Retronauts - 515: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Chapter 1

Episode Date: February 20, 2023

Jeremy Parish, Diamond Feit, Voidburger, and Chris Person summon their Stands to talk about the history, themes, and video game connections of one of the most influential manga series of all time: Hirohiko Araki's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. GO GO GO GO GO! Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

This weekend Retronauts, we're going to talk about Jojo for at least an order, order, auto, auto, order. everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. And this week, we are finally talking about a topic diamond fight has demanded for years. And finally, we're making it happen. This is JoJo's bizarre adventure. And as often happens with topics that are so expansive, this may be a single episode, but then again, it may not. And we reserve the right to expand into other episodes if the conversation warrants. So, settle in, take a ride in a magical turtle, and have some snacks. Stay cool to avoid being turned necrotic. It's going to be good times ahead. So we have some, well, a person I think who hasn't been on the show before and a person who has appeared once or twice before, but rarely. So let's everyone introduce ourselves starting way over in Osaka. It's a regular, beyond regular, really. Hello everyone. It's Diamond Fight. And yes, thanks to careful note-taking, I do know how many breads have eaten my life. All right. And who was that that I just heard laughing?

Coming back to Retronauts. You've been on the show before, right? Yeah. I'm positive. Forever ago. Hello. I'm back. I'm Jess O'Brien, aka Voidberger, and I did not prepare a pithy little one-liner for my introduction. But that's okay. See, you know, to really get into the Jojo style, you have to, like, think three or four steps ahead. Yeah, I'm just going to embarrassingly, I'm just going to embarrassingly crawl back into the wall and into my secret room to recover from this. There you go. And finally, I believe a new contributor to the show, but correct me if I'm wrong. Who are you?

Hi, my name is Chris Person, and it's very weird that I'm not, I don't know, that feels presumptuous. But, like, yeah, I make a show called Highlight Reel. I've known you guys for a really long time. I used to be on the oneup.com forums. Yeah, which is a lot. Oh, boy. Yeah, that's been ages. I used to be on the oneup.com forums, except because I was on staff, they hated me there.

That was the magic of the oneup.com forums is that no one who used them liked OneUp because it was grafted onto the site from gamers.com. Oh, oh, no, I did because I was one of the freaks on the one up yours forums, which was a different, entirely different, like, relationship. Like, there was the old, weird forum that, like, I don't know how you would describe it. It's like, it's like, it was a cesspool. I take it. Diet, diet something awful. Yeah, kind of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was like a diet something awful. But like old something awful as opposed to modern. Yeah, no, no, no. this is like Obama like early bush bomb bomb you know that era but like 2006 like oneup dot com all that stuff it's funny like um it's like how i met like a lot of people in the game industry before i worked at kataku uh was actually through that forum like you know clapick and what just everybody i know through that uh gen frank you know like i met her through the forums

and and stuff like that and yeah that's weirdly how i got into the industry is uh post Yeah, I also weirdly kind of got into the industry through OneUp.com because I was like, commissioned by Bob Mackey, I believe, to write like a let's play primer sort of series. That makes sense. God knows where that is. Maybe someone archived.org did or something. It could be somewhere in the database for Oneup.com and inaccessible because they used weird bespoke technology that only one person understood and they pissed off that person so he doesn't be maintenance on the site anymore. Sounds about right. Super cool.

And I also probably should have mentioned that I was very recently a video producer on giantbomb.com. Right. Until the layoffs. But anyway, I'm here now. Those of us who have spent any time in the Games press know all about layoffs. I also know about being video staff on a game's website and then getting laid off very suddenly in the parking lot of a Mitsuwa in New Jersey. Oh, that's right. yeah do you know that story

is that the one like that's not in Fortley but like between Fortley and Hoboken yeah it's the one that I recently went back there for the first time I did that Mitsu so much yeah you didn't get laid off via email like via like I think like jumping on a Zoom meeting those like hey you're

fired you've worked here for eight years in the food court of Mitsu I will say however to assuage myself for why the hell did a private equity company do that to me I went straight to the, I think there's a book off there or something like it. And I got myself the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure art book. And that is, it comes full circle. That is my, yeah, that was my gift

to myself. I was like, I just need, I just need to look at these beautiful boys in the highest quality possible. And I don't know what I'm doing with my life now. All right. So we are going to talk about Jojo, the, the manga, the anime, the pop culture phenomenon. And of course, the video games and its influence on video games, because would we have Shinemagame Tensei persona without Jojo's Bizarre Adventure? I say the nay. So, uh, this is all relevant and we're going to talk about as much as we can in the space of 90 minutes or so, because I like to keep them short and also Diamond has to go to bed soon because they're on the other side of the world. So, um, yeah, before we get going with this conversation about the masterpiece that is Jojo's bizarre adventure,

I have to ask, what is your stand and what does it do? Diamond, I feel like you've probably spent the most time thinking about this. Oh, my God. So we're going to start with you. You know what it is, Jeremy? It's the trap. I've spent too much time thinking about it. So it's actually a very hard question.

Like, okay, what is your stand today? Yeah, yeah. I put some time of this today. I think my stand is called Carpenter Brute. And it's just a nice, it's just a little. a cup that I can use and I can fill it with any beverage I want and that way I'm never I'm never thirsty. It has no combat ability unless I find someone who's like allergic to something. Maybe I could like splash them in the face.

But otherwise, it's just for me. It's just for me to keep myself, you know, running smooth. No, no. Here's the thing. You can totally imagine a combat ability based off of that. If it's like a never ending cup, you could like put it on someone's face and drown them. Oh, geez. Yeah.

Put it in their lungs. Yeah. Like the guy with like the guy in the desert. Yeah, just drown someone in the canteen. I did think of this. My stand, my stand, I'm posing right now, is Dead Man's Party. And it makes it so I can control skeletons, any skeleton. Your skeleton.

Whoa. Anything that kind of feels like a skeleton, maybe extends to buildings. Maybe I can make like... What about those 12-foot Home Depot skeletons? Yes. Anything that kind of seems can be called a skeleton by any like, you know, normal means, I can control one of those. So like a skeleton black wonder swan crystal, you can control one of those? Yes.

Does that have to be endo or can it be exo? Can I throw a lobster at you? Are you powerless against lobsters? I think that's like going to be the drawback is that only applies to it. And indo-endo-skeletons and not exoskeletons. So I have no control over bugs, which would be too opiate. I think, if I could also control bugs. I agree.

Chris, what about you? I mean, you know, when you're talking about stands, ideally you want to be one of the cool guys who has one of the, like, one meter stands that kick everyone's ass and that are, like, really powerful or something like that. I think it would probably be named, like, Family of the Paradise. Because, like, that's the kind of crap that people who write manga love is, like, referencing Family of the Paradise. so really obliquely and um but i also really enjoy the the the okay we'll get into this in a little bit but that like he was really into prog stuff and like classic rock stuff oh yeah and then until he wasn't until he until this is my favorite part of that i mean he sort of always is but like the one of the best parts is that halfway through like stone ocean he's like you know

i just like fashion designers a lot yeah i just really love fashion design design then then i stopped recognizing anyone's names. Yeah, I forgot everything. So, yeah, I think it would probably end up, like, I'd want it to be one of the cool one meter ones, but it would probably be something that's like a computer or something. Or ideally, like in Golden Wind, a bunch of bullets that are my friends. I mean, everyone needs a six immature. I mean, those are basically servebots from Mega Man Legends.

They are. Oh, my God. Sex pistols are the best. They are. Oh, God. Except you're not allowed in America to call them sex pistols. Well, we'll get into that. Six pistols, I think, is the, I have the wiki open.

I think it's just like six shot or something. Six bullets. Yeah. I have the wiki up in case we need to. We will need to. We will need to figure out what these things are called in America. That's why you got to listen to the, or watch the subtitle version of the anime, because, you know, they can't, they can't, you know, deny the fact that they're saying aerosmith or sex pistols instead of little bomber. or six bullets, you know, you can still hear the Japanese.

My favorites are the one where it's like, they just take the same sounds and they make it different. Like, it's like maiden, like, like young lady, like made in heaven. It's like, I don't think you actually need to change those words. I don't think the words made in heaven are copyrighted, but it's like, yeah, this is my stand made in heaven. Like, okay, yeah, we get. I think, I think my favorite, my favorite of those in the entire history of the localized version is Spice Girl. Because it's spicy lady. My favorite, my favorite is from the Morio arc.

Instead of dirty deeds done dirt cheap, it's filthy acts at a reasonable price. It's so, that's, I hate saying that, yeah, the localization's worth it like for that. But like, that is an art. The art of dancing around, like, what we know is to be like, just you can't get away with. You can get the way with it's in Japan for some reason. For some weird reason, you can get away with this in Japan, but you can't, I feel like Iraqis love for referencing, just straight up referencing, you know, musicians and fashion designers and so forth is one of the few remaining holdouts from like the 70s, 80s era of Japanese media where, you know, Japanese creators over there, especially manga, anime, et cetera, and video games, they just loved American movies and television and music. And they were, they just celebrated it right out there in the open. And now I feel like the culture of being circumspect has sort of taken hold. And you don't

really see that anymore. But I mean, you know, Jojo's Bizarre Adventure was inspired very heavily by Fist of the North Star. And the dude who wrote that, like, just adopted as his pin name Bronson because he loved Charles Bronson. He's like, that's me from now on. I am Bronson. Also, I have to immediately correct myself. I have to immediately correct myself. Dirty Dund Dirt cheap is from like steel ball rung and somehow I know it and misattributed it to the Mario arc diamond is unbreakable what stand am I thinking of though I have to research it anyway you know it's funny you mentioned that I've had this sort of like thought in my head about like especially with berserk berserk and this are both very Bronson adjacent and it's like you can

sort of see who buds off of Bronson and also like go nagai you know like those are the guys. Those are the guys who were just like, they were around. And if you were near them or like said hi to him or something or like even paid attention to work, you just made huge dudes or weird stuff. You know what I mean? And yeah, like he was the guy who made the big guy things. And Berserk is also that. Like, Berserk is just, it starts off as a series of like, okay, like Hellraiser 2. The movie Flesh plus blood for whatever reason, which I guess was was Berserk related when we were watching it and then looked it up. And then like, Evil Dead 2. And it's like, okay, you put those in a blood. Oh, and Phantom of the Paradise. He references Phantom of the Paradise and that, too. He's just, he's like, oh, okay, what if the, the Phantom of the Paradise guy was in the Hellraiser dimension and he had to fight the guy from Flesh Plus Blood. And like, that's what you used to do back then, because it was a cool thing to do.

