The Original Jojo Anime Was a Perplexing Cinematic Masterpiece

[Music] JoJo's Bizarre Adventure part three Stardust Crusaders is an absolute Paradox it drags in the middle and it can get a little repetitive even directionless at times but it still holds a special place in my heart as one of my favorite and certainly the most memorable JoJo part if even just for the final battle and because old man Joseph is an will always be a dill but did you know that the 2015 David production version is actually the 2 and a half time this part has been adapted to animation and there was actually a short series published in the 9s that made some absolutely confounding creative decisions and featured some early work from someone who later became a highly renowned director and a name that you probably know you did well keep it to yourself next time JoJo's Bizarre Adventure was a 6 episode OVA miniseries released on V HS in 1993 by studio app it takes a section of the manga and condenses it down into just six episodes cutting out massive sections of the original story and changing the tone drastically at times if you're one of those people who couldn't get through part three because it's too long and repetitive try watching this version instead it trims basically all the fat and the cartilage and a good portion of the muscle and rips out like half the bones and Chucks them in the incinerator I love watching things that are so bad it's good and things that are so good it's good and this is somehow both so come along with me on this Crusade and we'll find out why the original JoJo anime is a perplexing cinematic Masterpiece by treating it as its own Standalone piece of fiction and comparing it to the more recent version from David production which I think people are more familiar with warning the following video has been deemed too epic for YouTube it got age restricted which killed its momentum at the peak of its popularity this version has been lightly edited for transparency whenever there's a chunk missing you'll see this screen if you want to watch the fully uncensored version it's available on my newly created patreon page more on that a little later for anyone who doesn't know JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a manga series by hioo araki that began in 1987 and is still publishing part N9 at the time of recording it follows the ongoing Legacy of an epic rivalry between a pair of British chaps named Jonathan joar and Dio Brando who played rugby together for a while then the latter of whom became an immortal vampire God and continued to terrorize his extended family for the rest of Eternity by mind controlling a veritable Army of flamboyant freaks to mess with them anti- invented stands which are usually a magic dude made out of spirit energy that comes out of your back and fights for you with some sort of special psychic power and who can only be seen by other stand users but sometimes they're also a bunch of spiky purple vines that can grab on to things and or Divine seemingly any type of information through physical Media or a giant boat created by a gorilla that can both be seen and walked on by any ordinary person apparently just to give a couple examples each part follows the adventures of one or more of Jonathan's descendants and part three finds his grandson Joseph and his great great grandson jotoro as they Trek across the world with a ragtag band of hmos to find Dio's hideout in Cairo in order to defeat him and save Joto's mother/ Joseph's daughter Whose stand is slowly killing her while it looks a little janky and cheap by today's standards and I believe it flopped at the time though I can't seem to find a good source for how many copies it sold if anyone can find that stat definitely let me know in the comments the 1993 JoJo OVA is also at times straight up really good the series is of course defined by a pervasive silliness but at its core the subject matter is pretty dark at least in the earlier Parts dealing with mind control murderous demons and main characters dying in horrific ways the '90s version still has elements of the characteristic silliness that defines the JoJo series but it takes the original subject matter and treats it more seriously making something that feels much darker and more grounded than the manga or the later David production version a choice which at times elevates the source material to create something legitimately chilling and at others completely Falls flat on its face and strangely if you take a look at the credits you'll find a surprising name that's right doing key animation for a few episodes and securing one of his first ever directing credits on episode 5 his Visionary director sat con who of course was best known for his mind-bending surrealist psychological thrillers like perfect blue and paprika so make sure to stick around for that cuz that's the real reason I decided to make this video I think it's actually a really interesting look into the creative Visionary that con would later become contrasted with the content of Jojo which is pretty much the exact opposite of the type of story that became emblematic of his style anyway we'll talk about that a little more later for now let's jump right into this goofy ass mess with episode one I mean eight wait episode 8 okay we've got a Star Wars situation here so inexplicably they decided to First adapt only the second half of the third part of the JoJo manga then come back in 9 years later in 2002 to make a second first half that goes before the first second half they then re-released it all as a full set adding new title cards to the original series starting at episode 8 the 2002 prequel is done by a completely different team though as you can tell by the massive difference in visual style and the fact that J has a weird nasty little rat face we're only going to be looking at the original six episodes for now okay now We're Off to the Races so we open on this really cool Aztec sacrificial ceremony scene which I guess is supposed to replace the entire do backstory yeah I think they get it I love how atmospheric this is and these cool foot stomping insert Shots by the way this intro sequence is apparently animated by hiroyuki huchi a veteran animator who did animation for the likes of a Kira grave of the fireflies devil man Etc but who's also still working today having worked on the most recent season of Dr Stone for example and we got some tip this is a very serious show for serious men great intro guys really cool not sure if it has anything to do at all with the actual story that we're telling