. But I found him ok still, because his immense power and badassery is a good opponent to test out how resilient and fierce Jojo is.
Part 2 is... kind of good but not really.The villains were pretty pathetic and uninteresting, except for Wamuu who had a certain sense of warrior honor. The "good" characters weren't much more interesting either. Other than Stroheim, characters were rather lame and forgettable, although Stroheim was extremely redundant, I still liked him because I liked everything that came out of his mouth (especially with that accent). Joseph gets old fast, even if his strategies and unpredictability make good fights. I found it funny that an anime with a main character being able to predict what his opponents are going to say and do, was predictable in itself. I couldn't tell how stuff was going to happen, but I could tell what was going to happen, I am not boasting, it is just really obvious that X character is going to win, or would draw out from the fight and have a rematch later, or that a character would lose because it was someone else who was meant to defeat that particular opponent.
The worst part of this anime is the plot holes and ass pulls. This is going into the spoiler territory so I will not mention anything, but it is just extremely jarring. Remember when I said the anime loves exposition and obviousness? How it is predictable? Can you imagine if something happened and it was badly or never explained? It pissed me off. Especially near the final episodes, where there is a bunch of of ass pulls and plot holes in a short lapse of about 10 minutes. One is even lamp-shaded. Let that sink in. I found that disappointing. Maybe I am thinking too hard about it and worrying too much about the story while *maybe* it's the magnificience and manliness I should be focusing on, but I've read and been told it was flawless and a masterpiece, so my expectations were set as such. This is no masterpiece in my opinion. It shines in other aspects and is good entertainment, but it has room for improvement.
