Photo by Markus Spiske: https://www.pexels.com/photo/lights-night-street-dark-102729/
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure was a series written by Hirohiko Araki in 1987. The series has currently gone through 8 parts with a newer one being announced this year. When it comes to anime only Parts 1 to 6 have been adapted. The series starts with Jonathan Joestar but later begins to follow the generations of Joestars who each have their own unique personalities and stories. Each follows a different theme with part 3 being a buddy trip, Part 4 being a murder mystery and part 5 being a mafia story.
Parts 7 to 9, however, are separate from Parts 1 to 6, with this series ending at Part 6. I will firstly be doing a series reviewing Parts 1 to 6, and at the end, I will rank Parts 1–6, following on with covering Parts 7–8. This will come from someone who hasn’t grown up with the series and is jumping in based on context from the anime. I hope to read the manga in the future and compare it to the anime since there are still many differences between the adaptations. Outside of anime and manga, there have been light novels, games, and spin-off manga that have added to the expansion of the world of JoJo.
The first part is about a character named Jonathan Joestar who lives with a rich and prosperous family. One day a boy named Dio Brando is adopted into his family Jonathan later comes across a mask that he begins to study. The mask is soon stolen by Dio who decides to use the mask to turn himself into a vampire. Jonathan is set on a mission to find and defeat Dio's reign of terror through the power of Hammon. The part takes inspiration from the manga of the time like Fist of the North Star which was released in 1983. This is reflected through the more muscular build of the character and the more docile Erina.
There are characters that are introduced just to carry the story along. The biggest example of this is Dire and Straizo, who are introduced very late into the story so that they can assist Jonathan in the fight against Dio. This caught me off guard during my first watch since I didn’t have the time to understand these characters or have any sympathy for them. This is clear when (spoilers for the end of Part 1) Dire dies at the hands of Dio, which appears to have happened solely to motivate Jonathan to defeat Dio.
The first season brings a strong starter for the long-running series and sets up an integral pull that the audience has toward the Joestar family line. This makes the show interesting throughout its 6 parts (8 parts if mentioning the manga). Jonathan sets a good basis for what each Joestar can stand for and what the audience can look forward to within its characters. This part is where the most iconic villain Dio Brando was introduced. Even though it's the typical good vs evil the anime builds up a well-paced rivalry between both Jonathan and Dio. This is done by showing their relationship from childhood to adulthood and giving them both strong motivation for this rivalry.
Jonathan is very much the foundation for what came later in the series, and he is a typical sweet and heroic character, with his main goal being to defeat Dio and get the girl, Erina. It reflects the trends for the time it was written, and since the story was starting off, it made sense to build off a trope people knew about. This works against the anime when it comes to the audience getting an understanding of what the show is going to be like as it goes on. People drop Jojo after Part 1 due to how simplistic the story can be compared to the later parts that add a lot more complexity to it.
The weaknesses of the first season are that Jonathan even though the complex is very simple compared to the Joestars of the later parts who are more complex and have more personality within them. Jonathan solidifies the trope of the charming action hero. The fight scenes of this season are more simplified and it can sometimes make them pretty predictable with Jonathan winning through strength alone which up to a certain point can work but constantly rehashed it can become stale. The only time where this is made interesting is within the Dio and Jonathan fight.
The strengths of the anime were that it was a perfect set-up for later in the seasons, especially with Hammon, Dio’s character, and the Joestar bloodline. First comes the ending, which breaks the audience’s expectations by having Jonathan die at the end of the season. This raises an interesting question for the audience watching in terms of who the show could follow for the second part, especially given Erina’s survival with a baby, which opens up a lot of possibilities and questions about how the story could have continued.
Having Jonathan die sets the stage for what can be done with the story and gives more freedom to the characters since the story isn’t tied to its time period or Jonathan. This means that the series is able to play with different genres and themes through this generational style of character rotation. Many long-running stories can suffer from a lack of new characters, whether because the character’s personality changes so drastically that the audience no longer recognises the character or because the character becomes stagnant and stuck in a trope within the story.
In conclusion, there are reasons why to this day the show has shown stepping stones to a larger and ongoing story that has been ongoing to this day. Jonathan is a staple of the 80’s shounen hero and it's interesting to see how Araki used the trope and played upon it for an exciting story. Even though there were many parts that made the story waver it still never affected my overall enjoyment of this story. I loved how it eased me into the more bizarreness of the show by balancing the more serious tone with the weirder parts and making those more bizarre plot lines make sense within the overall continuity of the show.
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