here but but really cool I really hope this isn't the last time I get to see this okay here we are in the Sahara desert with the hmbo crew who are these guys who knows why are they here even they don't know what is that a helicopter we're going to have to ride in that thing and they for some reason made Joseph blonde no I'm sorry pner F I can understand but Joseph should clearly have gray hair we know what he looked like when he was young and he certainly was not blonde I do however have immense respect for the fact that they chose to put him in this luxurious yet refined purple outfit slay a helicopter from the Speedwagon Foundation shows up supposedly carrying another stand user to help out the crew Juro asks which one of you guys is the stand user these two chuckleheads decide the best response would be to give him the old bullfrog star down for a full 20 seconds this suspense building fake out is in the 2015 version as well but it only lasts a ptry 8 seconds after a master class in truly unsettling squelchy sound effects that had me convinced that the fole artist had a side hustle making slime videos on Tik Tok come out of here Iggy the dog makes his first appearance and a truly terrifying one I might add I'm a big fan of the way they have the camera fly around all erratic like bouncing off the walls I'm a fan of Mischief really gives a deeply unhinged feeling to this Motion in the 2015 version it's more of a standard pushin with some pulsation and speed lines which get the idea of the motion across just fine but I just can't get over how much the added bizarre jerky movements give you an instant impression of this Iggy character as a freaky freaky freaky little freak now this is a good time to mention that the 2015 David production version of the show is incredibly faithful to the original manga to a fault and this is pretty much exactly how it's depicted in the manga panel for panel and that's fair enough but I think there's also something to be said for the ability to take advantage of the differences between media in the '93 version The Crew saw an opportunity here to enhance the Dynamics of this Motion in a way that can only be conveyed through moving pictures now not all of these creative choices and deviations from The Source material are as beneficial as we've already seen and will continue to see believe you me but I think this is an example of one that works really well okay On a related note we got to talk about the elephant in the room or the Boston Terrier in the helicopter if you will you won't fair enough Iggy's character design hio Ari for all his strengths and there are many I mean the man can draw a hell of a bullfrog staredown face it's pretty clear clear that he's just completely flying by the seat of his pants here in terms of plot characterization rules of the universe essentially every aspect of these stories so it's no surprise that character design is no different in the earlier chapters of the manga Iggy looks like if you took a wet paper bag scribbled all over it with a sharpie and filled it with marbles and this may be an unpopular opinion but I really liked this version of the character I mean if you met a nasty lumpy little rat dog that thinks it's the center of the universe this is what they look like but the character design does not stick around for long it'll be interesting to see how each version of the anime decides to handle the switch so we'll revisit this later I mean the only way you could make this more realistic as if he was shockingly skilled at riding a skateboard but you know what he is shockingly skilled at haunting my nightmares with this horrific little toothy laugh after Iggy shows off his stand pner gets his [ __ ] rocked and avll lays down some bars to put it simply it is a stand of the sand bars the speed wagon found goons inform Joseph that his daughter only has 2 weeks left to live again I cannot stress enough that there is no context whatsoever here a viewer going in blind at this moment would only know that there's someone with a scary mask named Dio Joseph's daughter is dying of some sort of medical condition which the Keen ey May connect to this brief scene in the opening title sequence and that these strapping Lads are presumably going to do something about it who knows what now we're introduced for the first time to undu the first of the stand users that stand between the group and Dio they decide to forego this scene where he kills a fly by launching a rock with a precise jab of his Cane they instead opt for a much subtler and more ominous introduction I'd say this is the first indication of the difference in tone between the two adaptations it's safe to say that when thinking of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure subtlety is not a word that generally comes to mind so even a relatively subdued Villain Like andul is of course introduced with a flashy show of prowess in the original and of course the 2015 anime adapts it almost panel for panel but this version has much more of a penchant for mystery and suspense so the creators pull back a bit on that ostentatious impulse leaving the first villain of the series shrouded more in mystery the David production version is obviously more accurate to the source material but does that make it inherently better I'm not totally sure there are plenty of adaptations that stray from their Source material and are still just as if not greater than their Originals Stanley Kubrick's The Shining comes to mind which is famously wildly different from Stephen King's novel but still a classic anyway before long team JoJo discovers the Speedwagon Foundation helicopter crashed and the pilot dead having been attacked by water they've added this shot of churo walking toward the wreckage one thing that the 1993 version is great at is making jodo look like an absolute badass I love the more realistic take on this motion and the Dynamics of the cloth and the sand Rippling in the wind plus the heat Distortion Ripple effects add a lot to the atmosphere of the setting and make it really feel like we're in the Sahara while the 2015 version basically takes the manga panels and puts them on the screen the 1993 version often treats the subject of each shot as if it's being filmed in live action with a real camera and this is something that we'll come back to again during the final fight with Dio at the end I will say though for a miniseries that's trying to cover the same ground as 82 chapters of manga in just 6 30 minute episodes they sure do love these long lingering shots they don't seem to