It's like, what if, but also because American media was good back then and not in a nostalgic way. It was just coherent. Yeah. And it's no longer coherent. It's no longer fun. People don't have fun at the movies like we did in the 80s, not from a nostalgic way. nostalgia way, but just like a basic storytelling perspective.

Yeah, that's one thing that I enjoy about, about Jojo, is that it does kind of harken back to that because it's been created by the same guy since the 1980s. So it's got that spirit to it. But we should actually explain what all these things that we're talking about are. First of all, I need to say that my stand is called Firth of Fifth, and it has the power to inundate people with a flood of words, just an endless spray, a an ocean of words lapping over the the shoreline, you know, spilling over the banks of the word river. And they're always about video games. But that's my power. And it's real. It actually exists. But what is a stand?

Someone please explain what these things that we're talking about are. Because when I played Jojo's Bizarre Adventure for PlayStation for the first time, 25 years ago, ish and had no idea what Jojo was, I was deeply confused and really felt out of sorts. So for those who are like young Jeremy, please explain what the hell is this stand thing? What is a Jojo? Anyone? Well, first of all, I want to quickly continue my correction. I was thinking of bad company to stand, which is localized to worse company. That is my second favorite localization. I I actually really like Savage Garden, who in the, the anime or the localization became Savage Guardian, which actually kind of fits the situation and the nature of the character, like the scenario. And it also still has that sort of like, you know, that sort of assonance with the original name.

So that was a good one. Sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're not. So Stans are ghosts who are your friends that are connected to your soul, kind of. They're kind of you, but also some of them aren't you because some of them can be independent creatures that are not bent to your will or anything like that. But it's kind of like if you had a psychic ghost that you fought with. And they're actually like, they're based off of Haman somehow. And Haman is like a mystical energy that you harness through breathing. And that's

from like the early Jojo's. Right. Yeah. So Haman gets back to the early days of Jojo's Bizar adventure where it first started out as a, hey, I really like Fist of the North Star kind of thing. Fist of the North Star was created, and I'm not going to get too much into this because Diamond has an episode on Fist of the North Star, it's scheduled later this year. So we'll save most of this. But Fist and the North Star started when Boranson said, what if Bruce Lee but with deadly Chinese acupressure pressure? Well, and Fist of the North Star kind of took that and said, what if the acupressure were yoga? And that's kind of where you come into this. But, Chris, do you have a correction?

Yeah. Also, Yusaku Matsuda, who's the famous actor who was in, who died and was in Black Rain. I think I could be wrong. Please that it is out if I'm not wrong. But I've been getting really into his filmography. And if you look up Yusaku Matsuda and then you think Spike from Cowboy Bebop was based on this guy. And so was, I believe, Ken Chiro. Damn, this must be a smoking hot dude.

Hang on. I'm Googling. Yeah. Yeah. He's very hot. Also, I just watched the only movie he directed called Ahomansu, and it's phenomenal. It has my favorite ending of any movie. But to say, yeah, look him up.

He's spiked from Cowboy Bebop. And he died quite early. All right. So now that we've given a quick reference to Hammond that we never have to mention again, please go on and let's talk some more about stands. I think, I don't know. Should we start from the beginning? and be like, what's this frickin' show about?

Because it has such humble beginnings as just two willful boys hate each other in England. We can, yeah, yeah. It's such, I love that part of it. I mean, I love it. It starts so simple and then it gets fucking ridiculous so fast. It's amazing. Imagine, if you will, there, okay, so there's a count and then there's a mask that turns you into a vampire that's related to ancient Mesoamericans.

And then a guy finds a guy's carriage and then he, you know, this is. There's a whole bunch of stuff happens. Anyway, two boys, two boys end up being... This is sounding less simple than just presented as. Yeah. Diamond, I think you could probably do a good job at summarizing Jojo. Yeah, no, it's funny. I'm just like nodding your nodding my head the whole time.

Yep, that's correct. This is correct. Everything you're saying is factual and perfect. Yeah, I think I once tried to make my own Jojo podcast. And I think when I, I devoted a good chunk of the first episode of saying, what the hell is Jojo all about. And I think I pen to sentence about like a supernatural adventure series about two families bearing a grudge against each other. And I've heard people describe it as, you know, one disaster bisexual destroys his, you know, adoptive brother. And yeah, I think, yeah, it's sort of

one of the thing I think it's sort of magical about Jojo is the fact that, yes, the manga started in 1987. It was created by, you know, Iraqi and this guy's been, he's still making it to this day. we're recording this, we're hotly anticipating the next part, part nine unofficially, called Jojo Lans. And even though he's been doing this story for this entire time, and supposedly he says he's like, planned all this stuff out. I don't

know if that's true, but he says, shut up, no. He says, no, he's a liar. There's no way. He claims that. I believe him. What I think is so fascinating is that, you know, he started out this story and he's like, okay, here's Jonathan and here's Dio, you hear these crazy kids, you see them grow up,

they hate each other, they kill each other, and then, all right, forget them. Now you got Jonathan's grandson, and he's fighting against these muscular men who are actually like hundreds of thousands of years old, but they made the masks, they made the vampires. And you're like, wait, okay, okay, great, all right, we're still following this, and it's like, okay, you like that?

Guess what? Now here's his grandson, and we're in the 80s, and forget all the masks and forget the stuff. Now we got these, like, now we got these kung fu ghosts, and they all got magic powers. but, you know, some of them got fire of them, some that got swords. And, oh, Dio, Dio's back. Yeah, he was, he survived.

Never mind that coffin. He was in, the coffin had another layer to it. So he was like inside the coffin, inside the coffin. But here's the really crazy part. Here's the really crazy part. So it's not, it's not quite just Dio. It's Dio's head on top of Jonathan's hunky body. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And this, this becomes a very, very important plot. It's so important. It's so important. super important because the best arc you know the family lines get all jumbled up because of that whose come is this is kind of like the rest of the series who's grandkids over here not sure i guess that's a that's a you know like what's the boat the the the boat where it's here there we go yeah it's a ship a theseus thing but with nut um really hunky ship athesius though

who's whose dad is this you know it's like you're the father you're the father No, it's, it's so cool. Yeah, I don't even know how you do the DNA testing, the paternity testing. It's a, it's a, it's a manga about a really cool and kind of gay family. Oh, super gay. Oh, yeah. Really gay. And I mean, you know, you don't want to get too much into that because it's like a little bit of wishcasting.

And also it's, you know, it's like text versus like just general vibe sort of thing where it's like, you know, it's a very campy, very gay manga. And though not technically on paper like written as. such, with the exception of, like, certain elements of it, it does present to Paul over the entire series, or not Paul, but just, like, its presence is just like, it's so gay, it's so gay. It gets stronger as it goes on, too. It starts off, like, kind of like, deniable plausibility, like, oh, no, I'm reading into this. They're just, you know, good friends that are really close. The Pullman aren't really gay.

They're just really, really good friends who wear nothing and have been together for thousands of years, really, really close and know everything about each other and are always touching each other. And also there's this element, okay, we do have to talk a little bit about, and I know this is, it's hard to talk about Jojo because if you do that, do it, like, you're talking about it in terms of like, well, how, where the hell do I begin? Because there's so many things about it. But it's a, to talk about in these tiny little bits is it's really useful because it's like, okay, one thing you have to understand. Yes, it starts off about breathing energy. And like, then that turns into like personality ghosts. But so much of it is aesthetics that and like, and like, how those aesthetics bleed into literally every work of art, you know, in, in Japan. You know what I mean? Just like every piece of media just is like, all right, I guess we're doing a little bit of that. The fact that he does reference these things, like, where like all of the poses are like from prints or like, you know, Jotara's entire outfit is just Janet Jackson. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, I'm not joking. You're right. God

damn it. It is, isn't it? It's just weird. It's just the same thing. Like, you can, he, he, he's completely takes um like stapes of bits of costume and it's fine it's pastiche it's it's the thing you do when you're gay or seem pretty gay um the fact that he writes little tiny notes to himself which we'll we'll get to in a second because i'm sure everyone loves the little like liner notes between things um but also my favorite bit is the grand twinkification process that the entire series goes through to the point where it retcons it and they have to follow it throughout the anime which is why i think the anime is so good is they follow his weird foibles as he decides to completely change his art style.

He's like, I'm no longer drawing big boys, I'm drawing little guys, little fay guys, and now I'm into fashion design. And he retcons his own history and art style, and they keep up with that in the show, which is tight. Yeah, like, I feel like Araki is kind of like, his creation process is like extremely detail-oriented, extremely like well-researched, well-researched, well-researched, well-the-way, but I mean, decently Googled. But the rest of it is Calvin Ball. Like, it feels like he's just making shit up, changing the rules constantly. there's so many just dead narrative ends that never go anywhere you know like I'm still waiting for Joske to show like travel through time injured and save his younger self which is like this huge character development element in the Morio arc that never actually panned out it never

paid off and you know there's also the invisible baby like he was just she shows up like one other time incidentally as kind of like a deus ex machina for someone to figure out how to win a game of rock, paper, scissors. The more I say these things out loud, the more ridiculous it is. And that's why I love the show. Something I love about Jojo. And this is how I got into Jojo was my friend was like, you haven't seen Jojo. And then he went on this rant, this like incantation of just like listing off every possible weird bullshit spoiler he could think of. And none of it spoiled anything. Like, if you're listening to this podcast and you have no idea what Jojo is, don't worry, you're not getting spoiled.

You will not remember this five minutes from now. And when it happens to you in the show, you'll barely remember hearing about it, but it's not going to ruin anything. I think Chris said that, you know, the sort of, there's a gay vibe about it, if not text. But this show is so much about vibes. Like half the conflicts play out according to vibes, just like, who can out vibe the other person? And that's really like what this series has become about. And that's what, you know, makes it so appealing. It's just that it's this game of preposterous one-upmanship.

