Poll: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure - Should I?

[Super Cyborg]

JoJo is an interesting anime. It does have a good bit of fighting involved, but there is a good bit of plot and characters involved. The first part might be boring, since most people don't care as much for it but it's quite short. Part two is glorious with fights that are well done and Jonathon being one of the biggest badasses in all of fictional history. Part three is one of my least favorite parts, but a number of the main cast makes it bearable and later fights get quite intense. As of today episode 5 of part 4 just aired, and it's amazing. It kind of has a monster of the week going for it at points, but the cast is great and the main character is interesting. The way his power works makes him have to be creative in fighting, so he is more akin to Joseph in some ways.

There is no fan service and except for a few parts which makes fun of girls fawning over certain characters, there is no annoying romance subplots that take over the entire story. Part 1 has a love story, but I feel it's well done.

 

[MythicMatt]

Part two is glorious with fights that are well done and Jonathon being one of the biggest badasses in all of fictional history.

You mean Joseph, right? Jonathan was the one who started it all.

 

[Hero of Lime]

I know it falls under the "shonen" genre, but it rarely feels like the usual shows/manga in the genre. I recently re-watched it since part 4 is coming out, and I loved it like I did the first time. Yeah, it can be super over the top, crazy, even silly, but that's fine by me. I recommend sticking with it. The stories are constantly throwing curveballs at you, and things never get dull in general.

 

[Super Cyborg]

Part two is glorious with fights that are well done and Jonathon being one of the biggest badasses in all of fictional history.

You mean Joseph, right? Jonathan was the one who started it all.

Crap, don't know why I put down Jonathon. Yeah, Joseph is who I meant. Best part is the phrase he utters when he's about to pull his win. I get all giddy when that happens. Also, those poses are glorious in animated form.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

Yes. Then read the manga. Part 1 is good and all but it's nowhere near representative of other parts; it gets a lot better after Part 1 as well. If you can't bear watching Part 1 I might even recommend skipping to Part 2. IIRC Part 2 begins at episode 10 or something like that.

As has been said, Jojo is really its own thing that doesn't quite compare to any other series. Which is a big part of why I recommend giving it a shot.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Jojo is simulataneously serious and off the wall stupid but it is completely self aware of its own ridiculousness. If I had to describe it in movie terms, it's like if a B movie was adapted into a cartoon and found financial success.

So long as you don't take it too seriously and embrace the camp it's great. It's not the usual 'onee-chan' bullshit that you see everywhere nowadays; it's pulp-y old time-y action about a bunch of guys on an adventure to stop an ancient evil. All the characters are larger than life, deaths can be tragic but everything has a gung-ho spirit to it with an underlying weirdness that makes it just so damn fun.

It's also an incredibly ecclectic series. Part 1 is basically Castlevania, Part 2 is DragonBall-y, Part 3 is a globe-trotting adventure, quite Indiana Jones-y in many aspects, and Part 4 is a murder mystery in smalltown Japan(bit like Persona 4).

I highly recommend watching it and at least just getting through Part 1 and 2 (which are about 10 episodes and 14 episodes long respectively). Part 1 is a bit slow, but Part 2 is absolutely fantastic. By the time you meet Joseph, you will probably know whether you like the series or not.

 

[CaptainMarvelous]

Ok, to clarify one thing, I'm all for bizarre, but to give another example, FLCL. I hated that show, the amount of it I could stand. It was so out there, which by itself isn't a problem, but the way it was executed just grated on my nerves.

Most of the bizarre stuff is played completely straight rather than just being weird for weirdness sake. So stuff like someone having laser eyes is commented on and de constructed as logically as they can. It's... a far more entertaining form of weird than you get from any other anime. The only time I can remember them touching on an anime trope it was pretty heavily deconstructed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgWcSuxyvT8

 

[Ftaghn To You Too]

I might check it out then. I mean, I saw the clip that inspired the Friendship is Manly video, with the song in it (which is a fucking badass song by the way), and I was like "....ok, that....might be amusing to watch" It's just my dread of having to sit through 15 hours of "Sempai! Kawaii! " *cartoonish image of person with gushing blood nose because he saw a boob, or guy being assaulted by a woman because she over reacted to something while yelling* bullshit to see a 1 minute bit of awesome.

