You Should Skip Jojo Parts (If You Want To)

a year and a half ago i released a video called anime cheat sheet where i gave a jokey summary of the first four parts of jojo as a primer for the then newly released part 5. the video was mainly intended to make existing fans of the series laugh but i presented it as a way for newbies to get up to speed on the basics so they could watch the new stuff weekly and in response to that a certain segment of the jojo fanbase accounting for about 25 percent of folks who rated the video and maybe two or three percent of its total viewers lost its goddamn mind you can't be around the jojo fandom without at least being aware of the never skip parts meme but i realized in that moment how deadly serious some of the fans are about it and for a long time i felt really bad about how i made that video i do think it's okay to start jojo at whatever part you want but by choosing to introduce it as a thing to help new viewers do that instead of say a refresher for existing fans i'd inadvertently created this rage inducing 45 second barrier that was stopping the people who'd probably enjoy the jokes i was making most from getting into the video at all but then about a week ago when those give a take that'll get your blank card taken away tweets were doing the rounds and the jojo one popped up i decided to say it's still okay to skip to a part that interests you after reading some to be clear not all of the responses to that tweet i stopped regretting the intro to that video i realized that what i'd actually done was taken a bunch of objectively hilarious joe jokes and with just a few words of framing rendered them completely inaccessible to the kind of jojo fans who say other people don't deserve to enjoy the series at all if they don't watch or read it the right way and there's something poetic about that i don't like gatekeepers in my opinion which is also a fact the only people who really aren't real fans of things are the ones who actively try to get in the way of other people enjoying those things on their own terms because those people no longer want what's best for the thing they like or its creator which is exposure support and healthy evolving fan discourse they just want to turn the space around it into their own unchanging personal comfort zone now of course not everyone who objects to skipping parts is like that some aggressive jojo fans maybe even most of them just want to make sure that people who get into jojo's bizarre adventure get the maximum possible enjoyment out of it i can definitely see where you guys are coming from i know i personally appreciated having a friend encourage me to stick through some of the rougher episodes to get to the good stuff when the anime first aired but not everyone's like me and you should be cautious that you're not amplifying the voices of the gatekeepers and that your encouragement doesn't just encourage people to skip the series altogether because i'm pretty sure all of us real jojo fans can agree that a life with some jojo in it is better than one with no jojo at all and i'd extend that sentiment to all of the anime and game and manga and film series i love that's why i'm making this video to make the case that it's totally valid to get into jojo or any other thing you think might interest you by jumping over the parts of it that are getting in your way trying out the bit that interests you most and if you like that enough going back to the other stuff later or not if you don't wanna and in some cases for some people that can even be the best way to get into a thing the first half of dragon ball only made it to air in north america several years after dragon ball z was already an international mega hit to american and canadian otaku my age and older the story of dragon ball began with an evil monkey alien intimidating a random hillbilly bullying a presumably less evil green alien than flying off to a tiny island to confront an orange guy with a flying cloud his brother it turns out while he was busy introducing his newborn son to a bunch of other people we didn't know then they flew off to fight over that baby near the monkey alien spaceship until the green alien came back to kill both of them and take the kid it was a confused jumble of a narrative introduction and if you were anything like six-year-old me it had you hooked regardless dbz's distinctive art style and intense brand of action needed no further introduction and the mystery of who all these people were and how they all knew each other only added to my desire to learn more about it and i didn't need to know much about them to grasp the essential elements of the weird monkey alien family drama that was unfolding before me or to understand the threat posed by the even more powerful monkey aliens who were coming to do an invasion and get the magic wishballs which are a thing apparently now and even though my young mind had no concept of what metal even was i understood intuitively that the tale of goku's journey through hell itself to get stronger and fight those big bad monkeys off was metal as [ __ ] without knowing any of the backstory my friends and i enjoyed the heck out of the entire saiyan and frieza sagas and when we finally did get dragon ball in canada it felt more like an oddly comedic prequel to z than a truly essential part of it while i personally enjoyed it immensely a lot of my dbz loving friends never liked or finished the original and given that they still followed z for nearly 300 episodes longer