JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia

@jojowiki.com

3357 Followers 25 Following

JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia / JoJo Wiki (ジョジョ百科事典) is a website dedicated to the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series by Hirohiko Araki. (http://jojowiki.com ☆ http://jojo-news.com)

There are many series that can stun you with their first chapter. For me, the reaction is always twofold. As an artist, I'm impressed, thinking, “I see, so that was another way to approach it!” But as a reader, I'm simply excited, thinking, "This is incredible! It’s definitely going to be great!"

It's a strange sensation, like a rush of both cool, analytical admiration and hot, passionate excitement all at once. But a series that delivers a shock equal to, or even greater than, its debut multiple times throughout its run is incredibly rare. Almost nonexistent. That is the kind of manga JoJo is.

Each character's distinct worldview, the onomatopoeia, the dialogue, the poses, the system of passing down the role of protagonist, the visualization of psychic powers... People may say this is all old news, but you simply can't talk about JoJo without covering these points. Every time I reread it, the feelings from that time come flooding back to me: the pure joy I felt as a reader, and simultaneously, the sense of defeat I felt as a creator. To me, that is what JoJo is.

A manga artist has to play many roles alone. Needless to say, you are the director, but you also write the script, act out the roles (and for every single character!), handle the staging, prepare the costumes, apply the makeup, do the sets, props, location scouting... there’s just so much to do. When you juggle so many roles, some of them are bound to be mediocre. It's a common story in manga: you have a lineup of good-looking characters but they all act like cardboard, or the visual beauty is incredible but the script is garbage. But JoJo is on a different dimension. The staff and cast of JoJo are all incredible. Everything involved in JoJo seems to be arranged with an almost inevitable sense of purpose, all to make JoJo what it is. This is incredibly difficult.

About one or two weeks before Part 2 of JoJo ended, the editor in charge at the time said, “People are starting to get tired of Ripple (Hamon), so let’s switch to something different and move on to Part 3.” I panicked, thinking, “What am I going to do?”

Even so, I wasn’t given any time off, so in about two weeks I somehow came up with the idea of “Stands” and moved into Part 3. With “Ripple,” I had been depicting supernatural abilities by drawing ripple patterns, so I wanted to take it in a different direction. That led to the creation of a new rule where humanoid energy forms fight.

It was an extremely harsh challenge both in terms of schedule and difficulty, but looking back, it was a happy and memorable moment.

In my life, there are exactly two "yokai" (supernatural creatures) that I know of, despite both being human. One of them is an extremely picky eater whose diet consists almost entirely of fatty meat and watermelon; he doesn't eat rice or anything. He also claims to sleep only three hours every other day. The other one is notably thin but they're able to eat whatever they want with no limits. Their face is also always sunburned for some reason.

Both of them have managed to blend into society and earn steady incomes, though the exact nature of their work is a bit unclear (laughs). Even their marital situations are something of a mystery. The two have nothing to do with each other, but to me they seem like yokai in human form.

You told our colleagues at Full Frontal that you were angry about the film JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood not being released. Would you like to speak on that matter?

Junichi Hayama:
It seems that those responsible for the original work didn't like the final product. It was a feature length film that was even screened for several days. We had some pretty bad luck, as we were unable to make corrections in time for the theatrical release. The decision was made to release it nonetheless, despite the corrections we still hadn't added. Thus, we opted to add the corrections to the home video release on DVD/Blu-ray. We had even gotten corrections from Mr. Araki. So I reworked the storyboards accordingly. We were awaiting Shueisha's response, which didn't seem to be coming.

Then, all of a sudden, they contacted us saying they were going to take care of everything that still needed to be done, and asked us to give them all the production materials: the storyboards, the cels, everything related to the corrections! "We're going to make this presentable. Don't worry," they told us. Then, nothing. Everything had been taken from us...