You will not have this issue at all with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. No such things occur, and you will not see what you consider to be typical anime tropes happen very much.

 

[M0rp43vs]

The thing is, it drips it's own brand of stupidity and not even anime stupidity. It's kinda like Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the silliness is played seriously and is a bit of the norm in this world. Where stupid lines get dropped but you almost cheer because of how awesomely they're delivered or how they pull off such stupid ass-pulls to get out of dangerous situations but they're always justified by the heroes action and the fact that the heroes are usually outmatched in terms of power means it's impressive instead/in addition to being mind boggling.

It sounds like you have reservations against the "anime wackiness" that embodies the worst of anime today. Well don't worryas so far, Jojo has none or very little of it. There are no Ecchi, Harem, tsundere or nosebleed-and-physical abuse antics that plague modern anime. Instead of the generic in-your-face Power of Friendship spiel, it's more an understated Camaraderie that goes without saying. There is no bloodline technique that gives the heroes an edge out of nowhere, in fact, the bloodline is more of a hindrance than anything (except one arguable case). The heroes are often outmatched or fighting such strange seemingly invincible opponents that they have to rely on wits and clever power usage than last minute transformations or shouting technique names followed by 30 seconds of shouting.

I'd say start from Part one but if you're really strapped for time, I'd recommend starting (if you can ignore the weird bulky look of the main character at the start) with Part two;Battle Tendency, ie the one with Joseph, the Nazi's and the fabulous aztecs. All the arcs are pretty much self contained and this arc is one that's more popular with Western fans. The main character is a bit like deadpool without the powers or the fourth-wall breaking or the internet-meme humour. He's wacky, underpowered and defeats his foes by being clever, setting traps and having people underestimate him. It's a pretty light-hearted arc too, coming after the slightly dark Phantom Blood storyline.

 

[SecondPrize]

I watched the first episode of phantom blood and would have given up then and there if not for the Yes out of nowhere at the end. So I watched the second episode and stayed for the character names and watched the rest of them. It was totally worth it.

 

[Pseudonym]

It certainly looked very unambitious

A manga that's been running for 25 years, takes place over ~200 years, and has totally changed plots 7 times is 'unambitious'?

Yes, certainly. Making different versions of the same thing over and over again, or at least slapping the same name on different things you make seems very unambitious to me. It tells me that your writers don't even care to come up with a new name for their new stuff because it is all basically the same thing and that the creators probably didn't have anything interesting they wanted to make. I don't really know any show, game series, book series or anything else that could hold my attention for 25 years.

In any case, I wasn't speaking in terms of economical ambition, nor in terms of having the longest running show. How long it is doesn't matter that much to me. I was speaking artistically. Does the show do anything ambitious in that regard? It didn't look like it to me. Another show where a bunch of dudes fight monsters and stuff, and there is a main charactar who is the bestest of them and who gets stronger over the show. It didn't look like the worst thing ever, but it wasn't doing anything I haven't seen before either. In that sense it didn't seem ambitious to me. Maybe I'm wrong there. I've barely watched it. Then again a 25-year running anime, the main plot of which concerns dudes punching eachother sounds very lacking in ambition to me.

 

[Cowabungaa]

It's has it's own flavor of anime weirdness that doesn't really match any established tropes.

Pretty much. JoJo creates its own tropes.

So to answer your question OP; oh my God yes. Especially the second season if you ask me, as the first is pretty standard shonen. But 2 and onwards, well:

It's like shonen anime had a baby with vogue. And it's amazing. It's the most fabulously manly thing around.

 

[Benpasko]

It certainly looked very unambitious

A manga that's been running for 25 years, takes place over ~200 years, and has totally changed plots 7 times is 'unambitious'?