if they gave gt a shot made fan content around it and played a lot of the video games i'd still call them all hardcore dragon ball fans there's a reason nobody watched dragon ball as a meme in the show's fan community and there's a reason that dragon ball abridged was able to start in the middle of the story with nobody complaining about it this chaotic in-medius res introduction is just part of what dbz is within our pop cultural context now and considering how many people love dragon ball z considering the wild nigh unprecedented global success it's enjoyed and continues to enjoy and the sustained cultural impact it's had in north america in particular it's hard to argue that that was to the series or the fans detriment funimation banked on the idea that young americans would enjoy the series more if it just jumped right into the action and they were clearly right and that wasn't just some happy accident the whole reason that dragon ball has two big status quo altering time jumps built into it and the reason that it's broken up between those jumps into distinct sagas that focus on self-contained villains is to allow new readers and viewers to pick the series up in the middle without feeling totally lost out of necessity it was designed to be discovered out of sequence so is almost every tv show that's not a streaming original before the existence of streaming platforms that was just how you found new shows to watch you'd surf around until you saw something that could hold your attention enjoy the self-contained elements of that episode's storyline and then if you liked it you'd keep following the series trying to piece together whatever you missed until a re-run or marathon came along to help you get caught up shonen jump's entire business model is built around the idea that readers will buy the magazine to keep up to date with a series they already like from tv or bonds and then check out the other stories printed alongside it because hey they already own the whole thing and they may as well get their money's worth that's why they're always cycling in new series but it's also why every successful long-running shonen jump story is broken up into discreet arcs and sagas with self-contained plot lines and unique supporting casts these series need new readers to stay competitive and these arcs and their new characters give those readers a chance to enjoy a more digestible part of the story in the hopes that they'll eventually be hooked enough to go back and binge the rest or just keep going from there because again they're already buying the magazine for one piece or high q or whatever they may as well jojo takes especially great advantage of these principles the entire series is broken up into short digestible story arcs whose high concepts and underlying themes can be explored in at most a dozen or so chapters with closure coming in the form of a satisfying minor villain smackdown at the end of each one and these villain arcs build up to conclusive finales in the space of just a few years giving way each time to an effective series reboot with an entirely new cast central antagonist and storyline to follow for new readers to jump on the jojo hype train honestly it strikes me as pretty asinine that hardcore fans of jojo in particular are so insistent that people follow the one proper orthodox reading order when araki has gone out of his way to create so many different accessible jumping on points for new fans out of a cast of dozens only seven characters play significant roles in more than one part and three of those are split between phantom blood and battle tendency the long-term continuity of jojo only really becomes essential to plot comprehension in part six and arguably the very end of part three in the rest it's mainly lore fan service and non-essential character development and i do think understanding all of that can enrich your experience of each individual part but it's silly to argue that continuity is the core of what makes jojo good if it was araki never could have gotten away with rebooting the series in a parallel universe and also he probably wouldn't have wanted to do it in the first place that's the kind of thing writers do when they feel like continuity is bogging their stories down now of course in the age of the internet we no longer need to discover and experience stories in such an archaic inconvenient fashion nor do we need to worry about commercial breaks at least in theory in practice though i'm about to hit you with one today's anime analysis is brought to you by scigames and shadowverse their brilliant online collectible card game that features breathtaking anime style fantasy artwork deep strategic mechanics a surprisingly compelling fully voiced storyline and more waifus than you can shake a stick at even monster girls jeff especially monster girls with over 1500 cards and dozens of deck archetypes spread across eight different character classes with their own distinctive mechanics and themes shadowverse gives you incredible range to express yourself both strategically and aesthetically and you don't even need to pay a cent to start building your own unique deck it's a super generous free-to-play title with 50 booster packs up for grabs just for doing the tutorial and plenty more available through daily quests and other means now one of my favorite things about shadowverse is how the game lets me proudly fly my otaku flag through regular crossover events with anime old and new this month through the 30th they're