Like, what is the most ridiculous outcome that Iraqi can come up with for his, you know, this scenario that is created? Like, the scenarios are outlandish. You know, the stand powers get more and more abstract and bizarre and outlandish. And they turn into these really bizarre, like, mental battles. Yeah, bizarre. Oh, it's right there in the title. How about that? And it's, you know, the, the, the, um, the anime has that thing, like in Dragon Ball where, you know, three episodes take place in the space of about a minute of, like, actual time. And it's, it's, it dedicates a lot of time to people thinking and reacting and, like, internal monologues. But it's never just, like, didactically explaining what just happened on the screen and, like, characters, explaining to each other. It's always like them calculating and exclaiming to themselves. So it never feels like, oh, they're just padding for time. It never feels like, oh, they think the, you know, the viewer is too stupid to figure it out. It's like this is, you know, if you saw these conflicts play

out in real time, it would be incomprehensible. So it kind of needs to decompress. And I think that's, that's one of the advantages the manga version of this has is that manga, you know, it exists outside of time. So when you have Dio stopping time for five seconds, you know, that can take 20 pages of text, and that's fine because when you read, like, you know, you're just, you're not really experiencing time in a linear fashion. You're taking it at your own pace. But in the cartoon, when Dio T stops time for five seconds and it's actually like two or three minutes, it does strain plausibility a little bit and kind of feel like, well, what does it mean when he's limited to stopping time for five seconds? That means nothing at this point.

But, you know, that's just the nature of different forms of media. And I think the anime does a really great job for the most part of translating that and making it work, you know, just with its sense of self-confidence that it borrows from the original text. You know, like, it does things on its own terms, and that's just how it is. And you just kind of have to roll with it. Well, I think it's also worth asking, which anime? because there was the short-lived OVA, which I kind of like because, well, you should definitely, okay, so I'm not suggesting you would go out and watch the 90s OVA, which is basically what, like, it's like mostly up like the end part. It's like bits and pieces of like phantom blood, sorry, Stardust. Stardust.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you should know that the director of such films as paprika and Perfect Blue worked on it. And particularly, he worked on the episode where Dio is like having a night on the town and shit. And he like, he gets into the back of a senator's car. And like, if you want to see someone animate the hell out of something, watch that episode. because there's a scene in which, you know, like, I mean, you guys all, you know how Satoshi Kohn draws little guys, he draws a little weird, weird little guy. Imagine one of his classic froggy small guys trying to escape the back of a limousine and then ending up back in the limousine. Now imagine him draw animating that crap like it's paprika. That's what that is. It's awesome. It's a great episode. One of my friends showed him. I was like, damn, okay, I've been sleeping on just watching this arc. But yeah, watch it. It's really. Like, it's a really good episode. That was, we skipped past this, but yeah, that was my introduction to Jojo.

It was the, I watched, you know, it was 25 years ago, 1998, I watched that fan sub of that. And I didn't know what it was. I just, I picked it up in the store and was like, okay, this looks like it might be fun. And I brought it home and I was watching this. I was like, what the hell is? Because the weirdest thing with those OVAs, which they were made in 1993. So like kind of right after Starters Crusaders came to an end, they made six episodes. And it's just kind of like the back end.

of Stardis Crusaders. Like, it starts when they're already in the middle of the desert, and it goes right through to the end where Dio dies, and they have to rearrange stuff, they cut things out, but it's like, they tells a story. And then, like, seven years later, they make seven more episodes that start with Stardish Crusaders, and they kind of give up in the middle around justice somewhere. So in these 13 episodes, they don't even come close to telling the entire story of Staris Crusaders, but once they made the back seven and they had these 13 episodes, that

that's when it actually got licensed and translated in America. So they put out those 13 episodes and gave it to Americans like, okay, Americans, here you are. And it's like, this is in no way a complete story. And it's the weirdest, it's the, like, that's the weirdest thing to me about Jojo, is the fact that this thing has been going for so long. And it's been so popular in Japan. It has been a huge hit in Japan for, you know, most of his 35-year run. And yet, it really didn't hit America until about 10 years ago or so.

because they either messed it up or they just didn't bring it over. They're just like, ah, no, you don't want that. You don't want that. Like, the manga. We didn't, we didn't want Jojo until they brought roundabout into it. And that was the key, bringing yes in there and some Prague Rock. And now America's like, oh, all of these things are good. Of course.

Now I can make memes out of it. It really is, it does sort of speak to, like, how hard it is to, like, sell anything in America. Like, we, we talked to, like, the guy who. worked with like Hyam Saban on like one of these guys who worked with Hyam Saban back at Kotaku who was like talking about like bring over just like the basic stuff like Sailor Moon and like what hour you had to like pitch Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon was on UPN at like sixth in the morning. That's why I didn't get to fucking grow up on it. Yeah. No, no. They like they kept trying to have to repackage stuff and they kept doing like Power Rangers to it. It didn't

work because it's a bad idea. And then eventually Tsunami's like what if we put it on TV? and they're like, that's great. Now, imagine that for comics. It's even worse. You know, like, if you only have, like, a basically a manga-only property that really didn't have a good anime adaptation, it was basically, like, invisible to Americans except really weird ones who just import that stuff. And then you have these little artifacts of things that go through, like the PS1 game or, which is how I saw it. You know, it's like, oh, I think it was like, oh, it was Dreamcaster. You know, it's just like, what is that? I thought it was a thing about a detective because, like, the cover for, it does not look I was like oh is he a detective like what you know if you look at the cover of

the playstation you're just like I don't know man it seems weird and then like uh you know it it became like popular the fighting game community and that like kind of helped it out here but it's just like and those games are cool too I'm sorry they still going they still make them you can get them on game pass now the most recent one I think I think just like a lot of like American like whoever was in charge of bringing these things over really didn't think much about Americans' ability to, you know, deal with foreign media. Like, everything had to be, like, localized, over-localized, you know, like, Brock is eating donuts and not-

I grew up on Robotech, it's funny. And, like, not Onigiri. And it's like, wow, I guess we can't handle someone eating rice. Oh, no. So that got in the way, I assume. Although- I think that's Alex Kidd's fault. There is something to preserving, like, I don't know, maybe it's just because I've gotten really into, like, ripping tapes recently, like, transferring, like, really doing really high-quality

transfers, there is something to preserving the weird versions of that, like the version of Cobra. If you've ever seen the VHS of Cobra, that was only in England where they changed all the music around and it was all the band Yellow. What? And yeah, the bow, bow, bow, those guys. Now, they completely re-dubbed it with that. I don't want to say it's better, but it's got a cool vibe.

It's got a really cool. I kind of can see it. Like, just given the, the, uh, the nature of the show. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Tonight. Yeah.

It's so sick. It's so sick. Someone did, someone also, uh, put it up to the Blu-ray. They re-ed it and I was like, nice. You got the audio. Tonight. You got a look in my eyes. You got it.

You drive me out of my mind. Drive driven. Oh. Yeah. You've given. So we're doing this day And I said, drive, driven, I gave me a room, I gave myself away.

So we're doing the thing that always happens in big retronauts topics episodes, where we talk free form for half an hour before actually really kind of explaining the fundamentals. We almost did it. We got so close. And this is my fault. My failing as a leader as a host. But we haven't really explained what a Jojo is. We've kind of danced around it and made illusions and, you know, kind of taken the,

if you are familiar with this work, then you will understand what we're saying approach. But going back to what was said earlier about the two families and Victorian England, all that, the series starts, it's broken into, I guess at this point nine narrative arcs once JojoLand's launches. and each one tells the story of a different character whose nickname, not name, whose nickname is JoJo. And that's usually because it, you know, there's somewhere in their name, you have Joe and Joe. So it starts out with Jonathan Joe Star and is about the Joe Star family. Then his grandson is Joseph Joe Star and his grandson is Kujo Jotaro because he's half Japanese or three quarters. And yeah, so it carries on from there.

in Joe Starr, et cetera. The one that's kind of a stretch is Josuke Higashikata, and his nickname comes from the fact that he's in like a war. Like, I guess it's like, I think it's the way Kyoto has like its areas broken into Joe's, like Sanjo, you know, Gojo, et cetera. So he's from a neighborhood in his name is Joe Ski. Is that right, Diamond? Well, in the case of Joske, at least part four Joske, I guess part eight two, but really what it is, it's just it's a bit of, it's a little bit of a kanji trick. It's like both kanji in

his name can be read as Joel. Okay, no wonder that didn't come through very clear. Well, I also thought it's like, well, technically he's a Joe star but it's not literally his last name, but he is a Joe star or of that one line. So it's like, well, it's not technically his name, but

it is actually his name. Cool. Okay. Yeah, it's just a play on the kanji that make up his name. So, yeah, that's, to me, the funnier ones is, you know, the ones where you go to Italy is you have, you know, Giorno Giovana. And in that

case, like, in Italy, they actually spell it out with the G because I think, I don't think Italian has, has the hard J. So they have, in the Latin, the letter J is pronounced as an I. Right. So, in Italian editions, they actually, you know, it's actually

Jojo's, like, bizarre, or, like, La Ventura, did Giojo. And I just, I'd find that that little detail very funny in the fact that indeed at one point, you know, we'll get to it at some point in time, but when they made the PS2 game that was based on part five, they almost released it in Europe as Gio Gio's bizarre adventure with it with the hard G. And it just, it didn't happen, but like they came this close. Right. So there's always a little bit of a stretch for some of the names, but every chapter, every arc tells the story of someone somehow related to the Joe Star family whose nickname is Jojo. And the Jojo of each series

is kind of the central character who drives the action, not necessarily the most powerful character per se, but somehow the most essential and, you know, kind of the backbone of the story that drives the action. They're always driven by a sense of justice and rightness, even when they're kind of kind of rough and tumble characters who seem a little amoral at heart they're still basically good and driven by the desire to

save the world from Joseph's or sorry Jonathan's rival Dio Brando who continues to live on as an immortal vampire thanks to that stone mask that somehow relates to ancient an ancient Mesoamerican race of Superman. And then also there's an arrow that is made from a meteorite that has an

alien virus in it. All of these things relate. And all of them... Several arrows. There's several arrows. Oh, yes, yes. Many arrows can be forged. And even fragments have have amazing powers. I want to go back to that for a second, just because... So the very first chapter, the very first book of Jojo, it sets up the mask and it shows this whole scene, you know, where the as-sex are, you know, They're standing up a pyramid and this guy's wearing a mask and they do human sacrifice and the, you know, the blood gets on the mask and this guy becomes super powerful. And roundabouts playing. Right. Well, I mean, this is like the manga specifically, but so that's like the beginning.

