Jojolion: high highs, low lows and missed potential – The Spectator

It’s no secret that I love “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure.” I bought the “Jojo” fighting game over the summer, I wrote an op-ed on part five last semester and finally read Steel Ball Run (part seven) and Jojolion (part eight).

“Jojo” is an anime and manga series created by Hirohiko Araki. It has been running since 1987 and is notable for its outlandish scenarios and the author’s use of musical figures as names.

Steel Ball Run is the best part. Everybody saying so for the past decade has been correct. Johnny and Gyro have an excellent bromance, the villain is top tier and the stand abilities are creative. But as the title implies, this is not an article about Steel Ball Run.

I’m still not entirely sure where Jojolion falls into my overall ranking of “Jojo” parts. It’s better than parts one and five, in my opinion, but my personal “tier list” is always changing anyway.

This manga focuses on Josuke Higashikata, a young man with retrograde amnesia. He chases mystery after mystery around the fictional town of Morioh in an attempt to find out who he is … er, was.

Let’s get right into what the part does well. Stands are back (as if there was any doubt) and Jojolion has some of the coolest stands in the entire series. For the uninitiated, a stand is the manifestation of one’s fighting spirit. They are called stands because they stand next to their user.

Josuke’s stand, Soft & Wet, has two abilities; it can take one “thing” from anyone or anything with soap bubbles and can release that “thing” when the bubbles pop.

What is a “thing?” It is purposely left vague. In the very first fight of the part, Josuke takes the friction from a floor to cripple his enemy. He later takes his brother’s eyesight.

Its strength is in its abstractness. The limit to Soft & Wet’s power is our (or in this case, Josuke’s) imagination.

Paisley Park has the power of navigation, helping its user and her allies in a number of situations. It can guide someone out of danger or help them find someone or something they’re looking for. It would also probably be the most useful stand for the everyday person.

Nut King Call can detach and reattach two things, including body parts, with nuts and screws. Awaking III Leaves redirects pretty much anything with its arrows. Space Trucking can hide anything between two playing cards.

There’s plenty more I could go over that the part does well, but that’s not my entire focus. What does Jojolion do poorly?

My main gripe with Jojolion is that the villain sucks. His identity is a spoiler, but the community hates him so much that they don’t even care. He just shows up at the end with very little buildup.

His stand power, Wonder of U, is ridiculous. It has been disguising itself as a person, and long story short, the stand could have just been its own person and the main villain. Does that count as a spoiler? Is anyone reading this who hasn’t already read Jojolion planning on reading Jojolion?

Some of the characters are underutilized. The main offenders are Josuke’s adopted family, the Higashikatas, particularly Hato and Daiya. We see each of them use their stands a single time. Daiya doesn’t really have a character arc.

Why does Tsurugi, a ten-year-old child, have more character development than Josuke’s adopted family? Why don’t Josuke and Joshu, his adopted brother near his age, have a lot of screen time together?

Their relationship is played for jokes a few times, but not much else. There aren’t other characters in the story that would make a good friend for Josuke. The only character near his age other than Joshu is his love interest, Yasuho.

All of this goes into my biggest gripe with Jojolion: the missed potential. While I could go on about how much the entire Higashikata family and their stands could have been used more, I want to focus on two in particular: Josuke’s Soft & Wet and Joshu’s Nut King Call.

Soft & Wet’s aforementioned “thing” taking doesn’t get more interesting than the two previous examples. Josuke never removes someone’s oxygen to make them disintegrate on the spot. He doesn’t attempt to take the electricity from a power line.

This stand could have been my favorite in the whole series if we saw what it was truly capable of. It feels to me that Soft & Wet is bursting with potential, but pops much earlier than expected.

Nut King Call can detach and reattach things, but we only see Joshu really use it to prank people. The one time he doesn’t, he simply beats the crap out of some guy with his stand. Joshu could become the single most capable handyman in history.

Joshu could build bridges, ladders, pipes, wheelchairs, etc. The point here is that the stand power isn’t nearly utilized to its fullest potential.

I’m not going to say Jojolion is bad. It’s an excellent manga and I can’t wait for it to one day be animated. I enjoyed my experience with it, but it still left me wanting so much more. Here’s hoping that part nine, The Jojolands, explores the potential of its stands more than Jojolion did.

Tolbert can be contacted at [email protected]. If you email him, he just may take away your ability to read.