I'm relatively new to JoJo. I started watching the 2012 series, I think, a month ago, and watched the entirety of it in less than two weeks. I loved it. I absolutely adored it, especially Battle Tendency, with the young, charismatic, and extremely funny, yet super badass at the same time Joseph. Generally, I don't like anime that much, but it made such an impression on me, I couldn't wait to watch Stardust Crusaders - the most iconic JoJo, the JoJo everyone knew, the JoJo that gave birth to all the autistic memes from years ago I didn't get because I didn't know what exactly JoJo was. Basically, the instant I got a chance to watch it in all of its uncensored glory, I jumped right in and didn't think twice.
Now that I'm finished with both of the seasons, I think I'm going to pass on watching Diamond is Unbreakable. Why? Because the introduction of the concept of Stands almost instantly turned JoJo for me from the most awesome action anime in the universe to the most mediocre, boring slog I had to get through.
"What are you talking about? Stands are basically what JoJo is about! How can you hate it?" some of you may think. Well, I can and I do. And allow me explain why.
When I watched Part 1 and Part 2 of JoJo, of which the first season of the anime consisted, I got a clear impression of what it was trying to be: an action series focused on battles, that starts out extremely over the top right off the bat, and manages to raise the bar higher and higher with every episode, by introducing more and more ludicrous concepts to the mix. What's so special about it? That despite being so over the top, it always remained perfectly logical.
The gist of it was that every time a fight occured, the protagonist had to think up plans on the fly in order to deceive the enemy somehow, so they won't see them coming close enough to deliver a blow that will either kill or horribly mutilate them, effectively making them less capable of fighting back. The plans both Jonathan and Joseph were thinking up sounded absurd and impossible to pull off at first, but when they explained how they managed to do the thing they did, it all suddenly sounded perfectly viable. That's what made it great.
Stardust Crusaders, on the other hand, introduced Stands - spiritual beings that basically did the fight for the characters, while all they did was standing and watching it unfold. The thing with Stands is, that due to them having an uncertain amount of superpowers that's never revealed at once, it often leads to characters pulling a convenient new power out of their asses whenever the situation requires it, or deus ex machina situations, that initially may seem like the "impossible to win situations solved by a clever plan" gimmick from Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency, but when you think deeper about it, there's almost never any logic behind it, and the whole reason it even worked was straight up magic and nothing else. Not once and not twice you're introduced to situations where the enemy clearly has an advantage, only to find out that another character's Stand (Hierophant Green most of the time) was already doing something to tip the scales in their favor. Whenever something like this is revealed, it appears more of an insult to the viewer than something awesome, even more when it straight up contradicts what was shown to you literally a minute earlier. Examples:
1. The Lovers fight, when the Stand flew into a little girl's ear. At first it appeared as if Jotaro had to either make a difficult moral choice as to whether kill the user and make the girl suffer unbearable pain, or to lose. But wait! Plot twist! Hierophant Green had its tentacle tied to The Lovers' leg all along and managed to pull it out of the girl's ear in time! You know what's the problem here? You're shown tons and tons of footage where you can clearly see there isn't anything tied to the Stand's leg.
2. The Wheel of Fortune fight. When Jotaro is set on fire you can see him as a whole, burning for good 30 seconds. But wait! Plot twist! Actually it was only Jotaro's coat, that suspiciously looked like Jotaro's whole body, that was burning, while Jotaro himself got unharmed because Star Platinum dug a tunnel in the ground, where Jotaro could hide. Silently. Even though every other time Star Platinum uses his fists, it sounds like a thousand nukes going off at the same time. Not to mention screaming "Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora!" at the top of his lungs. But nope, he lived through it without a scratch.
3. D'Arby the Player "fight". You can clearly only see Jotaro's hands on the controller. But wait! Plot Twist! Hermit Purple was on the controller as well! What? You couldn't see him? Fuck you, he was there!
