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it's not as bad as I thought once I leave the fanart-related stuff out of the equation my DVD is out on loan.  yeah I should have the numbers going the other way but IDK
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Feb 21, 2016 23:47
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You sound kind of like that guy from Run Button if he spoke like Bob from Bob's Burgers
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Feb 22, 2016 00:16
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Baal posted:You wanna talk about embarrassment, I've got a video encoding right now that's me rambling about Phantom Blood for 18 minutes and makes me sound loving psychotic. That mashup's not terrible as far as mashups go fwiw. This is the best JoJo's mashup, imo.
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Feb 22, 2016 02:20
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A person who doesn't read jojo was telling me about how from what they understand, people don't read jojo for the stellar writing and only read it for the interesting fights and powers, and that the quotable sentences don't really count since they're just sentences and they aren't full passages or anything that don't really compare to good writing like you would find in shakespeare Now, I'm biased, but I think jojo has pretty good writing, but I also haven't read the original japanese text so I dunno if the original japanese is well written or not. Plus, shakespeare's writing was pretty crass. Well written, but crass, filled with innuendo and violence and jokes and all kinds of poo poo, so... I dunno, is jojo actually something that people consider to be well written? Obviously not on the level of non-comic book literature, but is jojo considered well written for being a comic? I feel like it's pretty dismissive to say that nobody seems to enjoy jojo for its writing.
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Feb 22, 2016 06:21
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The storylines are usually pretty good, yeah, some characters go through very intriguing character arcs. I'd go to my two opposite examples on why I like JoJo so much: DiU is a ton of character work, it's a story of a looming villain but mostly about obtaining what you want and how you get it with characters in this intriguing world dealing with imaginative and bizarre conflicts that often they start themselves while trying to get a simple and relatable thing and solving these conflicts just as imaginatively as they all grow in this massive cast, the main conflict throughout the acts is pretty interesting and evolving, leading to the final part where the villain essentially "wins" and the character with the least advantages must manage to solve an impossible stand puzzle to get our cast of heroes to defeat the villain. Then you got SBR where it's more about urgency, about a structured plot that seemingly is about a weak protagonist finding powers to walk once more and a jerk immigrant fighting for his own revenge, yet the tables turn as we find out it's more about how far a person is willing to go for their objectives, playing with our expectations as the jerk and the apparent villain both are actually too soft while the protagonist and the main villain are both more than willing to cross moral boundries for their objectives, where the whole good and evil thing is much more blurred as the hero is fighting less to stop jesus christ from being absorbed into america and more to obtain the pieces to prove to himself that he is not a failure. Another aspect, which is particularly strong for a shonen, is how death is handled, because while there's a few here and there that raise an eyebrow, most of them are extremely strong and impacting, F.F., Kakyoin and Gyro are people I didn't truly expect to see die, I was far too attached to them and their deaths were huge moments, when Iggy and Avdul bite it it's simply scary, Vanilla Ice is a terrifying monster. These moments have been so powerful that I have to remind myself every other week to stop caring so much about Yasuho because I know, I loving know that she's so great she'll die.
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Feb 22, 2016 06:42
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FirstAidKite posted:A person who doesn't read jojo was telling me about how from what they understand, people don't read jojo for the stellar writing and only read it for the interesting fights and powers, and that the quotable sentences don't really count since they're just sentences and they aren't full passages or anything that don't really compare to good writing like you would find in shakespeare I don't know about the writing ITSELF, since I don't speak Japanese, but it has great characters and group dynamics, and that dialogue is memorable because of its context. "But I refuse!" isn't a very clever line by itself, but in the context of the Highway Star fight, it's a great way to show off the uniqueness of Rohan's character. The plot is somewhat loose, since writing a weekly comic makes it very challenging to have a tight plot. I do feel like SBR and Jojolion are a huge bump up in that department, moving monthly has really allowed Araki to focus some time on the overall story structure and character development. The Shakespeare comparison is a bit unfair, since he was an unmitigated genius, and is in contention for the greatest English writer of all time. You can have really good writing and still not compare to a Will Shakespeare or Mark Twain.
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Feb 22, 2016 06:47
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The best way to describe JoJo is that it's plot-light and character interaction focused, which most people mistake for Bad because they're used to plot-heavy and character-weak genre fiction like the marvel movies or YA books where characters are basically just cutouts to move from one event to the next.
