Recently I asked J-List customers what anime they hated, and unsurprisingly, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure was one of the shows some fans noted as disliking. Considering that Jojo is one of the most popular series in the world, and Jojo memes have become an entire category unto themselves, this isn’t surprising. I’m sometimes turned off by things that are “so popular they’re annoying,” so I totally get this. In today’s post let’s look at my journey from a Jojo hater to a fan and why you should consider giving the show a try!
Everything You Need to Know About Jojo
If you read our crash course on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure blog post, Jojo tells the 140+ year story of the Joestar family. Some of the core elements are:
- As each series progresses, the story focuses on a new generation of the Joestar family on some quest, which is usually connected to the endless battle with the immortal vampire Dio Brando. Each main character is quite different from his predecessors.
- The show contains musical references, with characters’ names and Stands named after Western bands, albums, or songs. If you’re watching with subtitles or dubbed, the English will differ for copyright reasons. The Stand named Jumpin’ Jack Flash will be translated as Jumpin’ Jack Spark, for example.
- The style of the fighting evolves over time, starting out with a mysterious martial art known as Hamon (Ripples) and evolving into Stands (humanoid avatars that can be called upon to fight or defend the Stand User, Pokemon style) during combat. The names of the Stands will always be shoutouts to Pink Floyd, Queen, Jimi Hendrix, or whatever.
- There are certain unique ticks Jojo characters have, like the way they constantly narrate what they’re doing during combat or the way every character pronounces ja nai with a pause in the middle, which you can’t not notice eventually.
I have a secret: I am lowkey angry at Dragon Ball Z for being so influential and turning every other show of its era into a series of endless battles. I’ll generally avoid an anime if I think it’s going to be nothing but neverending battling between characters. But the battles in Jojo are so entertaining and unique, that they eventually won me over.
Jojo is all about two things: outrageously “bizarre” characters who are so strong, they raise your testosterone level just by looking at them, and attacks by some enemy, which generally unfold over one or two episodes.
The battles are all very entertaining and each manages to surprise you with a fresh new kind of supernatural attack you (or the characters) could never have seen coming. Each battle is like an inning of baseball, and you never know the action will play out when it begins.
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My Long Journey with Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure
I first became aware of Jojo 25 years ago, back in the early days of J-List, when some early figures came out after the release of the first OVA series, which was partially written by genius anime director Satoshi Kon. The figures sold terribly, because of course we were way, way ahead of the Jojo popularity curve, and I cursed the name of Jojo for the hard-to-move stock in my warehouse. When Golden Wind aired, I gave it a try and was hooked in no time. Mrs. J-List even got into the show, and now decorates her office with Jojo stuff.
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There are some valid reasons why some fans get a negative impression of Jojo:
- The art is bizarre, with ridiculously styled characters dressed in flamboyant costumes. There will occasionally be side characters who are so ugly, you literally can’t believe they were drawn that way.
- The visuals are so stylized they can come across as overly cheesy, “like the 1960s Batman show.”
- With its focus on fighting and its JUMP manga roots, Jojo can feel like a Fist of the North Star rip-off, which is what I initially thought, erroneously.
- Some fans, myself included, don’t like “fighting” anime because of the impression that battles take eight episodes to complete and are filled with silly posing and filler. Happily, Jojo battles are more concise and are resolved decisively.
- For the same reason, some fans might not want to get into Doctor Who, which has 26 seasons spanning 59 years, starting a show with such a long tail of episodes can be daunting. There are logical places to start in the middle, however.
- Above all, the fandom can be seen as pushy and aggressive, evangelizing the show excessively and spamming Jojo memes constantly.
Where Should You Start Watching the Show?
If you’re like me, you probably don’t have time to watch 152 episodes of anime (not counting the sixth story arc, Stone Ocean, currently streaming on Netflix). The general advice seems to be that, while you should watch the whole series for the full Jojo (golden) experience, starting at part 3 (Stardust Crusaders) is a perfectly acceptable place to begin.
I Might be a Jojo
One of the rules of traditional superheroes is that they often have alliterating names, like Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, and Reed Richards. With a name like Peter Payne, I’ve been told several times I need to live up to my potential superhero status.
But I also might be a Jojo. The story of Jojo starts way back in the 1880s, with the original Jonathan Joestar in England, then continues through the half-British, half-American Joseph Joestar in 1920, then his half-Japanese son Josuke Higashikata. My father Peter Payne Senior was born in 1927 in Chipping Camden, England, and he emigrated to the U.S. and had me with my mother in 1968. I came to Japan in 1991 and had my half-Japanese son Kazuki (who is also a huge Jojo nerd, even making a pilgrimage to Venice so he could lie in the spot a certain character died in), so we fit the pattern perfectly so far. I hope we can keep the Jojo lineage going!
Thanks for reading this blog post about my journey to becoming a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure fan. How do you feel about the show? Tell us below, or reply to us on Twitter!
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