bear cove

I finished the first season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure a few days ago without having any knowledge of the anime or manga going into it. The only thing I knew is that it was very stylistic and had a lot of posing.

Throughout the years I’ve known of it, it didn’t interest me because of what I assumed to be outlandish art style with absurd body proportions. I’m glad I’ve finally given it a chance because it’s excellent. Also, what? There’s vampires?!

I’m going to be honest – I don’t think there’s much of a deep story going on here but that isn’t what makes it so good. It’s shamelessly outlandish in so many ways. The dialogue and drama reminds me of a soap opera, the voice acting is over the top, the powers are borderline nonsensical, the colors are in your face, and even the pacing is ridiculous. The combination of all those things and particularly the outfits make everything feel so campy! I mean that in the most complimentary and flattering way possible. I found myself squealing at the outfits, ridiculous out of place posing, and oh my god- Dio Brando is so hard to dislike even as an evil antagonist. (Why is he so hot? Finger blood-sucking shouldn’t be hot.)

the characters

Okay – the dynamic between JoJo and Dio is fairly standard for anime and I appreciate how rapid paced they shot through how they were friends for about 5 minutes before being mortal enemies again. No, there isn’t a lot of character development but who cares when you have a person named SPEEDWAGON become your brother by bonding over the fact that you impressed him by being gentlemanly after he tried to kill you with his stylish, spinny blade hat. In fact, Speedwagon might have overattachment issues with how he was wailing over characters he had known for mere hours and laying his life on the line for them!

Dio on the other hand is this seasons biggest JoJo hater. Absolutely ZERO compromise in his haterade and I totally love that about him. It helps that he gets the best poses and villains are naturally hotter.

JoJo is on leagues above Luke Skywalker in his ability to grasp this world’s power, Hamon, which I barely understand but it doesn’t matter because it’s entertaining as hell. There’s one point where he wears a tiny bow tie and a pink vest and I just about screamed with joy. I was scared at one point thinking he was wearing something normal but then the camera panned down and I breathed a sigh of relief seeing it was actually a crop top showing his 16 pack abs.

final thoughts on season 1

My first impressions aren’t that fresh considering I finished a bit ago but overall, I can completely see the appeal to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure now. It’s camp, it’s fashionable, stylish, best of all, fun and entertaining.