running a code geass lelouch of the rebellion tie-in with a new quest mode that lets you take on tough computer opponents in order to win special code geass variant cards and characters from the anime available as playable leaders on the in-game shop so you can literally flex your strategic muscles while role-playing as xero himself what more could a weeb ask for in a card game click the link in the dooblydoo to start playing shadowverse free today and get in on that event while the getting's good anyway with the exception of ad breaks the internet has made media in general a lot easier to enjoy in its purest form we can access almost any piece of narrative art that exists in release order on our own time but that doesn't necessarily make it invalid to break sequence and it certainly doesn't mean that the pilot episode or chapter of a story will always be the best introduction to it with tv shows manga any kind of serialized narrative really the artists making them are figuring out what their story should be and how to tell it as they're telling it few series are totally planned out in advance and even when they are even in the case of things like one piece plans change new better ideas arise it can take a while for a series to really hit its stride and sometimes you'll get your best impression by jumping forward to a great standalone part then going back to experience the build-up to it now it's important to be aware that not all episodes or ostensibly self-contained story arcs are created equal and not all of them make for good jumping on points some of the very best parts of serialized narratives are moments that build heavily on what's come before and simply jumping into a series at its best rated episode may not actually allow it to put its best foot forward a while back the verge published an article about avatar the last airbender that got widely dunked on advising that people put off by the series tonally wonky introduction skip forward to one of its better standalone episodes to see for themselves how great it really gets the one they chose to highlight was season 2 episode 7 zuko alone and i can see why someone might think it's a good intro to the series on paper it is one of the best written episodes and because zuko is you know alone in it familiarity with the show's cast isn't required to understand the bulk of its story the problem in practice is that the heart of that story is the apex of a character arc that the series has been building toward for 27 straight episodes you can certainly appreciate the things that are good about the episode out of context but the things that make it great will be utterly incomprehensible to anyone who's not familiar with zuko and iro's journey to that point or their complicated relationship with the gang that's a gang with two a's by the way a pun that makes about as much sense outside of text as zuko alone does out of context considering that the question of who zuko will become under his uncle's influence is a big part of what makes them both interesting villains in the first season you could even argue that starting there might harm your viewing experience overall it certainly has the potential to blunt the impact of episodes like the storm and the blue spirit but that said i do know some people anime fans who have been turned off by avatar in its first episode so i do see the value in the idea behind the article and i would instead suggest that such folks dip their toes in with the series first two-parter winter solstice starting at episode 7 this mini arc comes early enough in the series that it doesn't really work from or spoil any major moments of character growth it also serves as an introduction to a major part of avatar's setting the spirit world and that takes up a lot of the episodes so you don't really need the context of six prior episodes worth of world building to get it it highlights what each member of team avatar brings to the table pretty well and the b plot with zuko and iro lets you get to know them as individuals before they're thrown into conflict with aang in the second part of the storyline that second part for its part gives the main cast even more chances to shine does a lot to establish the fascistic rot that has infested even the most sacred corners of the fire nation while showing us that there are still good people resisting it there and demonstrates how satisfying the series non-episodic narrative payoffs can really be is that how i'd want to watch avatar for the first time no but for someone who's seen a bit of the pilot and thinks it's peculiar blend of anime action and nicktoons goop humor just isn't for them winter solstice offers a chance to glimpse just how good the series gets without really spoiling anything that comes before or after it and if that's what it takes to get someone to watch one of the best shows ever it's totally worth sacrificing the theoretical ideal that they were never going to experience and even then in a lot of cases it is kind of presumptive to just assume that the release order is the ideal way to experience a story sure in the case of avatar which follows the same cast of characters as they develop progressively while working toward a singular goal watching every episode in order except the great divide makes a lot of sense but sometimes a non-linear narrative can be more satisfying in its own way and sometimes the linear path is kind of covered in broken glass for the first 20 feet or so and you really just want to go around it okay this is