These tears…so…delicious disturbing
Wherein now I finally talk about Part II of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure after checking out Part I and no one will remind me that I stalled on this for months. Absolutely no one.
No seriously, don’t call me out for stalling on what did turn out to be better than Part I. I’m sorry ok!!!
For some reason, the only thing I can do when I see this is go LOL
Taking place in 1938, or 50 years after the last events of Phantom Blood, Speedwagon and his foundation uncovered a disturbing carving with a number of stone masks embedded on it, along with a man inside the column in Mexico. Brought in to destroy the man in the column, Straights, one of the users of the “Ripple” and involved in the events of Phantom Blood, instead turns and kills everyone on the spot, and takes the power of the Stone Mask in order to become a near perfect being. For him to make sure no one gets in his way, he travels to New York in order to kill Jonathan Joestar’s wife, Erina, and her grandson, Joseph Joestar. Except this Jojo’s a little bit different from the Jojo he fought with many years ago.
Ok, completely different.
Battle Tendency ended up becoming a stronger series as I kept reading. Unlike Phantom Blood, where you knew the general end game was going to be between Jonathan and Dio, there was a good variety of enemy characters in Part II (so you couldn’t figure out who would be the big baddie until the end), although they all fall under the same “ancient beings with some weird powers with fabulous poses and large butts.” Well, maybe not that large, but I’ll address that later. With more variety of characters, that means a solid array of fights, and there was plenty of that, with each battle topping the ridiculous scale with its silly battle tactics and gruesome deaths. The ridiculousness thankfully extends off the battlefield as well, with using characters and their powers well to make me take the most obscure or trifle thing as a laughable offense.
The thing is, it can’t get away with being ridiculous or silly without the characters, and that is why this series can shine. Joseph, as you can probably tell above, is so arrogant, a jokester, someone so sure of himself, and willing to do just about everything to win, that it makes all of his interactions and fights compelling, either by making me smile whenever he ends up predicting what his foes will say before they say it or by making me go “wow” whenever he does something crazy to win a fight. One example is of course his fight with Straights. If this was Jojo I, he might have been naive enough to try and talk some sense into Straights before being willing to fight. Jojo II, however, instead attempts to kill him with a Thompson Machine Gun.
Cause, you know, you can own guns easy in New York city. Especially a Thompson Machine Gun.
As you can see it gets weirder. Or more…what’s the word…Bizarre!
From Jojo, you then have some new characters, ranging from seemingly ruthless Nazi commander Stroheim (who later becomes some special sort of awesome later in the series), to Caesar Zeppeli, who hardly seems to be like his grandfather but turns out to be a pretty cool guy — well, at least whenever he’s not kissing women and turning them into ripple users — to Lisa Lisa, who’s just awesome all around, though I admit, David Productions definitely made her more beautiful in the anime than in the manga. You do have the bad guys who reek of glory, pride, and being ruthless. You also have the bad guys who don’t last long, but manage to be ridiculous enough anyways.
With these types of characters, it makes the overall story work. Bringing in history with the story of the stone mask, the Pillar Men, and with Jojo turning into a world traveler, there’s enough to get interested about how Jojo and crew will try and stop them and also wondering if they’ll survive. On its own, it doesn’t seem remarkable. That’s why it mostly revolves around the situations the characters get themselves into, and the situations in this manga are great. I know one thing though: to make a gladiator battle between Jojo and Wham (one of the Pillar Men) to be as fun as it was speaks to how creative and well-thought out Araki made some of the battles. It’s usually “you gotta be super powerful” in most shounen works, and while in a way this does apply in this manga, there’s actual tactics and thought instead of just beating your opponent up and calling it a day.
You’ll still get this type of violence though
Now, there are some things to critique about this arc. The first is again, the story. Strip away all the colorful characters, you get what might be a pretty basic shounen manga, where we jump from Point A (facing Straights) to Point B (facing Santana) to Point C (facing the three Pillar Men). Strip away the exaggerated designs of the characters (where everyone seems to look like they came out of Fist of The North Star), you’ll be exposed to some really mediocre character placement in panels (where it looks like they’re too close together) and too exaggerated in said panels (for example, them butts!). Now, I do think the art is slightly more refined in Battle Tendency, but for the most part, I’m not exactly sure if they differ all that much from Phantom Blood.
But the critique is minor, since coming into Jojo, you already know it’s gonna be something completely ridiculous and exaggerated. And that’s for the greater good, since that means more fun can be had. With Battle Tendency, it takes what was interesting about Phantom Blood and changes it drastically, all to establish that there is a difference, that there is a generation that can stand on its own, and I feel that Araki nails that perfectly. We have characters to care about and remember, and really crazy fights that we can’t help but be impressed with. For something created so long ago, it’s great that it still holds up well even now.
…Now it’s finally time to go check out new Jojo material isn’t it? Time to finally see what Jotaro Kujo is all about in Stardust Crusaders. I expect to have my thoughts on this 2 years from now, based on the pace it took me to write this article.
SPPPPAAAAAAACCCCCCEEEEE