be in too much of a hurry Nel's stand reveals its true form when the water from inside the canteen takes the form of a hand I love the choice to add these big echoey metal creaking sounds as the camera pushes in towards the mouth of the canteen it makes it feel like as the viewer gets closer to it the very object itself expands into something gargantuan and imposing and puts us in the mind of the Speedwagon goon the only one who knows that that's where the Killer is he's the killer the Killer is coming and now we arrive at the single greatest creative change made by these worldclass artists you see kaco tells pner to attack the canteen and when pner is rightfully indignant in the original he points at kacin and tells him to do it himself well in a stroke of genious creativity they've decided to take that hand rotate at 180° and switch the finger so that pner is now flipping kaco the weird little half finger bent bird I fully agree with this chain change no notes maybe this is a good time to mention that in this version most of the comedy is completely removed from every main character except pner who ends up taking even more of a comic relief character role oh Jesus wow okay good to know that was the last thing kakyoin saw before getting his eyes clawed out kako got Kakak and they also for some reason decided to make the water turn into a boo blady for a second he's going to lose after a completely unnecessary added action scene where pner fights the stand in the back of their speeding truck and Joseph notices that UL has punctured the truck's radiator by looking at the 10 gauge we get to one of the best scenes added in this adaptation at the start of oh also I forgot to mention that 4minute long ceremonial sacrifice sequence at the start I really hope this isn't the last time I get to see this yeah that's actually the intro for every single episode but this time it's set to a very funky beat that makes you just want to shake it like it's 1993 at the start of episode 2/9 and upon crashing in the truck just like in the original the protagonists attempt to stay quiet but IND duel reveals that that won't save them he's already memorized where everything landed what follows is an extremely SU suspenseful scene that's structured more like a horror movie than an action show and uses techniques from liveaction film making to heighten the tension I want to break down this scene and what makes it so great then we'll pick up the pace a little bit the episode opens on an inverted shot of the sun based on the Deep rumbling sound that accompanies it I think this may be here to represent ul's perception of the world as a blind man with heightened hearing but I'm honestly not 100% sure let me know what you think a series of lingering long shots that mimic the characters looking where around the scene are interspersed with close-ups of the types of things that your idle mind only starts to notice when all the overwhelming stimulus is Stripped Away including a shot of a scorpion I don't know if this is a deliberate reference or not but certain types of sand scorpions actually hunt by using tiny little hairs on their legs that act as vibration sensors allowing them to detect the slightest Tremors in the sand from the movement of their prey instead of using sight or smell this shot acts as a visual metaphor introduces us to the scene where indul uses his own vibration sensing abilities to hunt down the crew without sight these long lingering pans across the desert and the repeated use of cross- dissolve transitions further emphasize the passage of time and build suspense of course pner has Tik Tock brain though so he can't sit still for more than 30 seconds from the start of this episode we've averaged a cut only every 6.6 seconds then as that initial tension comes to a head and Bubbles over there are suddenly two cuts cut in a whip pan in the space of a single second the scene cuts to Joto's reaction but then almost instantly Cuts again to a wider version of the same shot before panning to avdal the use of that whip pan instead of just another simple cut makes this moment feel even more frenetic things calm down a bit while the group debates what to do through hushed Whispers but it isn't long before the silence is violently broken by a pillar of water that erupts from the ground destroying one of the cargo crates in the distance after the sudden disruption the scene falls back into silence but a few seconds later it happens again but a little bit closer this time now the scene is punctuated at regular intervals by these sudden bursts of destructive force and the characters begin to realize not only that indu is playing a methodical game of Battleship from somewhere else in the desert narrowing down the handful of impacts that he felt to figure out which ones were the cargo and which ones were the people but also that he's making his way toward the Box on which pner is precariously perched as the tension builds it's cut with a little bit of classic JoJo comedy and again notice the use of the whip pan here which is motivated by P's gaze director hiroyuki kitako is using film language to put you into the head of the characters and increase the suspense finally pner jumps at the last sa monster in the house a term popularized by Blake Snyder in his screenwriting book save the cat is is an extremely pervasive type of Horror Story characterized by a character or set of characters trapped in a confined area with a monster of some kind alien is a monster in the House movie so are psycho and the birds so are Godzilla arguably and Jurassic Park and so is this scene in this case the monster is nul stand a supernatural creature that's able to Traverse the terrain invisibly and the house is the desert without the functioning truck the characters are stranded with no escape and no option other than to outwit and defeat the monster this legendary scene from Jurassic Park builds tension in a very similar way initially all is quiet in fact notice just how unrealistically quiet it is even though we're in a metal box in the middle of a rainstorm then a sound interrupts the silence and alerts the characters the characters gradually realize that a monster which can only sense them if they move is making its way toward them and it's only a matter of time before it reaches them through hushed Whispers they hurriedly struggle to figure out what to do while trying not to draw the monster's attention the tension is temporarily broken by a Moment of levity when you got to go you got to go right before the monster finally arrives and the