In any case, I wasn't speaking in terms of economical ambition, nor in terms of having the longest running show. How long it is doesn't matter that much to me. I was speaking artistically. Does the show do anything ambitious in that regard?

Well, I don't want to spoil too much, but it really is artistically ambitious. The creator is kind of an insane fashion nut, and the plot goes unexpected places all the time. In one part, the villain actually wins and kills off the entire main cast (This part hasn't been translated to anime yet, unfortunately). One part is entirely centered around a superpowered horse race from San Francisco to New York in the 1800s. One part takes place entirely in a women's prison, with an all-female main party.

And it's not the kind of series where the characters just shout a lot and suddenly they're so much stronger than everyone that was just kicking their ass, it gets around that by having very specific limitations on characters' powers. People are beaten by loopholes in their strategy, not the main character suddenly going super saiyan (No giant laser beams, more "You didn't even notice the fire had spread to the rafters, I'm gonna launch a sneak attack while you're avoiding falling beams!"). There's a fair amount of asspulls, but on repeat watches you can see them setting up the trap, even if it's subtle (Joseph is especially good in this regard). Honestly, only part 3 is bad in that regard, and it's still kind of interesting because the protagonist is so far from a usual shouting 'effort = infinite power' hero.

I don't really know any show, game series, book series or anything else that could hold my attention for 25 years.

The nice thing about JoJo that keeps it fresh is how the plot always changes. Plots end, the timeline advances, a whole new main cast is introduced, and it does something new. It also keeps it unpredictable, every single character is going away eventually, so it's hard to know who will live or die. Your favorite character could get shot in the face and just be gone forever.

 

[PapaGreg096]

It certainly looked very unambitious

A manga that's been running for 25 years, takes place over ~200 years, and has totally changed plots 7 times is 'unambitious'?

Yes, certainly. Making different versions of the same thing over and over again, or at least slapping the same name on different things you make seems very unambitious to me. It tells me that your writers don't even care to come up with a new name for their new stuff because it is all basically the same thing and that the creators probably didn't have anything interesting they wanted to make. I don't really know any show, game series, book series or anything else that could hold my attention for 25 years.

In any case, I wasn't speaking in terms of economical ambition, nor in terms of having the longest running show. How long it is doesn't matter that much to me. I was speaking artistically. Does the show do anything ambitious in that regard? It didn't look like it to me. Another show where a bunch of dudes fight monsters and stuff, and there is a main charactar who is the bestest of them and who gets stronger over the show. It didn't look like the worst thing ever, but it wasn't doing anything I haven't seen before either. In that sense it didn't seem ambitious to me. Maybe I'm wrong there. I've barely watched it. Then again a 25-year running anime, the main plot of which concerns dudes punching eachother sounds very lacking in ambition to me.

Its not the same thing each part has a different protagonist, genre, and tone for example one part is a murder mystery, another part is a prison story, another part is a horse race where they search for Jesus's body parts sure the powers and comedy are similer but to say its the same thing is ignorant.

 

[Corven]

JoJo is a show that I was apprehensive to watch at first, gave up watching after a few episodes second, and finally got over the few things I found annoying (characters will describe in detail actions and events that just happened) and am now fully on board with the show.

I think it is pretty fun if you realize that is wraps seriousness and campiness together in a weirdly enjoyable amalgamation.

Case in point, this gif is taken from a scene that involves a very serious life threatening situation:

 

[Pseudonym]

Well, I don't want to spoil too much, but it really is artistically ambitious. The creator is kind of an insane fashion nut, and the plot goes unexpected places all the time. In one part, the villain actually wins and kills off the entire main cast (This part hasn't been translated to anime yet, unfortunately). One part is entirely centered around a superpowered horse race from San Francisco to New York in the 1800s. One part takes place entirely in a women's prison, with an all-female main party.

Fair enough. Like I said, these were just my impressions from watching a couple of random episodes and clips allong with somebody else, from what season I am unsure. So maybe I'd like it more if I watched more. I stopped watching GoT after the first episode and only got into it later as people kept nagging me about it.