Another thing is the pacing. Oh dear God, that pacing. The first season could be unfolded in probably five episodes, and the second one in eight to ten episodes. There was so much pointless fighting inbetween it's inconceivable! And why was there so much pointless fighting? Because literally everybody and their mother had to have a Stand...
That led to the whole first season, and a good portion of the second one, being a filler, villain-of-the-week garbage that brought literally nothing to the story. It was just there to impede the characters' progress, so that they wouldn't reach Dio in 10 episodes. Because Dio was the only worthwhile villain of the whole series. They had nothing else to offer. Sure, Phantom Blood did a similar thing, but to a much smaller extent - there wasn't literally over 30 jobbers waiting inbetween Jonathan and Dio. There were, like, 3. Only three pointless, but still amusing, fights before we could finally see a clash between Jonathan and Dio. Not to mention there already was a large fight (and a bunch of smaller ones) with Dio before that. Battle Tendency did it even better because apart from Straizo, there weren't any minor enemies in the way. The whole arc focused only on the protagonists fighting the established villains - The Pillar Men in this case.
Having an established villain for the protagonist to fight all the time is much better in case of JoJo because it leaves tons of room for character development. You begin to despise the villains more and like the protagonists more, while also seeing that neither of them is perfect. You begin to get attached to them and understand their reasoning. That makes the emotional scenes hit even harder. I nearly cried when Ceasar got killed in Battle Tendency because it was an awesome character and it was really sad to see him die. Stardust Crusaders on the other hand, had literally no character development because it focused on constant, but ultimately pointless, action instead. I couldn't give two shits about any of the characters in SC because they were a bunch of nothings - their "personality" could be defined solely by the one liners they kept spouting at random.
Now that I mentioned how horribly paced the series is, I'd like to return for a bit to the logic part because the complaint about SC not being logical doesn't end here.
You see, in Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency when you are introduced to Hamon, you more or less know how it works right off the bat. There are some new techniques Jonathan and Joseph gain over time, but it's still a logical progression. You also know how to defeat every enemy - either expose them to the sun, or hit them hard enough with a Hamon-imbued strike to the head in order to disintegrate their brain. In SC, even after finishing both the seasons I still don't know how exactly Stands work. At first, it appears that you're introduced to every Stand's abilities right off the bat, just like you were with Hamon. Except it's not the case at all because, as I mentioned before, characters can suddenly gain new abilities, or force their Stand to do things they weren't able to do before just because it's convenient. Also, sometimes their powers work perfectly, and sometimes they don't, solely because it's convenient to the plot. It's especially apparent with Silver Chariot. "My Stand's sword is so sharp it can cut through anything, even the air, leaving an area of nothingness inbetween", Polnareff said about Silver Chariot. And yet in the Judgement episode he can't cut through simple iron bars because that would've been a way-too-covenient way of escaping. It's really baffling.
Another illogicality is how to kill a Stand, and that so far's been puzzling me the most because of its sheer inconsistency. Sometimes the characters have to kill the user for their Stand to die, while sometimes they only have to beat them up. Hell, sometimes they don't even have to fight him - his Stand just outright dies the moment they surrender. How in the fuck does it work?! Make up your mind, anime!
And last, but not least, the humor. Oh boy, how I despise the humor in Stardust Crusaders. In both Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency the humor is a combination of Evil Dead/Braindead/[insert your horror-comedy here] style of "so ridiculously violent it's just funny" fights and Monty Python-esque mix of absurdity and wit. In Stardust Crusaders? Shit jokes, fart jokes, shit-eating jokes, pissing jokes... Not to mention, in Part 1 and Part 2 the balance between humorous and completely serious scenes was more than masterful - the transition was smooth and fluid. Stardust Crusaders doesn't fluently go from one to another. Instead it just jumps from shit so dark and serious it could fit in Berserk to jokes about literal shit. It's really jarring, to say the least.