characters are forced to act and if pner is the kids adal's scheme to create fake footsteps with his bracelet thingies are Ian Malcolm's distraction with the flare it may seem insane to be adding new material to the 82 chapters that you're already trying to adapt in just six episodes and that's because it is it is insane but this scene is a master class in suspense and really Builds on what's already there in the original Juro realizes that Iggy is able to sense and duel and his stand and runs back to where Iggy jumped off the truck everything from here on is pretty much identical between the two versions but I will point out that because of the extra scene they added on the moving truck I can only conclude that joto has to run like a mile in the sand to get back to Iggy as opposed to the mere 20 or so feet otherwise I am truly astonished by the way each creative departure from the manga seems to alternate between masterful uses of film language to add atmosphere and suspense and slap Dash changes made at random just for the sake of changing things after jodo and Iggy defeat indul and andul punctures a hole through his own brain then gives a full 3 minute long monologue about Dio and his cult yes I measured that it is 3 minutes the end of the episode strikes a more Melancholy note with joto lamenting that perhaps if they had met earlier they could have on the same side interestingly andul still mentions the nine Egyptian gods of prosperity that represent the nine Elite stand users that will stand between them and Dia with only four episodes left I'm not sure if we're going to be able to fit all nine in there guys oh well I guess we'll just have to wait and see I have some terrible news in our haste we must skip over most of the fun and games section of the narrative which means sadly no Oingo and Boingo and no Mariah also no Anubis which I had entirely forgotten about and thankfully no [Music] alessie just like that the crew has arrived in Cairo and are looking for the building that appeared in Joseph's Spirit photo or psychography as they call it which is honestly a pretty cool name his what you say because we skipped the scene where he actually takes the photo and the scene where the power is explained takes place before the OVA even started and you've only ever seen Joseph use hermit purple as a dollar store Spider-Man web shooter well surprise it also does other stuff you know what it doesn't really make any sense in the first place let's just move [Music] on okay I'm starting to realize that while this Incarnation excels at tense Thriller type moments it balances it out with its dialogue scenes because what follows is the most lifeless possible 3 minutes of conversation with Darby The Gambler imaginable complete with full-on third trimester pregnant pauses between each line of dialogue and a glaring lack of any sort of Music cues or anything ain't this information worth something to you ah right you are my apologies and here's 10 lb well except for the Pokemon battle sting when they first notice him and this is supposed to be the Intriguing introduction to this mysterious character that builds up to the reveal that surprise he is indeed another stand user let's play for something more interesting your soul whatever Darby The Gambler defeats pner and Joseph by cheating in classic games of Cat jerky and coin whiskey respectively and his stand Osiris captures their souls forcing joto to challenge him to a game of poker the appapo version skips over some Superfluous explanations of things like the security seal on a deck of cards second dealing and the rules to Poker as well as this display of expert fingersmith as Darby had just shown his skill at slight of hand with the chocolate on the bottom of the whiskey glass but while the subtlety and restraint enhanced the suspense in the indel fight this scene which is at its core just two characters sitting at a table and playing cards benefits greatly from David Productions completely over-the-top approach to music and sound design and the hilariously overblown voice performances Darby continues to cheat but to little effect because in a stunning show of confidence jotoro goes all in with not only his own soul but also the souls of avdal and kakyoin who's away in a hospital somewhere he Bluffs by showing his unparalleled speed with star Platinum using it to light a cigarette then fetch a drink all in the blink of an eye when Darby begins to wonder if jotoro would be able to use that speed to switch out all five cards without him noticing jro bets the soul of his own mother and pressures Darby to promise to reveal the secret of do's stand if he loses this pushes Darby over the edge and reduces him to a sniveling wretch unable to call Joto's Bluff and just like that the 1993 version is back in the competition as Darby loses his cool we switch from telephoto to wide angle shots and for the first time we get a low angle shot of jotoro where the simulated camera is essentially embedded into the surface of the table making him look like a massive statue towering over Darby this guy is a high schooler by the way finally Juro is the one in control of the scene and the cinematography emphasizes that in true 9s OVA style the animation here suddenly gets incredible Dynamic and really accentuates the sweat pouring down Darby's face far beyond the usual cartoonish little drop that was weird uh instead of cutting quickly between several different angles that are mostly just single drawings like the 2015 version We again follow classical film making traditions and hold on an extreme closeup of his face The Passion of Jon of Arc is a French silent film from 1928 by Danish director Carl Theodore dryer which follows the historical accounts of jonov AR's trial and eventual execution after being captured by English loyalists toward the end of the Hundred Years War it's renowned as a landmark of Cinema for the legendary performance from actress Renee Jean falconetti who never acted in another film before or since and for its revolutionary AR use of the close-up shot being an art form that evolved directly from stage plays early film was mostly made up of long shots while filmmakers started using close-up shots in the early 20th century they mostly served as insert shots to give more information about or to emphasize an object The Passion of Joon of Arc however was composed almost entirely of close-up shots that focused unwaveringly on falconetti's face and forced the audience to feel the anguish displayed on it but as alif akali writes at least I hope I got close with