No, still playing in the manga. I'm positive. It's in there somewhere. But like that's sort of the iconic beginning of Jojo. And so when they made the OVA in the 1983, that's the opening of the of the cartoon. You see all the stuff in, you know, this pyramid and this mask. And you're like, okay, okay, so we got the sort of, you know, Central America, South America. Okay, we got some kind of blood feud, whatever.

And then it jumps to, you know, a bunch of buff guys in the Egyptian desert. And I'm like, wait, what? Yeah, it's the most impressive, yada, yada, yada, yadding. And that's, it's so fun to me. But it's, yes, the mask, the mask does start the story off and the mask has this, you know, has many repercussions as the story goes on. but if you literally open the show with the mask and then you jump ahead to what's actually happening in the show, it is just, it is so headspinning, you know, it's like episode, I think I once wrote this down in a tweet once, but it's like, episode one is like, oh, here is your new adoptive brother, you know, Joseph, hello, and it's like, Chapter 100 is like, I need to kill the president because he's going to, he's going to steal a corpse, you know. I was saying. Chapter 100 is I'm eating spaghetti. That's so good I might die. It's really good spaghetti. I think that's like my third favorite stand or something.

Oh, it's just like, what if you just had, we could make a meal so good? It's just like really, really. All your friends got like, oh, man, my back's better. Wow. It just makes you healthier just by eating it. Yeah. Yeah, that's the best episode. Yeah, that was one of the great things about the Mario arc is that you started getting stands. that weren't just about fighting in combat, but just like, hey, you know, these are manifestations of people's souls who aren't necessarily out to get into fights or, you know, seize power. They just want to do something really well. So there's a dude who can draw comics and he kicks ass at it. Yeah.

And there's a guy who makes pasta and it rules so hard that it makes your body better just by eating it. Dude, that kind of thing is great. Real quick. But you have to talk about Rohan, though. Go ahead. We got to talk about Rohan because it's a rocky self-insert. Oh, it's his Stephen King moment. You know, Stephen King, every character is an author in Maine.

And Rohan Kishibe is very much Iraqi doing the Stephen King thing. But it's also so important because, like, he does make him like the coolest character, like one of the coolest characters in the entire series, not the most powerful. But the thing about it is like, Iraqi is kind of that hot and is kind of that cool. Like that's, that is the bizarre thing. There's the meme that goes around of like how Iraq. he just hasn't aged, you know, like, and it's like him through the ages. It's like, oh, Egypt, ancient Egypt, you know, so it's like, you know, he's a vampire. He's just got really good skin care. This is, this is all like, you know, autobiographical. He's an undying

super hot vampire. And this is the stuff he made. My friend, the manga car revealed. There's a, there's a, there's a bunch of like little like side ones. There's, there's, there's, um, what is it, thus spake Rohan Khashiba. Rohan goes to the Louv. Rohan goes the Louv. Actually, one of my friends was like, I think we were eating, like, Japanese food. And she'd just come back from, I think, Europe. And she handed me this. And it was like, look at this.

It's like, okay, it's like, Rohan at the Louvre. And she was like, look at who printed it. And it, you open it up and says, printed by the Louvre press. Yeah. Because Europeans love Jojo. You can, like, buy it at the Louvre, like, gift shop. They have it. Yeah.

This is the thing also. he did a he also did a fashion uh collab uh with what was it was it was a prada no it was uh Gucci flying high with Gucci yeah it's a good fashion collab I mean it's a bit much some of the the things are a bit much but his art for it's really good and it's all based on like uh stone ocean and you know it's oh god I yeah I love I love the evolution of fashion throughout Jojo because the the outfits become more and more outlandish and they're all designed around like the printed page and, you know, a mangaka with a lot of assistants who can help him draw really meticulous stuff. And every time a new character shows up and, you know, you see them on

the page, you just think this is going to be hell, absolute hell for David's productions to animate. Like, how do you, how do you translate these complex patterns? Like, you know, Jolene basically has Spider-Man's webbing on her outfit. And then, you know, in some scenes, she's wearing like this transparent, uh, mesh kind of skirt, but it's like this huge mesh. It's like, you know, oversized wicker or something. And you can, you know, see her, her bodies form through it. Like, just trying to animate that on screen must have been hell. I don't think they could have done Jojo before digital animation techniques became widely available. It just seems impossible to translate Iraqi's art style. Just because of his, his love for, you know,

you know, fashion runway type outfits that no one would actually wear in real life, but just look really freaking cool when people are fighting and posing wearing those outfits. Yeah, like the detail is absolutely insane. Like, the amount of work that goes into every single panel is like jaw dropping. And like, it's similar to like the level and density of detail of Junji Ito's work. You know, speaking of, you know, someone that can't get a fucking anime adaptation that's half good. And it's largely because, like, you draw too good and it's too hard to animate. So it's kind of a miracle that David Productions can do any of this.

I wish people would stop trying with Berserk. No, also, I have to take this moment in this episode very briefly to say, fuck Netflix. I hate them so much for what they'd done to my girl. For people who don't know, this is maybe only an American Western thing. like, yeah, Jojo was a weekly show in America when it was like being brought over on like Crunchyroll and stuff. So everyone was like, yeah, I'll watch this once a week. And then goddamn Netflix fucking swooped in and was like, hey, what if we did our Netflix stuff to it with our Netflix things?

And they just ruined the vibe. They ruined the energy of like, all right, we're dropping the, like, and I had no, it was impossible for them to communicate it because they had so like a preexisting show. It's very popular. So like the release schedule in Japan as it related to America was confusing where it's like, okay, you're dropping 12 episodes at a time in these like big discrete chunks that are really not good for PR. But then also it has to have a Japanese release schedule. And it like completely did over the one arc that like kind of needs a little bit of love because it's like, you know, it's it's fraught, but it's everyone's it's, I don't know. I don't know a single lesbian who's a Jojo fan who's not just like a ride or this is my girl. Don't, don't mess with her. She deserves better. They did a terrible job with

the pacing of it. Like, it was, it was like nine months between chunk one and chunk two and then two months between chunks two and three. And I didn't even know the final section was out until I saw you tweeting about it, Chris. I was like, what that, what in God's name? Yeah. Like, what? It's here now, huh? Netflix was terrible. And also, their, their localizations. There's sometimes not great. I mean, compared to the Blu-Rays that have come out, which have really good solid localizations and subtitling, you know, even they even have like their own subtitles for the back episodes of JoJo that are distinct from the Blu-ray localizations. And they're, it's just like, hey, you should have an editor look at this to, you know, make it more natural sounding and make things coherent instead of doing kind of the straight translation. Anyway, it's disappointing. But I still really enjoy Stone Ocean, despite Netflix really fumbling it. I have exactly one, well, I guess two Jojo collectibles, and they are Jolene and Stone Free, just, you know, Figma figures, because she rules. She's great. She's awesome. I don't have a Jolene yet, but we have a lot of the other folks. And my favorite Jojo personally is young Joseph because he's basically like,

What if Bugs Bunny was really hot? And like, that's the perfect man. Oh, my God. He's so cool. He's, I think, he's like my favorite Jojo, I think. Oh, he's amazing. Also, I had one piece of Jojo paraphernalia, which was, a, oh, God, one of the boys from Golden Wind, and I got it from a UFO catcher in Japan,

which is to say I was trying to do that. And then, like, some child who, like, spoke English, like, seemed like an American army brat kind of situation came over and was like, yeah, do you want that? I know how to get that. I get, I have like three of them. They're fine. You know what I mean? And so immediately just one quartered it. And because you can do that with UFO catchers. UFO catchers are fair and just. They're a little more fucking fair, yeah, but there's different tricks to do. I've subscribed to YouTube channels about all the tricks you can do with UFO catchers. I went to the same Mitzua, not again, and they have UFO catchers there, and they're UFO catchers that have been trained to, like, work like American Claw

games because it's New Jersey. And it's like, why are you doing this to me? That's a cruelty. That's like making a dog a cop. Hey, I like tell concerto. Yeah. So, yeah, back to kind of the fundamentals of Jojo. I mentioned that every Jojo chapter arc has its own protagonist named Jojo. There are characters that carry over from one to the other. Jotaro from the protagonist of the third chapter kind of becomes a mainstate throughout the series.

And I think he shows up at some point. point in some respect in every part up through the end of Stone Ocean. So that's part, what, six? Yep. But each one takes place in a different country, in a different time. So you start with Phantom Blood in Victorian England. I mean, they even fight Jack the Ripper at one point. And then it jumps ahead to World War II, or like the, you know, kind of the early,

early days of World War II, where things are happening that, um, are so dire that even the Nazis kind of help out and are kind of good guys-ish. Yeah. Anyway, we don't like talking about Strowheim. Yeah. I will say that I do appreciate the fact

that when Stroheim's character is reprised to a certain degree in some of the more recent stories, he just disappears straight away. They just get rid of them. So that's good. No cool, bro. You're a good guy, Nazi fellow.

Yeah, we don't need that in the world. The only cool thing about him is that he's, like, done monstrous things to his body. Like, you know, it's just like the only, the only thing you're like, yeah, he's like some, like, weird Indiana Jones style, like thing. It's just he's jient be empathic. Something that, like, Iraqi does very, very often is, uh, making enemies into friends. And, you know, and this Nazi guy was introduced as the most evil fuck alive. And then, like, two episodes later, it's like, oh, he's cool. It's like, no, he's not.

Stop it. It's a Nazi. Yeah, that one didn't work out so well. But then we jump ahead 40 years or so to the third chapter, Starters Crusaders, which is set pretty much contemporarily to when the manga was published. It begins in 1987. And I think the manga itself, the chapter started in 1989. So it was almost current. And so that takes place.

