JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure – An intelligent action manga

Since I’m not watching any animes at the moment, I decided to write a little about one of my favourite mangas, Hirohiko Araki’s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. With 92 and more volumes yet to come, it’s Shonen Jump’s 2nd longest running manga. The story arcs in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure are separated into different parts and the current part, Steel Ball Run, is the seventh part of JoJo series. Compared to other action mangas in shonen category, there is something in JoJo that you see far, far too rarely: Fighting that rewards brains over brawn.

In JoJo, all the characters have their unique phychic powers that manifest as beings known as Stands. The first Stands appear in the Stardust Crusaders, the third part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (and the one that is currently being published in English by VIZ), and have been a mainstay ever since their debut. In the beginning most of stands have rather simple powers (strength, speed, range and so on), but soon enough Araki comes up with more interesting Stands, such as J. Gail’s Hanged Man that moves and attacks via mirrors and N’Dour’s water stand Geb.

Spoilers ahead!

The battles in JoJo aren’t about who’s got the strongest Stand, instead one should think of Stands as tools; even good tools are useless if you don’t know how to use them. Let’s take N’Dour’s Geb for example. Jotaro, the main character of the 3rd part, and the company meet him in a desert. Now, one would think that a Stand made of water would be useless in a place like desert. However, that’s so far from the truth. Due to the thin nature of sand, Geb can easily travel silently underground and attack his enemies before they realize what’s going on. But N’Dour has one fatal weakness: he is blind and has to rely on his hearing. While he can detect footsteps miles away, he can’t detect something that moves without making a sound, for example something gliding through the air. With this in mind, Jotaro is able to defeat him helped by Iggy’s Stand’s, the Fool’s, ability to glide.

Spoilers end here!

The reason why JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure isn’t very popular outside Japan is because there is no market for mangas like it here. First of all, most readers of action manga seem to prefer generic action manga where fights are decided by sheer power with no strategy involved. Secondly, there is virtually no fanservice in JoJo. There is hardly any female characters to begin with. Another reason would be Ariki’s unique artwork where the male characters are portrayed as somewhat fabulous, but not bishonen by the common standards, which turns away lot of female bishie-lovers, and the violence is over-the-top and sometimes sort of cartoonish, though not very graphic. While some, such as me, like Araki’s artwork, some consider it a turn-off and don’t get to know JoJo better because of that.

The stories in JoJo usually have lots of fighting and from little to no debth to them, but that’s not the point. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is very entertaining to read because of the battles that make the reader think how the characters can use their Stand to defeat their seemingly invincible enemies. If you’re fed up with action mangas, where the winner is the one with the most strength, the highest power level or the best techniques, give JoJo a chance. You’ll be surprised to see that fighting could be made so interesting with such little effort. Remember to give it some time, though, since the Stands won’t show up until 12th volume, unless you pick up Viz’s version which skips the first two parts.