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Feb 22, 2016 06:52
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FirstAidKite posted:A person who doesn't read jojo was telling me about how from what they understand, people don't read jojo for the stellar writing and only read it for the interesting fights and powers, and that the quotable sentences don't really count since they're just sentences and they aren't full passages or anything that don't really compare to good writing like you would find in shakespeare In terms of dialogue/narration (which is what I assume writing means in this context, not plot), I'd call it good for a shonen manga, if that makes sense? When I'm reading One Piece, even the Viz version, I can't help but notice how undisciplined (for lack of a better word) the dialogue is. Characters in One Piece always do the tsukkomi reaction thing, use too many words, say things that undermine the thematic seriousness of a situation, spell out things better left implied, etc. Jojo characters don't really do that, while still getting a lot of memorable lines. It's not Shakespeare-level, or even Watchmen-level, but it's solid. Edit: I don't mean to pick on One Piece. Dialogue in Naruto is worse in a way, with plenty of very trite lines and unclear exposition. Fairy Tail doesn't even have the memorable lines that One Piece and Naruto do. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 07:20 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 07:06
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https://vine.co/v/ivHphhJO6vi
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Feb 22, 2016 07:13
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something else to anticipate in the new anime: people being really mad at joseph joestar being old
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Feb 22, 2016 07:25
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I consider Jojo to be well-written, though that isn't to say it's well-written all the time. There are definitely bits where it's clear Araki wrote himself into a corner and had to bluff his way out, or forgot about something or changed how it worked, and in terms of plotting it tends to meander. By contrast, however, Araki's sense of pacing is pretty good, as is his comedic timing. His character arcs are sometimes a little rushed, but the characters themselves hit far more often than they miss and, as Araki's career has panned out, he's gotten better about writing their arcs around real, human problems like "Yesterday I met by birth father who walked out on me; today we're hanging out but I don't know anything about him really." Your friend also mentioned the fights, which I don't think I need to remind anyone here I consider mostly fantastic. Good fights require good writing, pacing, blocking, structuring. That's all writing. Regarding the dialogue, I neither speak nor read Japanese so I suppose that's not for me to say, but I used to read a lot of articles and blog posts by Jason Thompson, VIZ editor, who is able (I believe) to read and speak some Japanese, and in his own words: Jason Thompson, Human Being posted:Araki is also one of the minority of shonen manga artists who I would say writes something like real dialogue (as opposed to just "I'll show you how strong I am...!" "I must get stronger!" "Impossible! You can't be so strong!"). His characters go on long rambles, make crazy boasts and demented threats, make references to Weird Al Yankovic and movie stars and baseball players. Most of the villains in Series 3 are just bad to the bone, but later on the enemies have deep backstories, and Araki often goes into long digressions about the characters' messed-up, tragic, bizarre lives. Bad Seafood fucked around with this message at 07:34 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 07:32
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jojo's does characters incredibly well so even if there's the occasional hiccup story-wise it's still pretty entertaining just from the characters being good. they're frequently one of the most-discussed topics about the series, which sounds like something that should be a given, but consider all those series out there where at least 75% of the characters are quickly forgotten and no one gives a poo poo about them.
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Feb 22, 2016 07:37
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Johnny Joestar posted:jojo's does characters incredibly well so even if there's the occasional hiccup story-wise it's still pretty entertaining just from the characters being good. they're frequently one of the most-discussed topics about the series, which sounds like something that should be a given, but consider all those series out there where at least 75% of the characters are quickly forgotten and no one gives a poo poo about them. Jojo has some forgettable characters too, like many of the villains-of-the-week in Stardust Crusaders. Pretty much every recurring character is memorable, though (if not always as fleshed-out as they should be). Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 07:52
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I remember every bad guy in Part 3. Granted, I'm not the yardstick you should use for what the common man does or does not remember about Part 3, but there you go.
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Feb 22, 2016 07:54
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Bad Seafood posted:I remember every bad guy in Part 3. I remember them too, in the sense of remembering their names and their Stands. It's just that I can't remember the personalities of a lot of them beyond "cruel and arrogant, just like all the others."
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Feb 22, 2016 07:57
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every series is going to have forgettable characters, but jojo's tends to not have many. of the forgettable ones in arc 3 they're mostly before egypt, but after that things improve quite a bit.