It starts in Japan, but then mostly takes. place. There's a journey and ends up in Egypt. And so then chapter four takes place a few years after that. I guess like how many years after that would that be? Like 15-ish? 10 years later, it's 1999. Okay. Oh, that's right. It's right at the end of the millennium, the end of the cycle. And that takes place in a small city in Japan. The fifth chapter takes place across Italy. it's a road trip. It's kind of like Final Fantasy 15, basically. It is Final Fantasy 15. Final Fantasy 15 is like, hey, what if we did Golden Wind? But everyone wore kind of boring black outfits. But yeah, it's basically the same thing. And then Part 6, Stone Ocean takes place in Florida, mostly in a prison, but also at Cape Canaveral. And one thing that I really love about Stone Ocean is that it just leans into the fact that it's set in Florida. You know, I mean, besides the whole American corrective system, correctional system, and swamps with alligators, so many of the enemies and the powers and even the main storyline have to do with astrophysics. You know, there's like a dude who can summon meteors to smash into people from outer space, micrometeorites.

And gravity, like the, you know, the lensing effect of gravity is kind of like the core story element. But there's also a guy who can create zero gravity and, you know, it works with all the physics and the weirdness around zero gravity on Earth. It's great. Like, Iraqi really just, like, leaned into the nature and the location of the setting. But then they're also driving. Disney characters that come to life. Exactly.

Disney, yeah. They're driving through Orlando. It's like, oh, what if cartoon characters came to life? And what if, you know, what if they came to life all over the world? What if this was the single most powerful stand imaginable? except it has one major loophole that can be completely undo everything and the loophole is Calvin Ball

That's right I think everything is just made up as it goes The Calvin Ball element is so cool Because like Iraqi like doesn't want to do anything He doesn't want to do And I think that's what I respect about him so much Is he'll just like throw the invisible baby out

With the bathwater and just be like Yeah I don't want to do that anymore And like that's the most powerful thing you can do as a creator of nerd stuff is to say yeah that doesn't matter all that stuff you cared about I don't care much anymore it's not it's I don't I don't want to do that anymore uh half I want to forgot was like in golden wind being like oh yeah he can make uh his powers is you make a animal things into animals and if you hit the animal it will deal damage back to the person and then he's like I don't want to do that maybe he'll just give him healing powers okay

yeah like he stops that after like episode two and never uses that again It's used once and then he retcons it out and they keep that in the show, which is the correct. You know, it's cool for one episode. It's great because I never even thought about that because it just, it happens with such confidence and such finality. It's just like, this is how it is now. So at no point did I ever stop and think, oh, wait a minute, that's not how that's supposed to work.

That's just how it works now. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if like what you do makes sense. If you do it with confidence, it will always work. It will just be like, yeah, what are you going to do about it? You go on a Wikipedia. That is true. But, like, at the same time, Golden Wind is probably my least favorite arc because

it is so Calvin Ball with it. Like, I can't keep track of who's capable of doing what at a certain point because they keep changing the requiems at the end. It really, it's all over the place. God, like, ugh. I love Golden, I love Golden, I love Golden Wing a lot. I wish I liked it more. I understand.

I feel that way about, um, about Diamond is unbreakable. I love that one. I know. I like parts of it. But I think that, yeah, anyway, so the one thing I will say is that was responsible for my, like, biggest, like, hold the phone moment, which is, wait, where is he hiding? Oh, wait. He's hiding between the other boat. Yeah.

He, he, he, he, he wrapped a boat in another boat. We got boats all the way down. Yeah, it's, it's the exhibit of stands. It's so cool. I was like, I, like, it took me a while to, like, figure that out. There's, he goes so far into that. that he has to, like, like, obviously, like, how does King Crimson work is a big one? I believe you mean Emperor Crimson, because King Crimson is a band, sir.

Don't want any legal action there. Although it's weird because the guy from King Crimson started sharing memes because everyone kept tagging them in. And he was like, he's like, he's like sharing Jocho memes about it. And it's like, yeah, like, are you talking about Robert Fripp, like the guitarist? I think it was Fripp. Yeah, I think it was Fripp. He's such a weird dude that I can see him either being like super dower about. about that or, like, super into it. He and his wife do these, like, these recordings, these videos every Sunday that they

started during the pandemic, where he just, like, plays guitar and she sings, and they're always dressed up in weird outfits, and it's just like the two of them, you know, they're both in, like, their 70s, just farting around in their kitchen with weird music in the, every Sunday. And so, yeah, he's, he's like super dower, but he also has a sense. of humor. So I can see him being like into Jojo, even if he doesn't really get it. That's cool. Yeah. No, it definitely had this, had the like the vibe of like my, my nephews. Keep DM, tagging me this on Facebook. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

It was just King Crimson came up, so I had to talk about King Crimson. Yeah, I know. It's cool. Well, no, it's endemic of like, oh, maybe I pushed that a little far. And he doesn't learn his lesson at all. In fact, he does the opposite. He gets worse. I got worse.

And, yeah, just like, I don't know, like, I don't know how spoilery, especially now you want to get. But, like, what happens after Stone Ocean is really cool. I like the end of Stone Ocean a lot I know some people don't I love it. Enemy of mine no No it's a cool thing to do because you know what He was his he loves doing it He's like no this is my choice

I get to do this I can take the ball and go home I can do whatever I want with the series And it creates a refreshing change of pace In the series as a result Yep yep I took your toys I'm going home we won't say what happens As soon as I've finished watching Stone Ocean

I immediately hunted down Scansulations of Steel Ball Run the next chapter because I was like, how does he follow this up? I don't understand how this could work. And I've been really good about not spoiling myself on anything. So I genuinely had no idea. I was like, maybe this is like going to go totally off the rails. And it took me a little while to get into Steel Ball Run just because it starts out really differently and no one has any stands. But about a quarter of the way into it, I started to realize what the the key premise behind the race that is the kind of central element of the plot is. And I thought, is he really doing this? And then I started to realize who the main

villain is. And I thought, is he really doing this? And reader, sorry, listener, he did indeed do this. He just went for it. And I mean, I've read that there are some doubts as to whether they can, like, translate steelball run into anime because of all the horses involved. It's a horse race. But the fact that it just seems carefully calculated to piss off conservative Americans on every possible level, that's even a bigger roadblock for me. Like, how are they going to get over this stumbling? No, no one's told me this about this arc. The only thing I know is that there's horses. Yeah, no. Just, you know, okay, so I'll say this much. Stillball run. run kind of sounds like cannonball run for a reason, but it's as weird as you would expect from

Jojo's Bazaar Adventure and just it's set in America and it makes the most of that fact. That's all I really want to say because I want you to go into it fresh. I want everyone listening to this who hasn't tracked down illegally uploaded, translated versions of it should be able to experience it fresh. but by the end of it, I was like, okay, you know, what happened at the end of Stone Ocean? I'm cool with that because this was an interesting and a surprising direction for the series and I'm on board. Although I am a third of the way into Jojolian or Jojolian now. And I'm still not quite clicking with me, but I'm hoping it does at some point. But Jojolian also has my favorite art. I think his art got better. I think he's a patently better artist now as like time goes on. Not for dogs, but like, you know, know um his dogs are so jacked up wrong i love his dogs i love the dogs i like the way iggy goes from being like a dog to like a dog with a human's face as his character evolves or even just like you know the meme like where he like he stopped like you know jojo like you know his dog in the first

bark is just a fully formed normal dog and then then you have um you know uh iggy and then there's just the third dog that he draws, which is just like, it looks like a stick figure. It's like he's just stopped knowing how to draw dogs. Like he's not, we're being interested in knowing how to draw dogs, I think is more accurate to say. So he min-maxed his skills and he traded his dog drawing skills for everything else. Fashioned. Yeah. The diamond. What is that called? I always want to know the fighting game diamond. Is there a word for that? I've never been able to look that up. But every time you see a stand and its power, it's like, S, D, you know, like that.

And it's like, yeah, the graphs, the graphs where it's like range, range and skill and, like, destructive power and adaptability. And, yeah, it's, it's a, the, I think one of them is potential. The dance dance revolution chart. Yeah. But, but, like, is he the point zero at that? Like, is he the one who did that? Or was that stuff that existed in fighting games? And I'm just like, because I've never been able to look that up because I don't know what it's called.

I see them everywhere. I think it's just a Japanese trend. I mean, I literally, what, a few weeks ago, I was in Okinawa, and I played with a, of all things, I played with this computer sensor that was supposed to, like, judge your fitness. And it was, it was running on connect, because, of course, it was running on connect. And, you know, they gave me a printout, and it's like, they gave me a printout chart. And it's like, oh, here's what, here's your chart. And I'm like, I've got, I've got S's and B's and, wait, I'm supposed to go rock climbing now?

What do you want me to do with this information? Yeah. I don't know what it's called, but I hope he invented it. But I would believe it was invented by like, I don't know, something in the, you know, in like the 70s or something. I do want to talk about author's notes or does anyone know, everyone knows the author's notes. Yeah, they're on the, they're usually in the back of the books. Yeah. Yeah, they're cool.

This is where you see his brain unadulterated. And if you've never read the manga, I urge you to just go through the Wikipedia, the wiki for the author's notes. In particular, uh, trees. Steel Ball Run, Volume 19. Heads up to all the young people out there. Stop climbing trees as soon as you read this. However, ignoring my friendly wisdom is even more dangerous. Policemen are already looking for you,

especially throughout the Tokyo City Center. I know, I know, climbing trees is just too damn cool to give up. But consider the following. The moment you relinquish your tree climbing desires is the moment you avoid falling on your ass and looking like a complete buffoon stuck in the hospital, dislocating your pelvis, scraping your knees or kicking the bucket

can be just the beginning furthermore your mental health comes in question the second your foot encounters bark now a special message to any of you crazies reading this advice while hanging on on a tree branch return to earth I understand you wish to defy gravity and the natural order of the entire planet

but climbing trees is the wrong way to do it hopefully this message inspires every one of you to come to your senses and discover a newfound respect for your own well-being This sounds like a monologue from Father Pucci. He talks like that. That's his brain. His brain's like that.

He's like, who thinks like that? And then you see, like, he gives a little note at the end to just let you know that that's how he talks. It's like... He's like a human Wikipedia page, like a random Wikipedia page. So cool. With just a cascade of notes that you can click onto the tab to see. Like, this needs clean up. You know, Jess, it's funny.

