The First Bizarre Adventure...

I'm sure a lot of people remember this from a few years back:

This flash is based on the character animations from M.U.G.E.N., the freeware fighting game engine. It's been notoriously hacked and altered to include a far larger character roster than any other game.

Among the most famous finishing moves is the inspiration for the mudah flash...

The above is from Hirohiko Araki's shounen manga series, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Started in 1987, the series is still running with a huge following in Japan. Araki is currently on his 8th part, JoJolion, and still going strong.

This October, studio David Production came out with a new anime for JoJo, coinciding with the release of All-Star Battle, a JoJo fighting game by Namco-Bandai.

On Saturday, the series just finished covering Part 1, so I decided to review it as part of my first analysis of the 2012 JoJo's Bizarre Adventure anime!!!!!

Part 1: Phantom Blood is a very interesting part of JoJo in the sense that it introduces a lot of concepts that are dropped almost completely by Part 4. Also, Araki's drawing style was less defined than in later parts, so Part 1 somewhat suffered, especially when compared alongside its future installments. But, hey, that's how manga goes: Mangakas like Araki have developed their abilities over time and, thus, we get amazing material like Araki's current work on JoJo. Araki dealt with many different genres prior to JoJo, including the gory horror series Baoh and you can see that in Part 1's mixing of horror and action in a shounen series.

Founded in 2007, David Production, Inc. has helped out with Code Geass R2, Soul Eater, Inazuma Eleven, and Black Butler, but they haven't really produced much notable material on their own except for Inu X Boku SS (which I do recommend watching!). The company was founded by former Gonzo executives Koji Kajita and Taito Okiura and it makes me wonder if they brought along some Gonzo animators with them, because JoJo is very well animated.

Jonathan Joestar, known as JoJo to his friends, dreams of becoming a gentleman. However, his life becomes hell with the arrival of Dio Brando, the son of a man who allegedly saved the life of JoJo's father. As JoJo struggles against his new rival, a mysterious Aztec Stone Mask enters Dio and JoJo's lives, transforming the story into a very bizarre adventure with rogues, vampires, zombies, and famous serial killers. Will JoJo become a gentleman? And who's the mysterious Zeppoli? What is the mystery behind the Stone Mask?

And will JoJo win the big rugby game at the end of the year?

I'll admit, it takes a little bit of time to get used to the animation, especially in the opening episodes. Most notably, the colors are bright pastels most of the time. 

Making Dio 200% more fabulous than usual.

And this is very jarring, especially considering how the OVAs for Part 3 had much darker color tones...

"I'm going to be animated in pastels? Yare Yare Daze."

However, after you get used to this, it actually works. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a lot of dark parts, especially a few choice scenes with the villain Dio and what he does to mess with the innocent. You'd think that the color scheme would offset the dramatic effects of these scenes, but it really doesn't. It causes the viewer to feel that this is indeed a bizarre adventure accompanying JoJo. It makes the series a little less serious and a lot more fun, which it needs to be.

I really like how they animated this series. As I said earlier, Part 1 lacks some of Araki's style later on in JoJo. With this anime, they've done a great job making the animation consistent, making most of the designs look much more like the refined character designs found later in JoJo. It's a great move that should make the transitions between the differently drawn parts of JoJo go very smoothly. It also helped to make the female characters stand out more. Araki tended to have problems with designing female characters during Part 1 and the design of love interest Erina is particularly better than in the original because, well...

She used to look like Princess Di.

(Note: I won't get started on how Araki tends to treat women in JoJo... Maybe some time in the future.)

I will say that it's a bit annoying that they occasionally overemphasize the sound effects... The animators put a lot of the kanji sound effects to make the anime be more manga-like, but it doesn't work that well.

Death by Onomatopoeia?

The music is pretty good, focusing mostly on orchestration. It's a standard soundtrack for epic adventures that are full of action and so it sufficiently sets the mood well. This is contrasted with the J-Rock opening, "JoJo - Sono Chi no Sadame." Hiroaki Tominaga AKA Tommy does an amazing job, building up an opening that's an awesome callback to older, manly man shounen series. 

The OP's animation is also interesting.

While the CGI is a bit clunky, the blending of manga frames and animation is quite cool. It gives the whole idea that the pages are being brought to life before the audience's eyes. The best touch is the very beginning where the manga pages flip through the various future JoJos. The OP also summarizes the arc up very well, so it does a good job of showing the audience what's to come.

The ending theme is another rock theme, Yes's Roundabout, which is very appropriate for the international nature of JoJo and its many outside influences. 

The animation on the ED follows a trail of blood leading to the series's Stone Mask. Along the way are images of various pivotal characters in the series that change every few episodes. It's pretty decent, though it gets repetitive toward the end of Part 1.

Voice acting is pretty decent. Dio's seiyu, Takehito Koyasu (Aokiji from One Piece, Il Palazzo from Excel Saga, and Luke Valentine from Hellsing), appropriately hams up his character a whole lot. Dio Brando has some of the most crazy lines in the series and Koyasu pulls it off very well. Also, Yoku Shioya makes an extravagant Zeppoli, JoJo's mentor, that perfectly defines the character.

He's Italian.

Kazuyuki Okitsu as protagonist Jonathan "JoJo" Joestar is a little weird. While his nice guy character works for when JoJo and Dio are kids, he ends up maintaining the same voice after they grow up. I know that this is to show how pure-hearted JoJo is, but holy crap does it sound like he has not gone through puberty. Koyasu has this same problem with Dio, but in the sense that young Dio starts off sounding like an adult when he is still a teenager. JoJo and Dio are kids only in the first episode, so as a result, Dio sounds weird in only one episode, while JoJo sounds off for most of the series!

Phantom Blood is 9 episodes long, which feels like the perfect length; I feel like with any more episodes, it would have dragged and with any fewer, it would feel rushed. The anime is a near shot-for-shot adaptation for the original, taking great pains to feel like a manga turned anime and mostly succeeds. 

The addition of colors, music, and voice actors have really enhanced Part 1. I'm really interested to see how David Productions will spice up Part 2 and the rest of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. I'm hoping that the ride will keep getting better!

I give JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Part 1: Phantom Blood a collection of mudah parodies out of 10.