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Feb 22, 2016 07:58
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Bad Seafood posted:I remember every bad guy in Part 3. So, as a more reasonable yardstick (aka went through each part once): I don't remember a good number of the first half's "villain-of-the-week" types. Second half has all the remarkable ones, in my opinion.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:01
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I remember a lot of Part 3's villains of the week but that's also because I'm a huge nerd for part 3
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Feb 22, 2016 08:01
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I can't believe Baal hasn't asked me to guest star on his incredibly successful and influential Jojo LP so we can go on and on for hours about Part 3 together.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:05
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Dias posted:So, as a more reasonable yardstick (aka went through each part once): I don't remember a good number of the first half's "villain-of-the-week" types. Second half has all the remarkable ones, in my opinion. J. Geil and Mannish Boy are pretty drat remarkable fights, but I agree with the general sentiment. Though even more forgettable fights, like Captain Tennille and Midler, are still fun, and none of them overstay their welcome. hoobajoo fucked around with this message at 08:10 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 08:07
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Seafood's encyclopedic knowledge might just help the recap videos end up coherent 
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Feb 22, 2016 08:08
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Bad Seafood posted:I can't believe Baal hasn't asked me to guest star on his incredibly successful and influential Jojo LP so we can go on and on for hours about Part 3 together. One day, Seafood
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Feb 22, 2016 08:13
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dogsicle posted:Seafood's encyclopedic knowledge might just help the recap videos end up coherent Coherent recap videos don't sound fun at all.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:13
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Bad Seafood posted:I can't believe Baal hasn't asked me to guest star on his incredibly successful and influential Jojo LP so we can go on and on for hours about Part 3 together.  You guys should!!! I would love that.I can't really speak any more to the quality of writing than others have given but the strength of jjba lies in characterization and the fights themselves, with my interest actually skewing a bit more towards characters, but there's still an obvious sense of good comedic timing that comes through and just compellingly thoughtful monologues that seem to work well even if you assume the translation probably doesn't totally nail it. Someone mentioned that it's not really Watchmen-level and I dunno, speaking as someone who kinda likes Alan Moore (though I'm weird, Watchmen's not high on my list as I like stuff like From Hell and uh Top 10 better whatever we're not talking about that) I think Araki can kinda edge him out? I forgive a lot of Araki's fumbles though to the point of being very nearly an apologist. Still, that sort of discussion ends up feeling a bit apples and oranges to me- I dislike literary snobbicism in the first place and that's speaking as someone with degrees in the field of lit/writing so I feel Extremely Qualified to Annoy People with Bullshit Opinions on that front.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:15
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hoobajoo posted:J. Geil and Mannish Boy are pretty drat remarkable fights, but I agree with the general sentiment. Though even more forgettable fights, like Captain Tennille and Midler, are still fun, and none of them overstay their welcome.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:16
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Midler will never be forgettable to me because Araki had to make up a design for her for Heritage to the Future and one of her supers is throwing cars at the opponent
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Feb 22, 2016 08:24
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Also I will start asking for guest stars when I do the one offs for the JoJo games, so if any of you guys want a part in that then I'll let the thread know at the appropriate time
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Feb 22, 2016 08:24
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Bad Seafood posted:I can't believe Baal hasn't asked me to guest star on his incredibly successful and influential Jojo LP Same. Bad Seafood posted:so I can bully him. but this. I don't even have a mic but still.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:27
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hoobajoo posted:J. Geil and Mannish Boy are pretty drat remarkable fights, but I agree with the general sentiment. I always think Mannish Boy is on Egypt for whatever reason. J. Geil is good too, how could I forget Hol Horse. Like, from the top of my head I could name you Deep Moon Sea, Pedo Monkey, A Sun (is that first half?), those two and I think there is a murder car involved but I don't even remember what stand that is or what happens. Which I suppose ain't a bad number for someone that only watched once. But yeah, they're not BAD fights (although the first two end with asspulls), Jojo at its "lowest" still does shonen fights better than basically anyone else. To me, that was the main pull of the series: Araki is real good at writing cool fights that show off the personality of the combatants. Jonathan is a fiery motherfucker, Joseph is cunning and not above using cheap tricks to win, Jotaro keeps his cool always...and that extends to the villains too, most of the time. Alessi is a coward bully, so he breaks down when Jotaro smashes his face in as a pre-teen, for example. As someone whose favorite anime growing up was Yu Yu Hakusho (over Saint Seiya and DBZ), it just resonated better. I rate shonen on a curve in terms of "writing" (and what "good writing" implies is so vague anyway), but JoJo has amazing character work, a good sense of how to utilize that in fights, great pacing, no stupid power creep and often funny/badass dialogue. Plus, as the series go on, it becomes an experiment on building up the most insane scenarios and still finding a way to make it "beatable" in-universe. I'll say that it's often light on plot early on, but as someone said, that's not a knock on Araki - it's just a different take on genre fiction.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:32