You should mention that, Jess, because. really, if you look at Stone Ocean, which debuted in 2000, it's like he was definitely writing Stone Ocean during like the time when Wikipedia started. And you can see how some of the villains and stands in that era very much have a

I was up late, watching Wikipedia tonight and I've read all about rods and now we're, I've given, I've made a stand about rods and here's a stand that deals entirely with, you know, plane crashes and I think maybe I would, maybe he was watching Millennium, the Canadian is science fiction

film. I don't know about that one, but it's like, I, I, well, the Lingoliers, maybe. He kind of, he kind of gives away the game with Rohan. Like, Rohan tells you straight up, like, you have to, like, when he eats the, he does the thing with the beetle where he's like, it's really important that if you are a manga, you know as much about Beatles as possible. You know, like, he says this stuff. He's like, he's like, the thing you can know the, dude, to be a great artist and great storyteller is know a lot of stuff to an obscene detail. And that's true for him. It's true for him. He loves putting needless, extraneous details into it, and it gives the story texture. It's all texture. It's nothing but texture. And that's why he's cool. And that's why he told us with his insert

character, like, yeah, this guy, like, loves knowing stuff and then putting it in there. Human Wikipedia whole. So cool. We're going to be able to be able to be. I'm going to be. I also, I love the, that's one thing I do love is that, and it's, it's so, it only, it only gets stronger and stronger as, as the story goes on, but even in the, even the first part, when you've got, you know, you've got Jonathan, you got Dio, and just, you know, Dio summons these two random nights. It's like, okay, we're going to have these two tough guys. And yeah, of course, they're, they're named after famous museum, what is it, Bruford and Tartis? Yeah, Tarkas and Bruckus. Right. And it's like, in any other manga, you would just have these two guys show up, and they'd be strong. strong, you know, they'd have a special power, but they'd, they would just, they would just be strong.

But it's like, no, no, no, I need you to, I need you to understand that these two knights used to work for this queen a hundred years ago, and they, they served for her until she was killed. And then they pledged her, didn't they serve Mary Queen of Scots? Yeah, yeah. But I'm just saying, you get this entire backstory for these two guys just because Iraqi wanted them to have some depth. You know what I mean?

And he keeps doing this again and again and again. And, you know, that's why in part two, you got the Pillar Man, and it's like, at one point, it's like, okay, I need to understand that the Pillar Man are hundreds of thousands of years old, you know. And then you've got Dio, and Dio has, you know, their entire chapters where Dio is just hanging out and reading books. And, you know, he's in the library. And that even ended up being a trouble one point because, and this is the weirdest thing of all, I don't even think it's in the manga, but in the OVA of all things, in the OVA, they decided, oh, Dio's hang out in Cairo. What if we have Dio read the Koran? Oops. That got people angry.

That got the show temporarily pulled from shelves so they could write it out. And that's why if you look at like modern versions of Starz Crusaders versus like the original manga version, they took out some of the minuets in the background to make it look less Arabian or whatever just because they were worried about offending people. But it's like all that sprung from one guy decided to make, decide to put a Koran in Dio's hand just because, oh. But it's like, it's just, it's just a weird thing that was just someone put in there. He would read the Koran, too. Of course you'd read it. Yeah. It's totally in character.

But also, didn't that happen? That also happened to, um, Akkraine of time. Yep. Oh, yes. That's true. The, uh, the prayer chance. I mean, that's, that's, I think that's a little more severe. Yeah.

And there was also, um, what was that other, the fighting game that just was like completely killed? It was, oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, yeah. There's, um, the, if you want to go down a really big rabbit hole of

side note, look up the CD that's sampled from, because it's like a, now that's what I call sampling volume four. And it's where like all of jet set radio is sampled for, most of DDR and then like a handful of other stuff. It's a while you'll go through and you'll look at the YouTube timestamps and everyone's like, DDR Mix 2, Jet Set Radio, like if you've ever seen a serial experiment lane for some reason where it's like, Viva, Viva, la revolution, you know, just like these like weird movie clips and stuff like that.

But yeah, then they had one part where it's like, oh, here. Here's the one, like, prayer that, like, got eight video games pulled over the period of time because everyone was just using this and was like, oh, we can't put Muslim stuff in this because that's offensive. It's a pretty sacred, you know, it's just really funny. Yeah, I mean, like I recently created a video that talked about Muslim holidays. And I thought, oh, it'd be good to get some footage in there of, like, people celebrating. But then I thought, actually, that might have been some people. So I'm not going to do it. do that. And yeah, you have to be respectful of other cultures for sure. And I think, you know,

as worldly, like just global as Jojo's bizarre adventure is and all the different concepts that Iraqi pulls from, you know, I feel like there's that there's always that danger. And again, steel ball run, going to be wild when that hits Netflix or whatever. We're ready for it. So like something that like Japanese creators, uh, to have a tendency towards, at least like historically, is that, like, remixing other cultures stuff just because they think it's cool, like, you know, Evangelion has, like, all of this Christian iconography all over it. Yes, yes, yes. And it's, like, you know, you can obviously, like, a lot of that stuff comes with a ton of, like, baggage and meaning. But sometimes, like, Japanese creators are just like, I just thought it looked cool.

I don't know. Like, there's Kabbalah stuff in Silent Hill, too, in, like, the textures on the wall of a bathroom. And it's like, what? Why? Because they thought it looked cool. There's built-in lore with that stuff. You don't even have to write anything. It's just like, hey, I found some cool stuff in another culture.

And there's all this other stuff that goes with it. So I'm just going to build on that. And as a result, it's like, hey, man, you shouldn't do that, though. That's someone's called your dog. It is sort of like whenever you go through Japan and you see, like, a place that's just called, like, uh, ganja weed. You'll, like, see a store. You'll just see like a reggae store in Japan.

And it's, like, called like, you know, cannabis plus or something. and it's just like, everybody there has dreadlocks, and it's like, no, but weed is super illegal here. It's just like, it's, it's, it's this like, I see this thing out of context and I'm going to incorporate in my life, which to be fair, America now does with anime. We just, and we have done that needlessly many times. I mean, we've had Gwen Stefani for 20 years, so, yeah, it's fair. And, you know, even before that, you had girlfriend. So, so Diamond earlier, you mentioned something about the, the way Araki likes to, build backstory into even minor characters and villains. And one of my favorite things about

the entire JoJo franchise series is the way he increasingly humanizes the main antagonist of each arc so that they're not, like they're, they have amazing powers and they have ambition and they know how to use those powers toward their ambition, but they're not invincible. And there's, there's a tendency midway through an arc for, the villain to find themselves backed into a seemingly impossible corner and be forced to improvise and, you know, basically rewrite their entire plan. You know, you saw that with, in Golden Wind, with Emperor Crimson, King Crimson, kind of being confronted much sooner than he expected and being forced to rethink his strategies. And especially with Diamond as

Unbreakable with Kira, basically becoming someone new because he almost got killed by the protagonists in a big fight. And I think that's great because, one, it makes the villains a lot more, I wouldn't say relatable, but just more grounded. Like, hey, these are also people. They're not like cosmic forces. I mean, Dio, the Pillarmen, those were like cosmic forces. But everyone else is still, just a person trying to realize their desires, their ambitions with uncanny powers, but not infallibly. And it also gives the protagonist a chance to kind of show like, hey, you know, we are, we're like in this. And we, you know, when we ultimately win at the end, it's not some sort of ass pole. Like you've kind of seen that there's been some groundwork laid for it. But it also gives a chance for the villain to show their, you know, their skills and their cannyness and improvise the same way the protagonists do. And it kind of levels everything and makes for a much more interesting storyline and, you know, just a narrative. The Part 4 stuff is really impressive to me because really he's writing that in the early 90s

and like serial killers are baked. Like, okay, I'm going to make my bad guy serial killer. Okay, fine. But what he does is he takes this character and he gives you so much information about this guy we literally see his childhood home we see how he grew up we meet his dad his dad's a ghost in a in a photograph you know it's like okay i'm sorry i have to i have to interject uh my favorite element of kira's whole backstory is his weird erotic coming of age yeah the mona lisa the mona lisa thing because i am almost entirely certain that is just taken from mishima's life If you've ever seen the movie Mishima, there's a depiction of him coming to his, like, own as erotically by looking at a painting of St. Sebastian. And so it's like, oh, he did that, but with like Mona Lisa's hands.

And that's like such a cool. He's like, all right, let's put this random, see those random detail about Mishima being horny when he's like 13 into this character. And that's why he's cool. That's why it's a cool thing to do. Well, I think also once Kira kind of gets reset, it draws pretty heavily from American Psycho, doesn't it? Yeah. Like, just kind of like putting him into this suburban life as a seemingly normal person who also has this secret life that is extremely messed up and horrible. But his wife is thriving.

Yeah. She's doing great. She's really into serial murder version. That's the best part is that like he like does this like, he like steal. this guy's identity and like he's kind of a good husband he's kind of like he's kind of know his wife's like I've never been more attracted to you if he had only been able to like figure out how to make it work it would have been messed up but you know they would have been happy that's one of the beautiful things about that story is the fact that unlike a lot of villains and I say this before and

since cure is sort of unique and that he doesn't he doesn't really want anything other than killing he he wants to keep killing people and doing his thing that's all he wants like He has a whole speech where it's like, all I want to do is live a quiet life. I don't want to have any thrills. I don't want to have any despair. I just want to keep living my life and you people are interrupting me. And it's like, well, yes, because you're killing people. You can't do that.

But it's like other people are like, they've got vague notions about, you know, Dio clearly wants to rule, I don't know about humanity, but he wants to rule something. You know, Pucci, I think Pucci is a fascinating character who's got a lot going for him. But he also wants to like take over humanity. and take us all to heaven. Like, it's a very, it's a very strange. You kind of understand it, but it also, it's a big, he's got big visions. I mean, uh, Diavolo, I swear to God, I don't know what Diablo wants, which is kind of

the weirdest part of part five. I don't know what he wants, but I know he's, he's incredibly powerful and he's got King Grimson, which is this incredible stand. I think he just wants to stay on top of the mafia, basically, to, you know, to maintain his power. Yeah. Like, he wants to erase. Just keep that. That's right.

He views, that's right, he's got a whole thing about anonymity. He views anonymity as some sort of superpower, and he wants to destroy anything that could possibly give away his identity, including his own goddamn child, which makes him a monster. I just, I just gave it away. I'm, I'm in trouble now. No, I do, that Diablo actually really like, I do think he is Kira Vitu in a slightly less interesting way, although I do love the relationship. We won't say what to how he communicates with the outside world. that is one of my favorite details of any character arc is how it is because you know he has to be anonymous how does he be anonymous how does he communicate outside with the outside world it's very funny it's it's one of the coolest and it creates this like needless like and there's a tension with like with kira about like i want to be alone but i also want to be a killer it's like the same thing it's like i want to be the mafia boss but i have to be anonymous otherwise my life is in danger and if i have this advantage nobody in combination with my stand no Nobody can ever get me.