a very brave and controversial take that no jojo fans ever heard before but phantom blood isn't the best actually it's weirdly paced fully half of its cast is entirely forgettable like nobody would remember dire without straights and we only remember him because of part two and while its action is certainly bizarre it's not particularly cool or dramatically satisfying outside the two fights with dio and maybe that one bit where jack the ripper pops out of a horse araki was still figuring out what the series should be as he wrote it and while it gets good toward the end it shows the anime does tweak some of those problems and fix the parts ugly fist of the north star clone artwork but still if i didn't have a jojo fanatic friend telling me as every episode aired yeah it's rough but stick with it trust me it gets good honestly i probably would have dropped it around episode five or six don't get me wrong phantom blood has its good points those do fights are legendary his childhood feud with jojo is fun if a bit slow and if you dig the gothic horror aesthetic it immediately gains two bonus points but the space between those great moments is wide and rough and it's still a pretty off-putting introduction to the series overall i know more than one person who bounced off phantom blood even with encouragement and only came to love jojo after checking out stardust crusaders frankly unless you're a big gothic horror nerd i think you'll get a better first impression starting with any other part and the manga's own history kind of validates that position from what i can gather jojo languished in relative obscurity within the pages of shonen jump until parts 3 and 4 drew in new readership with the more unique battle concept of stance having japanese protagonists in a modern setting probably didn't hurt either people tend to like things that are like things they already like they're more likely to relate to characters who share common points of reference with them too and across eight parts jojo has the potential to leverage those principles to draw in a wide and eclectic range of people fans of gangster movies twin peaks indiana jones and junji ito manga but if you want to draw those people into the fandom you gotta let them gravitate toward what they like most first because if they do then jojo will become a thing they already like and they'll be more likely to check out and appreciate what's good about the other parts that they might otherwise never have watched or read i no longer regret how i started that anime cheat sheet video but i do regret that i didn't end it by calling on viewers to watch and read the rest of jojo if they like part 5. i figured they would unlike some of the people who got mad at that video i don't think anyone's dumb enough to honestly see 24 minutes of jokes as a suitable substitute for over 40 hours of television but i still wish i'd hedged that bet because i do think that everyone who's interested in jojo will get the most out of it if they watch and read every part of it barring there being some aspect of a part that they just can't tolerate like that one nazi who's a main character in part two i know that's off-putting to a lot of people i just don't think they need to do it in order jojo's parts are designed to work as standalone stories and while you will miss the context for some plot elements or character moments in any given part that you watch before its predecessors that context is never crucial to enjoying the main storyline or to understanding the current cast of characters except recurring ones of course but besides joseph in part 3 they always take on supporting roles anyway there's even some potential fun to be had in discovering connections between the parts out of sequence and i think there are some cases where not knowing certain things about past parts can even enhance the power of later story elements which is why inspired by the now famous machete order for star wars i've come up with my own basement order for jojo i'll give that to you now so that anyone who's watching this and wants to try jojo out this way can stop the video and do so without being spoiled then i'll explain why i made the choices i did for the basement order you start with part 4 diamond is unbreakable then watch part 2 battle tendency which starts at episode 10 of season one after that you jump to part five golden wind followed by the first season of part three stardust crusaders and after episode 24 of that you finally hop back to watch part one phantom blood and cap the anime off with the battle in egypt arc of part three then you can read part six of the manga stone ocean seven and eight are in their own continuity so you can worry about those separately but you really should read them because they are the best parts of jojo hands down now here's the rationale for why i put the parts in this order the story of jojo is a story of long-standing family legacy but that legacy is fractured by tragic circumstance by familial estrangement and by hidden infidelity such that no jojo is fully aware of their inherited destiny until it calls upon them by watching the series in this sequence we're able to discover the joestar legacy alongside the characters who were unwittingly swept up in it and thus better relate to them and their confusion and curiosity before going back to see how it all began in part 4 for instance a defining aspect of josuke's character is the fact that his father is a total stranger to him and by starting here we get to meet