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JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Season 1 Review

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is fantasy action anime series. Its first season premiered in 2012 and it has 12 episodes. It’s a very good show.

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“The ultimate being embodies the powers of

each and every living thing, all lives gather as one“

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Interestingly, this season has two arks. Phantom Blood follows the Joestar family and focuses on Jonathan who gets bullied by his adopted brother Dio who plans to take over the family and their fortune. Eventually, he’s turned into a vampire and the two fight and both tragically die. In the next arc Battle Tendency, Jonathan’s grandson Joseph is the main focus and in particular his fight with the awakened, deadly Pillar Men.

The first arc is much shorter at ten episodes, but still a fabulous start for the show. It started as this very intriguing supernatural historical series with strong characterization and humor, but it eventually turned into an all-out action show which the second act also featured. Although sometimes overwhelmingly action-oriented, the action is so good that I still ended up loving the show.

The storytelling is intricate and the second arc benefits from the long history of the family being well utilized previously and thus it became even emotional and honestly quite epic in some scenes and episodes. Also, the second arc is so out there in its weirdness and powerful fights that I really dug it plus the many resemblances to Dragon Ball Z were quite welcome.

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Let’s talk about the characters. Jonathan is quite a gentleman and thus he’s overly good and somewhat dull, but Dio is naturally a phenomenal, very entertaining and competent villain. Erina is pretty good, Speedwagon is also solid and von Stroheim is very likable. Smokey Brown is an unnecessary sidekick, but he’s still quite endearing and the fact that he’s black is quite interesting.

I was so disappointed that we did not get to see Lisa Lisa fight as she was horribly used in that last fight where she was tricked by the villain in a very unlikable turn of events. But still, she’s a tough, badass female character whom I really liked and I also loved the twist that she’s JoJo’s mother. Although a soap opera, it was so well established in the flashbacks and intricately told and epic that I still loved it.

JoJo himself is a lot of fun as this powerful, but also goofy protagonist who’s kind of a cheating trickster too. The villains in the second arc are simply fantastic as they’re immensely powerful, but also quite clever. Wamuu is excellent and he got some great moments with Joseph, but Kars is naturally the standout, most powerful, God-like villain who posed genuine threat and was so cool to follow.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure features a very interesting animation style that is different and unique with its angular shapes in character designs and very macho looking dudes, but not terribly good looking in face which I liked. I also liked the colorful color palette and some imagery was quite memorable.

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The score is sometimes awfully metallic which I really disliked, but the sound effects are good and the voice acting is strong across the board. The dialogue can be cliched and typically for anime they talk while they fight, but it can also be quite funny and memorable. The action is stupendously executed, impressively detailed in strategy and simply a lot of fun. And I just loved its weirdness in some scenes and typically crazy scenarios that can only happen in anime. I just wish that they weren’t so contrived most of the time.

Overall, the first season of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure became a very different show in its second act, but I am not a vampire fiction fan so I was fine with that change. The show is problematic for being too rushed in pacing as the story moves too fast, but still it’s epic in tone with highly memorable characters, solid animation style to it and hugely entertaining fights.

Worst Episodes: Youth with Dio, Sorrowful Successor and The Warrior of Wind.

Best Episodes: A True Warrior, The Ties That Bind JoJo and The Ascendant One.

My Rating – 4

You can get this great anime on Amazon.