That's all she (well, actually he, but it's an expression and I don't want to say it correctly) wrote. If you managed to get to this point, I'd like to thank you for reading through my critique and commend you on your perseverance. I hope that this thread is good enough to ignite a really good discussion. Let me know if you agree with me or not, and if not, tell me why. Once again, thank you for reading.
Now that I'm finished with both of the seasons, I think I'm going to pass on watching Diamond is Unbreakable. Why? Because the introduction of the concept of Stands almost instantly turned JoJo for me from the most awesome action anime in the universe to the most mediocre, boring slog I had to get through.
"What are you talking about? Stands are basically what JoJo is about! How can you hate it?" some of you may think. Well, I can and I do. And allow me explain why.
When I watched Part 1 and Part 2 of JoJo, of which the first season of the anime consisted, I got a clear impression of what it was trying to be: an action series focused on battles, that starts out extremely over the top right off the bat, and manages to raise the bar higher and higher with every episode, by introducing more and more ludicrous concepts to the mix. What's so special about it? That despite being so over the top, it always remained perfectly logical.
The gist of it was that every time a fight occured, the protagonist had to think up plans on the fly in order to deceive the enemy somehow, so they won't see them coming close enough to deliver a blow that will either kill or horribly mutilate them, effectively making them less capable of fighting back. The plans both Jonathan and Joseph were thinking up sounded absurd and impossible to pull off at first, but when they explained how they managed to do the thing they did, it all suddenly sounded perfectly viable. That's what made it great.
Stardust Crusaders, on the other hand, introduced Stands - spiritual beings that basically did the fight for the characters, while all they did was standing and watching it unfold. The thing with Stands is, that due to them having an uncertain amount of superpowers that's never revealed at once, it often leads to characters pulling a convenient new power out of their asses whenever the situation requires it, or deus ex machina situations, that initially may seem like the "impossible to win situations solved by a clever plan" gimmick from Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency, but when you think deeper about it, there's almost never any logic behind it, and the whole reason it even worked was straight up magic and nothing else. Not once and not twice you're introduced to situations where the enemy clearly has an advantage, only to find out that another character's Stand (Hierophant Green most of the time) was already doing something to tip the scales in their favor. Whenever something like this is revealed, it appears more of an insult to the viewer than something awesome, even more when it straight up contradicts what was shown to you literally a minute earlier. Examples:
1. The Lovers fight, when the Stand flew into a little girl's ear. At first it appeared as if Jotaro had to either make a difficult moral choice as to whether kill the user and make the girl suffer unbearable pain, or to lose. But wait! Plot twist! Hierophant Green had its tentacle tied to The Lovers' leg all along and managed to pull it out of the girl's ear in time! You know what's the problem here? You're shown tons and tons of footage where you can clearly see there isn't anything tied to the Stand's leg.
2. The Wheel of Fortune fight. When Jotaro is set on fire you can see him as a whole, burning for good 30 seconds. But wait! Plot twist! Actually it was only Jotaro's coat, that suspiciously looked like Jotaro's whole body, that was burning, while Jotaro himself got unharmed because Star Platinum dug a tunnel in the ground, where Jotaro could hide. Silently. Even though every other time Star Platinum uses his fists, it sounds like a thousand nukes going off at the same time. Not to mention screaming "Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora!" at the top of his lungs. But nope, he lived through it without a scratch.
3. D'Arby the Player "fight". You can clearly only see Jotaro's hands on the controller. But wait! Plot Twist! Hermit Purple was on the controller as well! What? You couldn't see him? Fuck you, he was there!
Another thing is the pacing. Oh dear God, that pacing. The first season could be unfolded in probably five episodes, and the second one in eight to ten episodes. There was so much pointless fighting inbetween it's inconceivable! And why was there so much pointless fighting? Because literally everybody and their mother had to have a Stand...
