jojo’s bizarre adventure

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Part 1, Phantom Blood, Volume 2 by Hirohiko Araki

I enjoyed the first volume of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, and I was looking forward to see if the second volume continued with the unrelenting manliness and general crazy action. I wasn’t disappointed.

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The second volume continues with the battle between Jonathan Joestar and Dio, who has completely been taken over by the evil stone mask. Dio can suck the life force out of people to heal his wounds, and the corpses become zombies, which can certainly be a problem for anyone trying to take Dio down. Jonathan is determined to destroy the monster who killed his father, and fights back through impossible odds, burning down his own mansion and fighting through the pain as Dio breaks both his arms. I continue to be delighted by the character of Robert Edward O. Speedwagon, mostly because I find it amusing when Jonathan yells “Get out of the way Speedwagon!” during battle. Also, Speedwagon’s tendency to stay on the sidelines while injured allows him to provide running commentary on all the battles.

With the Joestar mansion being burned down, and Dio both impaled on a statue and crushed beneath a pillar, one might think that Jonathan’s battle was done, but this is not the case. He meets his long-lost love Erina again as she tends his wounds, and once he is somewhat healed he meets a strange mentor named Baron Zeppeli, who decides to teach Jonathan the ways of mastering Hamon energy to become even more powerful.

In the meantime, Dio has pulled himself out of the wreckage and continue to grow more and more powerful, aided by some additional evil allies. Jonathan and Zeppeli go to confront Dio, but will his vampirific power overcome their new martial arts discipline?

It is a bit unusual for me to be truly surprised by action scenes in a manga, but JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure really does deliver on this front, with surprising plot twists and innovative ways for everybody to power up. The stakes grow higher and the battles grow more impressive as both Jonathan and Dio gain power. The art is still a bit on the crude side, but undeniably energetic. Some of the fights take place against the backdrop of a low-hanging moon, which just makes everything look even more epic. What random character named after a rock band will appear next? I’m looking forward to the third volume to find out.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Part 1 Phantom Blood, Volume 1 by Hirohiko Araki

I read this volume without much background in this series other than knowing that it was a huge and long-running series in Japan, has a bit of a cult following in Japan, and the books that Viz had been releasing under the shonen jump line started midway through the series. This volume goes back to the earliest story arc in the series, kicking things off with the English nobility, bloodthirsty Aztec masks, and people beating the crap out of each other.

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The story kicks off in old school shonen fashion, where a scantily clad woman is sacrificed to the wearer of a mysterious stone mask who proclaims that his accessory drinks the blood of the living. Bones from the mask pierce his skull, but he’s still alive and taking on even more blood sacrifices, not worried about staining his stylish leopard skin pelt cape because he has found the secret to eternal life!

The story then skips over to England, where an evil red-haired young man offers his dying father some medicine. Dio’s father tells him a story about how he accidentally saved the life of a nobleman named Joestar when he came across the wreckage of carriage he was intending to scavenge. Brando tells Dio to go to the Joestars when he becomes orphaned, and Dio does, thus starting the torture of poor young Jonathan Joestar. Dio is immediately adopted as a second son by the Joestar family, but since he is basically the spawn of Satan and Jonathan Joestar is like a friendly naive puppy, things do not go well with the new brothers.

Dio is basically a human form of a cancer, undermining the heir to the Joestar family whenever he gets a chance. It has been a long time since I’ve read a shonen manga this manly! There are speed lines and yelling on almost every page. Jonathan and Dio engage in fistfights and boxing matches, where one blow will end up knocking a half dozen teeth into the air. Towards the end of the book the legacy of the blood drinking Aztec mask is further explored, and Jonathan finally begins to get proof of Dio’s nefarious deeds. The art is really dynamic although the proportions are often a bit off. Often one of the muscular bodies of the main characters will look like it is supporting a shrunken head. If Rob Liebefeld and Tetsuo Hara of Fist of the North Star mashed up their styles you might end up with something like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, except Araki can actually draw feet. I’m sure the art gets much better in subsequent volumes, and even though it wasn’t always to my taste I couldn’t deny the effectiveness of the energy of the many battle scenes in the manga.

As a main character, Jonathan Joestar lets himself be taken advantage of for far too long, but he does manage to battle back as shonen heroes always do. The hardcover edition is really nicely designed, with color pages shifting to further tonal pages where the black and white art is enlivened by shades of orange. This volume ends on a cliffhanger, and I do want to know what happens next, as I assume it will involve more stone mask blood drinking and face punching. I can certainly see why this is such a long-running and popular series in Japan. Recommended for those who want a major dose of testosterone in their manly manga.