And, like, the tension there is actually really good for me. It's just a slightly weaker version of what Kira is because it scaled differently. It scaled like a traditional Jojo arc instead of a diamond, which I respect the most, I think. Which leads to that incredible sort of storyline where you have two villains fighting each other in Golden Win, and you're like, wait, these are both villains. But it's like, the story almost puts you in the shoes in one of the villains, like, oh, I kind of want this guy. a win in this situation because the other one's like a straight up killer but it's like no but they're both fighting each other it's it's such a it's such a great story and it's uh that's definitely one of the bits that i think is animated so well and it gives both characters they even i think when they

when they run animating it they even give one of the characters even more backstory and more storyline that he doesn't have in the manga and it sort of gives it puts the situation like oh my god these characters are both really cool but they're both terrible and they both kill people but I kind of want this one to win. Maybe this one wants to win. And, of course, because anime at that point, everyone on Twitter is like, I want to sleep with both these men. I don't care.

It's like, daddy, daddy. Like, everyone's just doing daddy stuff on Twitter. It's like, oh, geez. So we are nearly an hour and a half into this episode. We are not going to be able to talk about the video games based on Jojo's bizarre adventure and do them justice. So there will be a second Jojo episode. You know, to make this still relevant to Retronauts, a video game podcast, I would like to talk about the influences upon Jojo and the influence that Jojo had upon video games. So, I mean, if you look back, I really think you start to see the influence of video games in Stardust Crusaders, which, you know, began in 1989 at that point.

The Japanese market is just dominated by Famicom. And, you know, there is a contest in Stardust Crusaders. that revolves around video games, including one called, oh, that's a baseball. Love, oh, that's a baseball so much. I mean, it's kind of a conflation of super NES and NES, but the trends there are definitely on point. But really, the video game influence I see in Starters Crusaders is just the entire dragon questness of the entire journey, where you start out as Jotaro, and he gets his question. quest to save someone, in this case his mom. And along the way, he meets people, he fights people.

Some of the people become his friends after he fights with him. They join his party. And they travel across the world on boats, on airplanes, eventually journeying to the final boss who has quite a few super bosses in his final layer. And one of them is named Vanilla Ice. whole thing is just it is just straight dragon quest four honestly i think i think you should also mention that um i mean aside from the fact that the joe star family is independently wealthy from jump uh the element that kind of uh allows for like allows for this like extravagant travel is the fact that like they got oil money real real early and uh particularly we're like as it relates to uh their good friend uh robert edward o speed wagon and his band

The Speedwagon Foundation. And so it's just this sort of thing where like, okay, they're just like the family is like really, really good wealthy money. Like they have like standard oil money and they use that to like okay, now you have a submarine.

It mostly it manifests in star dust but like bits of it come up up through Stone Ocean where they're just like, all right, now you got now you got like a weird Yeah, here's a pigeon. Yeah, here's a pigeon. And it's basically like they have their own, the CIA.

We used to have a bigger budget, but now we just send pigeons to do things. Yeah. Yeah, they just like, well, you know, times are tough. What with renewables. It's interesting because the Speedwagon Foundation, they kind of, like, they always talk about it like their affiliates, like, oh, yeah, we have a good relationship with them. Not so much that they are, like, part of the Speedwagon Foundation. It's a little, it's a little abstract what the relationship there is. But yes, you're right. They have, I believe the term is a shit ton of cash.

Yeah. Although it's funny because they're also like, environmental conservation. Like, they're like, oh, we love medical research and environmental conservation. We're based on oil money, which is like, oh, yeah, that's pretty accurate. Yeah, it's pretty accurate. Yeah. So anyway, video games, I feel really started to influence the series with Stardust Crusaders, and it's very natural that Sardust Crusaders was the first arc to be turned into a direct

video game adaptation, if I'm not mistaken, like to just, you know, take the whole storyline and turn it into a video game because it is extremely an RPG. But then in turn, you know, because of the popularity of Jojo's Bazaar Adventure, it has become extraordinarily influential on video games themselves. And really, the thing that kind of got me to even check out Jojo's Bizar Adventure and, you know, watch and read it was Diamond constantly talking about how everything is Jojo. Like everything, like, you were always talking about how everything is Jojo. Like, it's just this massive influence. So I don't know if that's something you want to talk about Because it feels like it's a very important point to you.

I think what I'm reminded of is, you know, a few years ago when David Bowie passed away and you saw sort of this outpouring of emotion from people online. And it's like, I got this impression where it's like I didn't really, I was never that into David Bowie. But almost every musician or artist or actor or anybody loved him. So it's like he was this creative force that influenced like generation. of creative people, and I feel like that's what Iraqi and Jojo has done, but they were doing it mostly in Japan for a long time. And it's like, everyone who made video games in Japan loved Jojo, and some of them made explicit references to it, and some of it just sort of made

subtle references to it, and it just sort of cast this shadow over just decades of stuff, and it goes from little stuff to big stuff, and especially it's just timing-wise, you know, When fighting games blew up in the 90s, it matched so closely with how, with Stardish Crusaders and how Jojo went from a popular manga to a really popular manga. And you can just see there's just so many fighting games, so many fighting game characters and fighting game special moves and fighting game concepts just seem to come directly out of little things in Joja. Like the fact that, the fact that Dalseem can stretch his limbs, like, well, geez, that's the Hamon guys are doing that. in the very beginning of Jojo and... No, that one specifically, no. That's Master of the Flying Geotene.

Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry. Sorry, not to objection you. I normally agree. Maybe it was in that, but, like, I know Master of the Flying Geotene, like, has a guy who does that. Okay. Do I have a correct piece of trivia here, or is it an incorrect piece of trivia? Isn't Gile based off of Stroheim?

He looks exactly like Stroheim. Although some people say he's like Polner-F, but they took the hair instead of make it tall, they made it wide. But if you look at the picture, if you look at Storheim and you look at Gile, like, they've got the same flat top and they're both blonde. I really think it's a one-to-one in that, in that. But then, of course, you've got other games with small, not just popular games, but like World Heroes, World Heroes, Strip has a robotic Nazi. It's like, yeah, they just decided to make a robot Nazi in that game. They also have a character named Dio who looks like cars. He's got the jewel in his head.

It's like, yeah, it's just. Also dark stalkers. Well, you know, I mean, you look at S&K's entire catalog of fighting game characters, and all of them are super fashionable and like to pose. They are much more, I see a lot more of Jojo in King of Fighters than I do in Street Fighter, to be honest. I mean, Ben Amaro is straight at Polon Ruff. There's not even a veil of secrecy over that. That's just, you know, he's got, he's got the clothes. He's got the hair and the clothes.

He looks just like Bolner F. As someone who is probably the least familiar with fighting games here, my point of reference here is one of the most recent Jojo references to be in a video game. Hi-Fi Rush has a character, a boss character that is fucking hilarious, but he is a Jojo character. He is doing the poses on purpose. Like, it is the poses that are very famous from Jojo. And he does, like, all these goofy things. But one of them is he says, like, let's give it a go, go, go.

and he does three different poses and the katakana shows up next to him, go, go, go, go, go, go, which is something that is like so intrinsically Jojo bullshit, the menacing sound effect katakana coming up. He's like, he's like Jojo, he's like Jojo by way of like the Venture Brothers. You know, yeah, actually. He looks a lot like butterfly guy. I forget his name. My, my sweet. Yes. The monarch?

The Monarch, yes. The mighty monarch. So I also feel like when you look at Stans, We kind of explained them earlier, but the important thing to know is that when people fight in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, they're often not fighting themselves. They're usually summoning forth their stand. And especially when the Jojo's themselves fight, they all have kind of a commonality in that their stands tend to have short range and be extremely fast. So usually, you know, the climactic blow for any battle where a Jojo's involved is that they summon their stand, whether it's Star Platinum or Stone Free or whatever, and they just unleash a flurry of infinite punches while shouting, Oro, Oro, Oro, Oro, that is, you know, the idea of battles by proxy have become extremely common in a lot of role-playing games, not like the Dragon Quest. style of real playing games. But when you look at Pokemon, you are, you're, if Pokemon are basically stands, like you're calling out your Pocstand to do your fighting for you. Mega Man Battle

Network the same way. You know, like you, you play as a kid in the real world, but then when you get into battles, you summon your digital friend Mega Man to, uh, to fight on the battle network and use his battle chips and so forth. Um, you know, I think, I think it was thousand arms. for PlayStation was even more explicit. It's been a while since I've played that. But, you know, like Eunice summons in Final Fantasy 10, or the

Final Fantasy 12 summons also, where you just have like these massive magical creatures fighting for you, as opposed to, you know, you having to fight yourself. That's just become a thing in RPGs and probably some other

kinds of games too, but I'm mostly familiar with RPGs. And so that's kind of my point of reference. And it just, you know, watching Jojo's Bazaar adventure, reading it, I was just like, oh, this is, this is extremely role-playing game. And of course, you have to talk about persona because persona three and four, those are just straight up diamond is unbreakable. Like, at some point, Atlas's creators sat down and said, man, this Mario arc is so good. let's just do this. Let's just like straight up do this

and turn this persona series into Jojo's Bazaar Adventure, the RPG. I, man, I have a mixed feelings about, um, the entire Dutaro arc because it's like, it's definitely the most popular for a reason. Like, that's their Dragon Ball,

the Dragon Ball moment in the series. It's like, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, like, iconic, but it's also way too goddamn long. And it's, it's, it has some amazing episodes in it. but like it ends up being the most like impactful for that reason it's just like this is like the kind of the peak of the series in terms of just impact and then it's just like yeah there's cooler stuff it gets so much better he doesn't like it's just like you know as mentioned earlier like it is the most RPG like it's just like it's got the most it's almost like tabletop RPG it's got the most questy quest to it and I think a lot of people enjoy that a lot whereas like the other arcs it's like oh like the like the like diamond is um breakable like that's more of a mystery story you know and like it goes into these different like genres and then we've got like the prison break story and like a rocky seems to kind of like like floating between these different genres while still making it like definitely a jojo thing

and i just i love all of his influences and i also just love how much he's clearly a nerd for traveling like he wants other people to see what he sees in italy or cairo or all these places he's been. And like, that's so charming to me that clearly, like, a lot of his work just functions as a good, like a Yelp review. Like, I went to Cape Canaveral. Here's how cool it was. He loves Italy. He loves Italy so much. I spent a week and a half in Italy last year, drove from Rome down to Puglia. And I'm like, you know what, Araki? You are correct. This place rules and the food is amazing. But what we're saying about Stardis Crusaders about it being a little too drawn out. To me, it kind of suffers from Mega Man 3 syndrome, where it's like you've got the bosses based on tarot.