That led to the whole first season, and a good portion of the second one, being a filler, villain-of-the-week garbage that brought literally nothing to the story. It was just there to impede the characters' progress, so that they wouldn't reach Dio in 10 episodes. Because Dio was the only worthwhile villain of the whole series. They had nothing else to offer. Sure, Phantom Blood did a similar thing, but to a much smaller extent - there wasn't literally over 30 jobbers waiting inbetween Jonathan and Dio. There were, like, 3. Only three pointless, but still amusing, fights before we could finally see a clash between Jonathan and Dio. Not to mention there already was a large fight (and a bunch of smaller ones) with Dio before that. Battle Tendency did it even better because apart from Straizo, there weren't any minor enemies in the way. The whole arc focused only on the protagonists fighting the established villains - The Pillar Men in this case.
Having an established villain for the protagonist to fight all the time is much better in case of JoJo because it leaves tons of room for character development. You begin to despise the villains more and like the protagonists more, while also seeing that neither of them is perfect. You begin to get attached to them and understand their reasoning. That makes the emotional scenes hit even harder. I nearly cried when Ceasar got killed in Battle Tendency because it was an awesome character and it was really sad to see him die. Stardust Crusaders on the other hand, had literally no character development because it focused on constant, but ultimately pointless, action instead. I couldn't give two shits about any of the characters in SC because they were a bunch of nothings - their "personality" could be defined solely by the one liners they kept spouting at random.
Now that I mentioned how horribly paced the series is, I'd like to return for a bit to the logic part because the complaint about SC not being logical doesn't end here.
You see, in Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency when you are introduced to Hamon, you more or less know how it works right off the bat. There are some new techniques Jonathan and Joseph gain over time, but it's still a logical progression. You also know how to defeat every enemy - either expose them to the sun, or hit them hard enough with a Hamon-imbued strike to the head in order to disintegrate their brain. In SC, even after finishing both the seasons I still don't know how exactly Stands work. At first, it appears that you're introduced to every Stand's abilities right off the bat, just like you were with Hamon. Except it's not the case at all because, as I mentioned before, characters can suddenly gain new abilities, or force their Stand to do things they weren't able to do before just because it's convenient. Also, sometimes their powers work perfectly, and sometimes they don't, solely because it's convenient to the plot. It's especially apparent with Silver Chariot. "My Stand's sword is so sharp it can cut through anything, even the air, leaving an area of nothingness inbetween", Polnareff said about Silver Chariot. And yet in the Judgement episode he can't cut through simple iron bars because that would've been a way-too-covenient way of escaping. It's really baffling.
Another illogicality is how to kill a Stand, and that so far's been puzzling me the most because of its sheer inconsistency. Sometimes the characters have to kill the user for their Stand to die, while sometimes they only have to beat them up. Hell, sometimes they don't even have to fight him - his Stand just outright dies the moment they surrender. How in the fuck does it work?! Make up your mind, anime!
And last, but not least, the humor. Oh boy, how I despise the humor in Stardust Crusaders. In both Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency the humor is a combination of Evil Dead/Braindead/[insert your horror-comedy here] style of "so ridiculously violent it's just funny" fights and Monty Python-esque mix of absurdity and wit. In Stardust Crusaders? Shit jokes, fart jokes, shit-eating jokes, pissing jokes... Not to mention, in Part 1 and Part 2 the balance between humorous and completely serious scenes was more than masterful - the transition was smooth and fluid. Stardust Crusaders doesn't fluently go from one to another. Instead it just jumps from shit so dark and serious it could fit in Berserk to jokes about literal shit. It's really jarring, to say the least.
That's all she (well, actually he, but it's an expression and I don't want to say it correctly) wrote. If you managed to get to this point, I'd like to thank you for reading through my critique and commend you on your perseverance. I hope that this thread is good enough to ignite a really good discussion. Let me know if you agree with me or not, and if not, tell me why. Once again, thank you for reading.
