JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 2: A Letter From the Past
[revised 10/2018]
After the first episode's over, we quickly jump into a sudden time skip, leading to seven years after their initial encounter and their childhood rivalry and traumatic dog-burning, and both Jojo and Dio are now young adults with rippling muscles. Oh, and to continue with the establishment of time, Jack the Ripper's been killing people left and right, apparently. Again, a good chunk of the episode is still devoted to the rivalry between Jonathan and Dio, which, while more subtle now (manifesting mostly as monologues during the rugby match). It definitely does feel a bit repetitive, but they do try to be pretty faithful to the source material and I can't fault them for it.
The conflict of this episode is quickly thrown in, with George Joestar dying. Jonathan ends up figuring out that Dio has been feeding George some slow-acting poison, and after a scuffle where Jonathan manages to overpower Dio's "thumb in your eye" trick, pushes Dio off the second floor... and in one of the sillier things that Jonathan does, leaves Dio relatively unguarded and alone as he goes off to investigate the drug. Jonathan's defining character trait is his earnestness and naivety, though this is a bit of an eye-rolling moment for me.
We also have the first negative-colours palette swap that the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure regularly employs in climactic conflicts. I'm not sure what this is in reference to (the manga is black and white, after all), but it did catch me off-guard when Dio screams out loud about how his bastard father never had any honour, and suddenly everything is bleached in different colours. Giving Dio pink hair for some reason. The later seasons will get better at how tasteful the colour-palette-swaps are, but in the first season and especially Phantom Blood, it always feels like they dragged on these sequences a bit too long.
Jonathan's journey to confirm the potion takes him into a random Asian drugstore, where he runs into everyone's favourite character from Phantom Blood -- Robert E.O. Speedwagon, a sharply-dressed leader of the local ruffians who tries to rob the two-meter-tall musclebound man. Speedwagon fights with "Ogre Street tactics", which includes throwing that bowler hat... which is bladed. Speedwagon apparently realizes that Jonathan fights "like a true gentleman" and is moved that he goes in for non-lethal wounds, and ends up befriending him. "I picked a fight with the wrong man!" A bit of a weirdly-paced scene, honestly, but if it gets Speedwagon into the cast a bit quicker, I don't mind.
Speedwagon is going to serve as the archetypal "lancer" character, that dude who hangs out the protagonist and witnesses everything, and sometimes gets to participate, but for the most part acts as an audience surrogate or a commentator -- with that latter role being something that the Western audience, at least, remember him fondly for.
Meanwhile, while Jojo returns with a new best friend and evidence of Dio's foul play, the unsupervised Dio wanders around the city holding the ever-mysterious stone mask, and figures out that it's not just a torture tool -- it turns people into super-powerful vampires that drains blood via their fingers. Dio narrowly avoids being killed when the sun rises up and evaporates the vampire attacking him.
After the first episode's over, we quickly jump into a sudden time skip, leading to seven years after their initial encounter and their childhood rivalry and traumatic dog-burning, and both Jojo and Dio are now young adults with rippling muscles. Oh, and to continue with the establishment of time, Jack the Ripper's been killing people left and right, apparently. Again, a good chunk of the episode is still devoted to the rivalry between Jonathan and Dio, which, while more subtle now (manifesting mostly as monologues during the rugby match). It definitely does feel a bit repetitive, but they do try to be pretty faithful to the source material and I can't fault them for it.The conflict of this episode is quickly thrown in, with George Joestar dying. Jonathan ends up figuring out that Dio has been feeding George some slow-acting poison, and after a scuffle where Jonathan manages to overpower Dio's "thumb in your eye" trick, pushes Dio off the second floor... and in one of the sillier things that Jonathan does, leaves Dio relatively unguarded and alone as he goes off to investigate the drug. Jonathan's defining character trait is his earnestness and naivety, though this is a bit of an eye-rolling moment for me.
We also have the first negative-colours palette swap that the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure regularly employs in climactic conflicts. I'm not sure what this is in reference to (the manga is black and white, after all), but it did catch me off-guard when Dio screams out loud about how his bastard father never had any honour, and suddenly everything is bleached in different colours. Giving Dio pink hair for some reason. The later seasons will get better at how tasteful the colour-palette-swaps are, but in the first season and especially Phantom Blood, it always feels like they dragged on these sequences a bit too long.Jonathan's journey to confirm the potion takes him into a random Asian drugstore, where he runs into everyone's favourite character from Phantom Blood -- Robert E.O. Speedwagon, a sharply-dressed leader of the local ruffians who tries to rob the two-meter-tall musclebound man. Speedwagon fights with "Ogre Street tactics", which includes throwing that bowler hat... which is bladed. Speedwagon apparently realizes that Jonathan fights "like a true gentleman" and is moved that he goes in for non-lethal wounds, and ends up befriending him. "I picked a fight with the wrong man!" A bit of a weirdly-paced scene, honestly, but if it gets Speedwagon into the cast a bit quicker, I don't mind.
Speedwagon is going to serve as the archetypal "lancer" character, that dude who hangs out the protagonist and witnesses everything, and sometimes gets to participate, but for the most part acts as an audience surrogate or a commentator -- with that latter role being something that the Western audience, at least, remember him fondly for.
Meanwhile, while Jojo returns with a new best friend and evidence of Dio's foul play, the unsupervised Dio wanders around the city holding the ever-mysterious stone mask, and figures out that it's not just a torture tool -- it turns people into super-powerful vampires that drains blood via their fingers. Dio narrowly avoids being killed when the sun rises up and evaporates the vampire attacking him.
The episode still moves pretty slow, although I guess it can't be helped. Phantom Blood is pretty slow-paced, honestly, and a good chunk of all of this is just setup. We do get some fun action scenes on the part of Jonathan-vs-Speedwagon and Jonathan-vs-Dio, although both are relatively short. It definitely could've been a bit tighter, for sure.
The JoJo Playlist:
- Speedwagon, or rather, Robert E.O. Speedwagon, is a reference to REO Speedwagon, an 80's Rock band. Some recommended songs from REO Speedwagon: "Keep on Loving You", "Take It On the Run" and "Can't Fight this Feeling".
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