the pronunciation this use does not simply emphasize the sorrow and pain of the protagonist but it also functions as a metaphor in the narrative especially in the long trial scene Joan is isolated trapped judged and put on display she is alone against others at all times okay I don't know what happened there my silly little anime video almost just got eaten by some sort of academic hogwash uh anyway we hold on an extreme closeup of his face and let the audience sit with the anguish displayed on it where he was previously in control at all times now Darby is isolated trapped judged and put on display I also really love this interpretation of the scene where David production takes this panel and renders it in a completely different art style making it look like Darby's soul is leaving his own body turning him literally as white as a sheet and this is just way funnier Darby is completely unable to tell them anything about Dio including the location of the Mansion the central question at the start of the episode here though he does tell them the location so they can skip over the next 31 chapters and get straight to it weirdly I think this actually makes the episode better this way the episode starts on a goal a piece of information that the gang is searching for and by the end of it they've struggled and overcome an obstacle and achieved that goal in the original plot this ends up basically being a complete waste of time this video is brought to you by this guy and my newly created patreon page which I'm launching along with this video like I mentioned at the start this video has been re-edited and censored for YouTube so if you want to watch the full original version that's where it is it starts at just $3 a month and you get your name and the credits at the end of my videos plus behind the scenes updates occasional Q&A videos and a bunch more perks which you can find out more about at the link in the description and if you spring for a higher tier you can get one of these little holographic acrylic John keychains he's beautiful he's holographic he's exclusive also I might think about making a Discord server at some point I don't know and guess what you can scam me by signing up for 1 month and immediately canceling I'm so desperate for validation that I literally do not care I'm begging to be scammed people somebody come scam me please but seriously it's been so fun to build this Channel and to interact with y'all so just being here watching commenting is amazing thank you so much I've been working pretty much full-time on this channel for a little while now and there's only so long that I can do that before I starve to death but I'm actually right on the cusp of reaching the point point where I can at least barely pay my monthly bills which is a point I never really thought I'd be able to reach so if you do have a few extra bucks laying around and choose to use them to help support the channel and give me the privilege of being able to keep making these videos for the foreseeable future thank you so much now back to the video and just like that here we are at Do's Mansion skipping over Whole Horse Boingo again and Pet Shop that means Iggy is still with the group and still has the standard number of legs that dogs tend to have have and you may have noticed and I told you we'd come back to this that in the manga Iggy now looks like a medieval painting of a dog before they figured out how to draw anything other than people he has a new slick simpler character design and essentially a human face plastered onto a dog's body he looks like an uncanny valley creature that could only come from taking a dog and a human child and using some sort of alchemical process to combine them into one being oh God no what have I C personally I think adaki just changed his mind about the character but you could read this charitably as a change in the way that the other characters view igy particularly after his battle with pet shop they finally view him as more of an equal and not just an annoying nasty little dog and this is backed up as a theme for him as a character by this moment with vanilla ice this seems to be the interpretation that the 2015 version goes with because faithful as ever they also redesigned ay here they could have easily just used this design the whole way through the 1993 version however keeps him just the way he was instead of another stand user who happens to be a dog this feels more like a dog who happens to be a stand user and this is totally subjective but I just find that Dynamic a bit funnier and more interesting also this version just creeps me out somehow even more than the original well either way we don't have to deal with it for much longer oh sorry spoilers so the crew enter the mansion skip over Darby the gamer gamer dudes and do that oh z a basb and Kenny G who I completely forgot about until rewatching both versions and head straight for Dio's room where they encountered Dio and Vanilla Ice no faffing about oh holy [ __ ] he's all legs looks like that pink guy for Monsters Inc and here we encounter one of the biggest flaws in the APPA version Dio's voice no hate to the late no Tanaka or anything but after hearing the 2015 version takahito kaasu is di this guy doesn't sound like he's going to take over the Earth at best he'll cut in front of you in line at the DMV things in this section get a little jumbled up with Vanilla Ice's self decapitation and Resurrection happening right in front of them as an overt show of power and Dio's stair based Tom Foolery happening right here as well to joto instead of pner and and shockingly afdal takes the vampire henchman's place in the coffin and is killed by Vanilla Ice right here which kicks off pner and Iggy's severely a bridged battle against Vanilla Ice unfortunately one casualty of this fight being jammed into one episode instead of three is this incredibly tense scene where pner and Iggy lie heavily injured in the center of a large room while Vanilla Ice unwilling to poke his head out of his pocket Dimension to see where they are spirals around the room like a needle on a record player destroying everything in his path and gradually closing in on the two of them remember the OVA original scene from the second episode that I compared to Jurassic Park well this scene is a perfect reflection of that one the invisible monster is unsure of Our Hero's exact location and is using a process of elimination to find them just like last time pner has a little time to think but not much and there's a clear visual indication of how little time is