Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure 22
Posted: June 11, 2008 Filed under: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure 5 Comments »I’m sorry, I meant to post this on June 7th, and I had it written in advance and everything, but I wound up leaving town for the weekend (to work a few 14-hour days ;_;) and didn’t have time to get the images for the article. Forgive the slightly belated nature.
We here at Slightly Biased Manga like to celebrate the lives of our favorite manga artists, so today we’ll be having a birthday celebration. For me. And also Hirohiko Araki. Since he’s been having a hard time lately, and also because he’s awesome and his birthday happens to be the same day as mine, so I remember it. He only condones one type of celebration, dance, so this review will be periodically interrupted by a Jojo dance party.
I was happy that this volume was full of nothing but absolutely ridiculous opponents. We get the meat of the battle with Bast/Mariah vs. Avdol and Joseph. The first chapter of this volume was amazing, because I had been comptemplating the homoeroticism in this series for a couple days, and the first chapter is just Araki having fun with Avdol and Joseph being stuck together and trying to slide themselves apart/dance with each other while others watch. Several comments are made about how out-of-character this is for Avdol. Both seem to be suffering immensely.
The rest of the chapter is good (with some comments about what a fine old man Joseph is thrown in at the end by Mariah, along with comments from Joseph about how he isn’t even going to consider her a lady anymore), but it doesn’t quite reach the same level as the first chapter. I have to admit, I like the gimmick of the stand being magnetized. As I said, that’s what I love most about this series, it’s not so much that the opponents get stronger and stronger, it’s just that the characters have to figure out the way to beat whatever particular unusual power that their opponent possesses that isn’t strength.
Next we fight Alessi and his stand, Set. Normally I don’t spoil the stand’s powers, but this was more than half the volume. Alessi went up against Polnareff, who was handicapped immediately by Set, which is a shadow with the power to reverse age its victims. So yes, Polnareff and Silver Chariot fought the entire battle as little kids. We get almost an entire chapter of first-person perspective before this is unveiled, which was really a great way to go about that. There’s also lots of really, REALLY bad jokes (that I loved), especially when Polnareff is taken in by a woman who cleans his wounds and bathes him. You can see where this goes.
One person is turned into a fetus.
Jotaro enters the fray at the very end of the battle, but Araki is sly about him. The hat/hair mystery still remains, unfortunately.
The images are from Jojo a Go Go! It starts with several pages that say “Are You Ready! Yeah~! Let’s Dance!” followed by characters from 60 volumes of the manga dancing together for about 16 or so pages. It’s quite literally the nicest book I own, and actually comes in a box as three books. I hate, HATE posting images here, but this book will never in a million years come out here, and while it is probably still in print in Japan, it is also prohibitively expensive, and I’ve only featured a tiny part of it. If asked, I will take the images down.
Otherwise, have a Jojo-filled day, even if I did post this a few days late.
[...] Connie reads vol. 22 of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure at Slightly Biased Manga. Chloe Ferguson tries some manhua (Chinese comics), vol. 1 of White Night [...]
A couple weeks ago, if you had suggested to me that I would be buying this, I would have said “Oh, I’ve heard good things about Jojo, but there’s other manga I’d rather blah blah blah”. Nothing short of seeing it sold at a really low price at a local bookstore would have enticed me.
Half Price Books figured this out. So they made a package deal where, if you bought all 10 volumes of Jojo in the store, you only paid $25 (plus tax).
Quite frankly, this is not my kind of thing. However, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is so great that even though it’s not my kind of thing, I still enjoy it immensely. I love seeing what’s coming next, because it’s so imaginative because it transcends the tournament structure underlying the story.
So, are you going to have another Jojo/birthday party this year? Would you invite me?
Awesome! I’m glad you got a chance to pick the series up. I am doing another birthday celebration, actually, and yes. I saved the only volume that’s come out since last year to review that day, and I’m probably going to do a special post about the earlier parts of the series. It’s funny you mentioned this tonight, because I just started re-reading from volume 1 last night. These stories don’t use stands and opt for a much more boring martial arts-type system, but they make up for it with their nonsensical plot developments and the fact that, for whatever reason, vampires just don’t fit.
I’ve praised it to high heavens already, and I’m glad you like it. It really does do magical things with the tournament structure, and I love its sense of humor. I laugh harder at the out-there plot developments in Jojo than I do any other series. It’s the one thing I miss most in the earlier parts, though I think they try to be funny with really over-the-top violence.
Happy Birthday!
May the next year be filled with manga-reading joy, and with joy in general.
Thanks! I’m happy you remembered!