joseph joestar as he does seeing him first as a doddering old fool before slowly discovering his true heroic nature through his actions this sets us up for an exciting reveal when we finally get to see joseph in his prime in part two and there's a neat bit of narrative symmetry in jumping back from one time his wallet was stolen to another i also chose part four to start because jotaro explains how stands work in the first episode and while it's not as metaphysically comprehensive as the exposition at the start of part three it absolutely gets the job done in battle tendency again we're put in a similar position to joseph and to a lesser extent caesar learning about jamon as they do and knowing their ancestors only through the stories granny arena and speedwagon tell about them and then when we get into part 5 we like giorno know next to nothing about his father dio besides the fact that he was a really bad dude and also a vampire who set this whole stand aero business in motion way back when dio doesn't really factor into the gangstar saga anyway at least not until the end when polnareff gets involved and curiosity about him makes for a great narrative bridge into part 3. now obviously by starting stardust crusaders near the end of the series we do undercut the big reveal of what dio and jotaro's powers are but frankly i think the ship has kind of sailed on people being surprised by time stopping and jojo and besides that this viewing order leaves the mystery of dio himself intact we feel his influence but we don't get to know him directly as a character until we jump back in time to his origin story when the crusaders at last reach egypt curiosity about who dio was and how he became who he is will hopefully be strong enough at this point to push viewers through the slow start of phantom blood which should also feel a bit more tense overall since we know what the mask does going into it this flashback also serves to break up the repetitive fistfight of the week formula that defines stardust crusaders which can get a bit tedious when stretched across 48 straight episodes in my opinion anyway theoretically this order should turn the rough viewing experience of both parts into a much smoother ride to the grand finale of dio's world which is still in my opinion one of the best god damn fights in this series and should make for a heck of a satisfying finale to it from there if you're so inclined you can go on to read stone ocean or otherwise wait for it to be animated either way you'll be primed to enjoy it as a celebration of everything you've watched so far and as a more direct continuation of dio and jotaro's respective legacies so is this basement order the truly definitive way to watch jojo of course not and also that's not really the point of this thought exercise what i hope i've demonstrated with it is that there can be pros and cons to either watching the series in release order or shaking things up and you won't necessarily enjoy it less if you watch it at a sequence depending on the order you may even get to enjoy some satisfying setups and payoffs that don't exist in the linear jojo timeline and that's not only true of this watch order obviously not every possible random approach you can take to jojo or any other massive franchise for that matter will deliver as smooth a ride as something planned out by someone who knows the material or the standard chronological order but that's where you as a jojo fan can help your friends find a way of tackling the series that works for them and is still satisfying overall if you can get past the idea that there's this one perfect way they have to go about it i've said it before and i'll say it again the more jojo you have in your life the better so the best approach to exploring the series in my opinion is whatever gets you the most excited about it even if that means you only ever watch the handsome mafia variety hour or scooby hairdo and fill in the blanks with a wiki or you go full chaotic evil and exclusively read the light novels honestly i'd love to hear what someone who does that thinks of jojo and the same goes for anyone who's experienced the series differently from me hearing varying perspectives on things i like only ever enhances my own appreciation of them that's a big part of why i make these videos and still read the comments despite the advice of my peers and that is the single best reason i can give my fellow jojo fans to not only let part-skippers be and let them join your conversations about it but also to straight-up encourage people who might side-eye the series for its length or the pushier parts of its fan base to ignore what they're supposed to do and help them enjoy jojo in a way that makes sense to them the bigger and more varied this fan base gets the more interesting it'll be for all of us who take part in it i'm jeff though professional [ __ ] bag signing out from my mother's basement you

Channel: Mother's Basement

Views: 304,120

Keywords: Mother's Basement, Anime, Anime Analysis, jojos bizarre adventure, stardust crusaders, golden wind, diamond is unbreakable, mothers basement, joseph joestar, jotaro kujo, phantom blood, jonathan joestar, hirohiko araki, anime cheat sheet, josuke higashikata, stone ocean, jojos bizarre adventure part 5 primer, battle tendency, jojo part order, never skip parts, jojo part skipping, dragon ball z, avatar the last airbender, shounen jump

Id: l_m2gFd2I2w

Length: 29min 27sec (1767 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 15 2020