left the difference is this time avall isn't there to save him with a diversion with avdal dead pner has to not only step out of his shadow and find a way to outsmart Vanilla Ice and not let avdol's death be in vain but to do it he also has to work together with Iggy who was originally his sworn enemy these two scenes work so well as capstones on either end of P's character Arc that I'm personally hurt that they don't both exist in one single version of the series avall and Iggy's deaths end up being very sudden both happening within this one episode and on the one hand this makes them all the more shocking and helps further emphasize how much more dangerous Di's Mansion is than anywhere they've been so far I mean they walk in and just like that two main characters are dead on the other hand their deaths do end up feeling very rushed with aball suddenly blurting out this little monologue that just screams I'm about to die the battle we are about to begin no matter what the outcome I have no regrets I am here because I want no regrets right before opening the coffin the only way it could have been more telegraphed is if he had handed pner one of his wrist thingies and said in case I don't make it out of here give this to my wife back home and pner replied you can give it to her yourself and Iggy instead of heroically and intentionally giving his life to save pner just kind of gets surprise merked meanwhile since jotoro got yeed through a wall Joseph is now alone with Dio who just revealed that he needs Joseph's blood to fully control the body of his grandfather Jonathan joar which he's currently inhabiting luckily kakyo makes his triumphant return to rescue Joseph in the manga he had reappeared at the entrance to the mansion but I think this change works it means he gets even less screen time than the already pathetic amount he would have had but who doesn't love a dramatic return right at a critical moment okay now this is the whole reason we're here in the first place Satoshi Kon was a highly renowned animator manga artist and film director best known for masterpieces like perfect blue paprika Millennium actress and Paranoia Agent his work is highly recognizable for its themes and style style and tends to be characterized by the mixture of fiction and reality explorations of the unreliability of human perception and a fascination with Cinema and the entertainment industry in general he often crafted mind-bending psychological thrillers that look inward at the subject of interior Human Experience rather than taking an objective external View and depicted incredibly surreal subject matter through a realistic lens while in college in 1984 con self-published his first short manga Torico and quickly gained the attention of none other than katsuhiro otomo the creator of Akira and was hired as an assistant artist for the manga in 1991 he got his first animation work as a key animator and background designer for roin z a film about a robot hospital bed that decides to turn into a giant apparatus of Destruction which was written by otomo directed by hiroyuki kitako who spoiler alert also directed the next and final episode of the series and produced by Studio apapa he worked on one more movie in a similar capacity before landing his first ever directing credit episode 5/12 of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure which happens to also be the one that is this one that we're looking at right now being a loud and over-the-top action comedy JoJo is just about as far as you could get from the type of thoughtful and mind-bending but grounded psychological thrillers that would later Define con's style but with so-called URS or artists with a clear overarching Creative Vision you can often find traces of that style even in their early work and this episode is no different in fact I think the best example comes right at the start of the episode when Dio carjacks an American Senator and forces him to drive so that he can catch up to Joseph and kaco when the senator tries to escape the car Deo uses his power the world to as we later find out stop time and reposition him to the other side of the car so that he ends up diving right back into it in this shot the senator climbs out of the driver's side of the car and in one seamless tracking shot runs across the road and stumbles right back in through the passenger side door whereas the David production version uses a simple jump cut to portray this moment Satoshi con makes it way more psychedelic by turning it into a single continuous shot there is no break in the Senator's perception and in his panicked State he either doesn't notice or just can't comprehend the sudden change in his surroundings and only realizes what has happened after he's back in the car and con further puts us inside the Senator's Mind by Framing the the shot is a claustrophobic telephoto closeup where the camera is pinned to his motion it's worth mentioning that this can also be attributed in part to the older cartoony animation style that would more frequently place a moving character in the center of the frame while only the background moves behind them this can also be seen in the previous episode when joto gets blasted out of the Tower and when kakyoin zip lines in to save Joseph bone uses this technique not out of necessity but for expressionism Dio's power isn't just terrifying and Godlike because because it's powerful but because it's incomprehensible half the battle is just figuring out what he's even doing so by depicting the subjective inner experience of one of his victims in a very Satoshi con Way the show makes it apparent why we should be afraid and playing with that space and time in unexpected ways as well within his wheelhouse as always where the 2015 version excels is the comedic vocal performance meanwhile joto wraps up some casual broken ribs and says this I guess you're badass enough to be my opponent all right excuse me what badass enough Dio and the senator follow Joseph and kaco in a chase scene that's much more gruesome and which spends much more time focusing on crowd shots and innocent bystanders take a look at this added insert shot of a little girl looking up at the 70-year-old man flying across the rooftops like a goddamn spider monkey I'm not sure what it is about this shot that screams Satoshi Khan to me maybe just the design of the girl's face or again the emphasis on the personal subjective experience of a normal person violence toward innocent bystanders is certainly present in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure but it's