The kind of silly action series where vampire squirrels destroy military cyborgs & a volcanic erruption can fling an Aztec warrior into outer space, & it's all played straight.
This Jojo is a dead ringer for his grandfather, but they couldn't be farther apart in personslity. Instead of a doormat who toughens with age, he's a hilariously childish attention-seeking prankster. He has wildly inconsistant levels of intelligence, a bad habit of making a complete ass of himself in public, & makes a bad first impression on everyone he meets, which works in his favor because he has the element of surprise on his side when his tactitian abilities are grossly underestimated. If you're not laughing at the Mr Universe bare-assed blinged-out lingerie-clad enemies prancing around like ballerinas, or the rediculous clothes, the oddball attacks, then you'll be laughing at Jojo's salty rivalry with Caesar.
Joseph is arguably the dumbest & smartest JoJo in his entire family line, concerving all of his brain power for tactical fighting. Being good at fighting does not make you a genius, but it does make you a good level tactician. His crass personality & complete lack of patience are on par with a Yakuza underling. He is also the rudest JoJo, the manliest JoJo, & the only JoJo who can use both Ripple & Stand powers, but that's for another series. His personality gets a complete overhaul in Stardust Crusaders.
Like the prior series, he's a "teen" in the first few chapters, despite appearing to be in his mid 30s while the exact opposite can be said for Lisa Lisa.
There's even less attempt to make it look like this was set in the 1930s than the prior series tried to look Victorian/Edwardian. But he has gotten even better with faces & his modern distinct face design is starting to manifest here, as well as everyone constantly standing in weird contortionist model poses, which with these bulky gravity defying bodies will keep you chuckling. The jodpurs make it look like the M Bison/Guile-looking nazis dumped a load in their pants, & eyelashes are so heavily shadowed the closeups make everyone look like they're wearing drag makeup.
Going from Devilman to this, I just can't seem to escape male nudity. I haven't seen this many ass shots since Spoony reviewed the Final Fantasy series.
This series will leave you with questions like "why does the eastern United States look like the deserts of Arabia?" & just where did Jojo find a dress big enough for him to squeeze into?" or "just how does Cars hide all that thick-ass hair under such a tight headscarf?"
You may find yourself empathizing with Santana at first, because from the moment he wakes up, everyone is a complete dick to him & attacks him first.
Caeser is Italian born & bread, thus his name should be spelled Cesare & pronounced Chee-zah-reh in the anime (Romaji Chiizare). Then again, everyone in this series uses mostly made-up names, so whatever.
Speedwagon is just usless here, not fullfilling his duties as Joester cheerleader or arena commentator. He serves as the Dude In Distress who needs to be rescued.
Smokey is even more pointless. He doesn't fight & he only shows up at the begining & end of the series.
Stroheim is pretty cool. Despite what he is, he's just a man who wants to save his country & the world, even at the cost of himself. Even though he saved Jojo's life & fights, je never got his own cool ball joint action figure.
The Pillar Men were my prime source of amusement. Aside from prancing around nealy nude & eating people they bump into via skin contact, you get weird hilarious shit like
Wham jamming a poisoned wedding ring into Jojo's chest & telling him the antidote was in his lip ring, then ACDC jamming another poisoned wedding ring into Jojo's throat & telling him the antidote was in his nose ring. That Cars who is a villain would save a puppy (& latter gets hugged by a squirrell) while Jojo who is a hero would kick a cat, ACDC crying was so goofy it was hilarious, Werid Beck & his free hugs, the phallic weapons dick size joke, when Cars said he & Wham don't get turned on by fighting women, Wham using his own head as a projectile weapon, ACDC posessing Suzie Q like a trolling poltergeist. There was alo the dick-size joke with the pillar Wham threatened Jojo with, which is the second one if you paid lose attention to the shape of Lisa Lisa's oil training tower.
[spoiler] Speaking of trolling, one of Jojo's love interests
! turns out to be his estranged mother.
Jojo gets married at the end & has abolutely no chemistry with his wife at all. But if he doesn't have kids, then there's no season 3. Funny enough, the same thing happened at the end of Toriko, & both protagonists are based on Kenshiro from Fist of the North Star.
If you're reading this series online, know that the 7 volume version is uploaded in entire volumes with the chapters completly out of order, no matter which site you visit. You'll have to read either volumes 5-12 of the Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken complilation, or the fan-colorized Jojo 2. Unfortunately, the scans on the compilation suffer from unnessisary cropping on the bottom half, often cutting off more than a few words.
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