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I think that's a supremely bad idea unless you want to be bullied yourself over the accent stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc0ZTB0qFyI e: honestly I don't want to start up this avenue specifically cuz I hate the "what should Dio's accent really sound like" thing but still: if we want to get REALLY loving awful with English accents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_mpaF5-SlU Okuyasu Nijimura fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Feb 22, 2016 |
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Feb 22, 2016 08:33
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Dias posted:(although the first two end with asspulls) People just miss the forest for the trees since he uses a signature-style attack.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:36
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With JoJo I feel its strength lies in its character writing and fights as well. Its stories are all always very bare bones and just "THE ADVENTURE," without much in the way of thematic power until SBR. That being said, JoJo's very good at making you like its very traditional characters and never making them feel stale or having the next protagonist after the one you just saw be fresh and unique. Jonathan's the most shallow they get and even he's still easy to get behind because he's a hot-blooded character who is also a gentleman and kind which you don't see as much of these days since hot-blooded is generally associated with characters who are crazy motherfuckers. It's easy to watch/read the opening of Phantom Blood and feel lovely for Jonathan and Erina because they've never done wrong to anyone are just silly kids, yet this rear end in a top hat forces his will on him and you want to see him get his loving face stuffed in and it delivers instead of stringing you along forever like most shonen would do. Just talking about Phantom Blood alone the fact that main character is so simple and shallow works when his counterpart is Dio, a character with so much maniacal depth to his assholishness that you want to see him defeat Dio and destroy his plans. It's really hard to read most shonen and after a certain point keep giving a poo poo about either the protagonist or antagonist because more often than not they last a while and don't know when to hit a satisfying end for character arcs which also makes JoJo's different parts a strength in and of itself. Also I realized I only talked about PB and that may be because I'm coming off that goofy rear end video, but I realized p recently that I actually do like Phantom Blood more than I gave it credit for and remember a lot of it (Mostly due to the last few years of overexposure I've gotten from it).
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Feb 22, 2016 08:40
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Bad Seafood posted:I still maintain that Dark Blue Moon and Strength were both legitimate victories for Jotaro. I'll give him the fight against Forever since jotaro and shoot objects like bullets with how strong his stand is regardless of the star finger stuff, but the star finger thing was pretty much the only reason he beat Dark Blue Moon
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Feb 22, 2016 08:40
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Jotaro defeated him by going with the flow of the current, saving his strength to deliver one single powerful blow. The fact that that blow was in the form of Star Finger doesn't negate his problem solving skills. He could've just punched him to much the same effect.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:52
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I'll give you a star finger
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Feb 22, 2016 08:52
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Bad Seafood posted:I still maintain that Dark Blue Moon and Strength were both legitimate victories for Jotaro. Asspulls might be a bit strong, they felt more...lazy. "Oh, someone beat Star Platinum's range/speed game, what shall we doooFINGERBANG". Second one was better because at least we saw him do it, but it felt like a power that didn't quite fit the Stand and was there to fill in for some of its weaknesses - which is why I'm glad Araki dropped it. I also got a bit huffy when Dio fragged Jonathan with his dumb laser eyes , so maybe I'm just weak to piercing attacks.
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Feb 22, 2016 08:53
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I don't feel like it was lazy in the context of either fight - Jotaro realized he was outmatched in speed, so he allowed his opponent to defeat himself basically - but nevertheless Araki caught on pretty quick that signature attacks were a poor fit for his series.Baal posted:I'll give you a star finger
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Feb 22, 2016 08:58
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People getting Worlded is sort of an Araki signature.
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Feb 22, 2016 10:22
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Star Finger is just Zoom Punch
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Feb 22, 2016 14:41
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Further evidence that Star Platinum is Jonathan like that one awful fan comic tried to theorize
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Feb 22, 2016 15:23
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