rarely emphasized or taken very seriously to keep the adventure fun and bizarre but it certainly is emphasized here with all these crowd shots that bring a completely new level of danger to this conflict and this is only further accentuated by the sheer level of Animation quality and detail attributed to them I mean these shots look incredible they're present in the newer version too but there are far fewer of them and they're generally just still images damn even this guy's got them beefy ass robot shoulders oh also they added a train so that's cool after a game of catch with the senator and I mean with as in using not accompanied by Dio continues to chase Joseph while kakyoin sets up an ambush and oh Joseph has like a 30t vertical leap now I guess I get the do can fly but I thought Joseph had to use his Vines to swing around eh it's fine now it's David Productions turn to make a departure from The Source material Dio uses the power of the world to stop time evade kakyoin's Ambush and kill him all in an instant with the last moments of his life kako figures out the secret to the world's power and uses his last ounce of energy to send a message to Joseph by destroying a clock tower and in a sense stopping time in the manga and the 1993 version this is the moment where we finally get to see Dio's power from his perspective but the 2015 version holds out just a little bit longer only showing the instant that kakoy is suddenly hurdling through the air with a massive hole through his chest they allow you to figure out Dio's power along with kakyoin and Joseph only to come back and show that scene again from Dio's perspective once Joseph has figured out the secret this makes the reveal that much more dramatic an actual creative change from David production good an and thus concludes our total 10 minutes and 24 seconds of screen time for kaco out of a total 3 hours and I'm counting this as screen time and almost a minute of it is just this Justice for caco the 2015 version is unparalleled in terms of hype but aapa once again uses restraint to its Advantage instead of getting louder when di stops time the music and sound effects swell to a Crescendo before fading away entirely leaving behind complete silence the world that combined with this cool metallic muffling effect die kakin evokes the fact that if time were truly stopped there would be no sound whatsoever maybe now is a good time to mention that the sound design is actually done by Skywalker sound where the other version is reminiscent of a loud intimidating Roar this is the calm unsettling Whisper of quiet confidence though I do think this could have worked even better if the music was a little bit louder in the first place everything from here is basically the same though Joseph puts up a little bit more of a fight perhaps to make up for the fact that most of his scenes earlier in the series have been [Applause] cut so you know noticed my wave energy Shield huh and your life has come to an end oh that's too bad but look at the way they've animated this blood splatter while David uses these cartoonish blood splatters that almost look like they've been animated separately and just pasted on top of Joseph here and by the way I'm not saying that cartoonishness is bad just that these two interpretations are taking the source material in very different directions Satoshi Kon and the crew at apapa take a more realistic approach and really focus on the volume and phys of the blood spurting erratically onto the floor certainly making extensive use of reference footage I think I see some influence from films like psycho in the way that con adds this insert shot of the blood pooling on the ground and while the colors in the more recent version are almost always more Vivid than those of its predecessor here the red of the blood is the brightest color in the scene and here it's actually quite muted all this is to say that the 2015 version strikes a cartoonish tone and deemphasizes the blood so as not to distract from the hype train that is jotoro though in my opinion Joseph's death here is not treated with the same level of importance as the other characters particularly with him being a former protagonist which clearly telegraphs that he's going to come back to life and undercuts the scene a bit incredible animation quality aside Satoshi con instead emphasizes the blood and the general horrific of this scene right down to this shot of Joseph writhing around on the ground in an uncannily realistic way this may feel a bit too dark to allow the viewer to go right back into hype mode the very next second but as the the ultimate buildup to the true final battle of the series joto versus Dio this moment should be shocking and make the audience feel as upset as jotoro is here tragically neither adaptation recreates this iconic [Music] panel oh are you coming for me yeah got to get closer to mess you up the 1993 version skips right over Joto's game of 5D chess where he uses a magnet to trick Dio into thinking that he's tricking Dio into thinking that he can move while time is stopped but actually he can't but actually he can instead they treat it like Star Platinum has been moving on its own to protect joto without his conscious effort this whole time which was actually set up the first time Dio punched him two episodes ago it's not a terrible way to condense this section of the fight but this trick within a trick is some classic JoJo [ __ ] and it's really a shame to skip over it particularly if you're going to have jro say this this is bad he's able to move for 5 seconds before it took everything I had to move for just an instant when just seconds earlier he also said this without any conscious effort star Platinum has been protecting me all along well which is it did it take everything you had or no conscious effort at all floran over amazing animation analysis already did a really great breakdown of this shot so if you want to watch that I'll link link it here and up in the description down in the description Jump Ahead a bit and you'll find joto lying on the ground and playing dead after narrowly surviving a Fus salot of knives by packing magazines under his clothes wait why is his shirt orange wasn't it red just a second ago I think we've got a die hard situation on our hands fellas the scene is condensed a bit with Dio only attempting to decapitate Juro with a street sign once instead of twice and P's heroic return coinciding directly with jro's surprise attack okay now now we've got a DI hard situation and let us return one more to a familiar refrain say it with me everyone production music at all Studio to sit in complete like that's right good job everyone in the 2015 version this punch is split up into 1 2 3 4 five separate shots filled with speed lines and effects and the actual impact is completely obscured by this cloud of debris over here it's only three shots and is way simpler in terms of effects without the over-the-top debris animations you're able to see Dio Smash Head first into this pickup truck and go spinning into the steps in the background much more clearly this shot is framed and presented simply and realistically as if someone really went out onto the street and set up a camera on a tripod to film it and I think that really humanizes di In This Moment jro has managed to graze him once or twice but this is the first time that we've seen anyone actually get the better of Di and he suddenly doesn't seem to have this Godly Aura to him anymore finally the two of them are on equal footing watching these two scenes side by side I will say that this version feels a little bit underwhelming and maybe there's a happy medium somewhere with a little bit of crunch to the stairs and some camera shake with the impact but I don't think there's any moment in the 2015 version where the animators show such incredible understanding of a 3D form as this handful of frames of Dio kening through the air like a ragd doll I don't think this next shot was intended to be as funny as it is does this street look familiar to you or being the tourist that you are do all streets look the same it's fitting it's fitting well after another astonishingly gruesome added scene and some incredible action [Music] animation it feels great sink straight to the bottom J whoa [ __ ] put those things away this is a familyfriendly channel Dio stops time one final time and of course we need one final completely arbitrary change so the becomes an oil tanker for you well I guess not completely arbitrary it was the '90s so we needed a big fiery explosion for the climax okay now we've got to die after six long episodes Four villains and the adventure of a lifetime it all comes down to this as it turns out aljo needs to become the strongest stand user in the entire world is to get really really pissed off [Music] off I'm the one who froze time forgotten relics has already done a great breakdown of this cut plus I think I've done enough analysis at this point that you already know exactly what I'm going to say now that's how you end a series well we've done it Stardust Crusaders is a bit of a mystery wrapped in an enigma it's a transitional section that straddles the line between the manly campy action adventure of Parts 1 and two and the more focused twinkish sitcom elements of the later series and it really drags in the middle and seems completely unsure of what to do with kaco and Iggy throughout still what it lacks in structure and focus it makes up in wacky Antics and sheer intoxicating flamboyant grandiosity while neither out of adaptation is perfect looking at the two side by side gives a great view of how a strong Creative Vision is like this Ramen candle I had to drive across state lines to buy just for this joke even if you point it in the wrong direction you're still going to end up with something Unforgettable the 2015 David production adaptation takes a safe route by taking basically every panel of the manga putting it to Bright and stylized if a little stiff animation and coating it all in a thick gooey layer of pure weapons grade Auto at height and how could that be wrong on the other hand this OVA May sort of Miss the point of what we were all here for in the first place taking this goofy bombastic story grounding it in reality and turning it into essentially an action thriller but as its own individual piece of art it's actually pretty good in a completely different way and at times I would say even better while each individual drawing looks a bit dated and less detailed the animation is in general actually more fluid with more motion and in between frames and a much better understanding of 3D space and the directors particularly Satoshi con often draw on classic film language and conventions to create a ton of moments that are legitimately chilling that said treated as a completely separate piece of art it's also fundamentally unwatchable it drops you into the middle of a story gives you almost none of the character backstories or motivations or even much of the plot and expects you to either already know what's going on or just go with the flow remember back at the beginning when indel made a point of mentioning the N9 Egyptian gods represented by nine Elite stand users how many of them do you think we got to meet two including himself the only other one was Darby The Gambler now why would you not just remove that line if you know you don't have time to cover even a quarter of them so I'm not really sure where that leaves us but I think in a way a paradox of an adaptation is fitting for such a paradox of a story it's clear to see that there were some really passionate and creative people working on this show even if the fundamental decisions at the core of its creation are confusing bafflingly senseless one might even say bizarre but that's why yeah then the video is going to Loop like a Tik Tok so it Loops back around too and that's why the original JoJo anime is a perplexing cinematic Masterpiece and then that just Loops for 10 hours and I just Farm watch time baby oh [ __ ] is this still recording if you want to go watch the OVA I'd really recommend it even after this video I've covered a lot of it but believe me there's still a ton of stuff if I cut or just skipped over entirely okay seriously if you've made it this far thank you so much for watching if you want to support me doing things like spending a good chunk of my day counting the seconds that kaco is on screen feel free to drop a like subscribe hit the bell all that YouTube stuff this is a bit of an experiment with a completely different type of video than I've done before and I put a boatload of time into it so it really means a lot to me

Channel: Swamp Jawn

Views: 48,254

Keywords: Swamp Jawn, Swamp John, Swamp Jon, Anime, Manga, analysis, breakdown, review, recommendation, animation, video essay, jojo, jojo's bizarre adventure, ジョジョの奇妙な冒険, jojo no kimyou na bouken, 90's, OVA, old anime, best anime, 1993, part 3, stardust crusaders, satoshi kon, animes, underrated anime, best old anime

Id: e22LR1leCJI

Length: 52min 19sec (3139 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 19 2024