Okay, that's fine. But then you beat them all, except the final, you know, the final tarot boss. But wait, now here's the bosses from Mega Man 2 remixed in stages that you've seen before. It's the same kind of thing where you're like, oh, that's a lot to have to deal with. Yeah, it can drag out a bit. But I feel like it has a great payoff. And, you know, like by the time you've spent all this, this journey. journey with the characters. When one of them falls in battle, it's genuinely like heartbreaking.

You're like, no, you can't do this to this character. They deserve better than that, but they got to go out. And, you know, he makes it count. So I feel like it works. I wanted to so quickly bring up, and you could take this out if this is a weird thing to bring up. But did you guys know there was like a fan, not fan fiction. Oh, what's the word when a dogeon? Yes. That was made by clamp. Yes, yes, yes. Just Jotoro and Kakioin having a baby via a big egg. Yep.

I just want to mention the big egg. It's so good. Everyone's so long and clampy. It's so weird to go from like a rocky style to like, here's like the cardcaptor soccer people drawing these lithe boys with their egg child. It's, it's legendary. It's a legendary fan work. And it's funny, it's because, I mean, we've, we've already said the word gay many, many times this episode, and I just, I feel like we need to reinforce the fact that there is, there's so many queer readings to be found in this series. And it's not always explicit, but in some, but there are so many situations where it's like, I don't know how else you can read this, you know?

Yeah, like, Dio, for God's sake, like, in Stardis Crusaders, like, Avdahl, like, when he's talking about, like, Dio and how he met him, he, like, explicitly says that his, like, sexual magnetism was overwhelming and he had to jump out a fucking window. Yep, yep. Like, he's so hot. Yeah, I mean, it's so cool. Yeah, the whole, the whole cast of Part 5 of Golden Wind, like, it just, yeah, it just radiates that. the, you know, the bros on a road trip. And there are, there are characters, secondary characters who are, like, presented as explicitly in gay relationships, which I think was a first for the series where it was like, hey, yes, like, these two men are together. They are an item.

They are a couple. And they're named after pastas or something. The anime leads into that, too. Yeah. The anime absolutely leads into that. Like they, like the, I can't remember the names, Squalo and, and, and, I forget the other guy, but. Tizanio? Yeah, yeah.

Clash and, they're so cool. Yeah, like, those two are definitely, they're together in the manga. There's no doubt about that. And they definitely, you know, they have a, they clearly have a passion. It was like one of them, one of them literally dies for the other one. But it's like, when you watch the cartoon version, they're like stroking to their chests. It's like, it is, they literally turned it up. It's like, no, no, there's a giant dial.

Like, no, we need, we need to make this more gay. Gayer. They're, they're, they're, they're, oh, God. I'm just, yeah, I'm looking at screenshots. Oh, God. They're my favorite couple in the entire, and it's just because they like, they're like hanging out and they're like, there's a weird angle his squalows elbows at and stuff like that. And the other one's hanging out over him, like drinking a cup of water. But like in a way that nobody. They're doing the Jojo poses, but it's two people instead of just one person. That's like a combined. That's the true power couple right there. There's also like this element of like the reasons in which, uh, I know now Jojo's again, TikTok. talk popular or was for a second because the the jojo pose thing like that's that one like somebody did a song i forget a hip-hop artist name uh god i'm spacing out but anyway the song jojo

pose ended up becoming a tic-to dance thing where people are posing for a second and it's just like yeah like the ways in which the series cannot die because it's just it's got something to it that every generation can get out of it i am always so thrilled when my TikTok algorithm remembers I like Jojo and just like thrusts me deeply into Jojo TikTok and I see all of the cosplayers looking dope as fuck and like there's this one Japanese guy, I think he lives in Osaka somewhere, but he is just, he goes around cosplaying Dio and he can do a really good Dio impression. Oh yeah, you've shared those videos. Yeah, he sounds just like Takayasu. I can't remember the actor's name. But yeah, that

Yeah. That voice actor is a big deal in Japan. And yeah, he's one of those guys who, like, you know, kind of like how every comedian in America can do like a Christopher Walken. I think every, I think every young person, I think every cartoon fan in Japan could probably do Takayasu's voice at this point. That like back of the throat semi-nasally but deep voice. It's so interesting. When I was in Japan, oh, Apollo Fresh was the guy, did Jojo Post. Wanted to get that down.

I think I was like watching TV in Japan and it was like I'm sorry no I know I'm sorry I watched 70 ads for like cell phone games and then a couple of well produced ads no and Takito was like Kiyosu was narrating like a documentary about like Italy or something and I was like I'm 99% sure that's Dio's voice you just hear it from like a mile away you're like that's you know I know I know I know I know a fucking deal when I hear it, and that's Dio. All right, we are closing in on my cutoff point for this episode because once again, our guest from Japan probably should get to sleep sometime soon. So I do want to wind down. But like I said, we didn't even touch on the many, many video games that have been created based around the Jojo series. So we will follow up on this episode at some point if all of you are game to talk about them video games. and just how bewildering Jojo's venture was for poor innocent children in America in the year 1999. So weird.

But I do want to say thank you all for taking time out of your Sunday or Monday, as the case may be over in Japan. And yeah, if you have any final thoughts you want to toss in here, we have a few minutes left. And we can also do our, I guess not intros, but outros, tell everyone. where to find you on the internet. So go for it. Chris, as the newcomer. Where can people find you? And what do you, what final thoughts do you have on Jojo for this conversation?

My, my final thought is re. God, that's still my favorite part of, of Deo, his whole deal, is saying that. But you can find me on Highlight Reel on YouTube. I do a game show. it's a lot of clips from the gaming world stuff I find online I go and talk to people and say hey can I put this on the show and they're like go for it

or no or yeah sure why not but you can send in your clips to clips at highlightreel.info or visit submit.hlightreel.com. I'm also now blogging at least for the immediate future I think for like three months. For The Verge

I'm tech blogging. So if you want to see me blog about stuff you can go there or you can follow me on Twitter.com slash Papa Pishu P-A-P-A-P-I-S-H-U I refuse to change my screen name because I think that on some level

you should always have an element of your form self in your current self. I agree. As somebody who still goes by their something awful name on everything else. It's your true name.

It's like in Earth Sea when you find the true name of a thing, you gain its power, but it's like in reverse. Chris, and I just say my children are big highlight real fans. So we often watch the program here in the living room and everyone gets a good laugh out of, you know, some creed, some poor sap who plays the latest triple game and like steps on a rock and their, you know, their limbs flail into the, into the void and just, you know, we're all cackling. So it's, it is. It's not all glitches because I do like when people are good at video games.

Oh, yeah. But when a new game comes out, oh boy, do people, do I go in and try to find every way in which that game breaks? lovingly because that's a good thing about games is that they do fun things like people just will T-post at the wrong time so if you ever have a clip of someone doing that send it to me because I love that shit I love that shit so much it's my favorite thing about video games is when they break it's so good and I'm Jess O'Brien at Voidberger on Twitter and everything else that it basically matters I also recently made a domain a domain name Voidberger.com you can find all my link tree bowls

shit there. But yeah, I'm a video producer, currently looking for a freelancy style work. So if you need something, keep me in mind. Talk to me on Twitter. You know, mingle with me. And my favorite DO thing is Zawarado. It's true. You can take that out if that was lame. Go ahead. No, no, that's fine. We'll just have like five seconds, five frozen seconds of silence there. Yeah, that went well. That one of really good. Drop the sound effecting. It'll be cool. You have to put that there at the end and then just cut the entire podcast out from there.

Is it my turn? Fito, yes. Okay. Hello. I am Diamond Fight. And honestly, I understand that we have to stop talking at some point. But yeah, I can, like I said, I once literally tried to make an entire podcast about Jojo. So I can talk about this subject for hours. But by all means, if you like to to hear me talk about stuff, why don't listen to more of my stuff on Retronauts? Because I write a weekly column and I read the column to you. And that is something I do exclusively for our $5 patrons. So if you go to patreon.com slash retronauts, you get lots of stuff for me. And I've

also been hosting certain episodes. And as Jeremy alluded to earlier, I think we've got some stuff lined up this year that will do more influential stuff that's not necessarily a game topic, but a umbrella topic that touches so many games like Jojo, like Fis the North Star, like, I don't know. I've got Lord of the Rings coming up. Oh, boy. Yeah. I like that term umbrella topic. That makes me feel better about talking about things that aren't explicitly video games.

Thank you. Yeah. I also love Resident Evil, so it's an easy little for me. Hell yeah. Anyway, if we're doing like forum names, I've used the nickname Fight Club for almost 20 years now. F-E-I-T, that's my last name. name. CLEB, it's a word you already know. Fight Club. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, on the internet at places like

retronauts. Hey! Also on my YouTube channel, which is called Jeremy Parrish, making things about video games. And I just tackled an influential work in the form of black belt for Sega Master System, which is actually Hokuto No Ken, just to the North Star. And I got to talk a little bit about that. And I do that sometimes. Sometimes I talk about things that are really crappy and I hate, but I still try to make it interesting. And of course, my day job is at limited run games, writing books and creating content about the video games that they publish and other stuff too. So check that out. Would it be weird? Would it be weird to plug a Jojo podcast that I know? By all means, if there is more context to be gleaned for listeners who are bewildered now

an hour and a half later, please. Yeah, so my fiancé is deep into his own Jojo's Bizarre Adventure podcast. This is actually the normal podcast day for him. So this is a big Jojo day in our household. But if you want to listen to two extremely funny best friends introduce each other to the entirety of the anime Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, you should look up, Dogs Must Die. That is the name of the podcast. Dang.

Because Iraqi doesn't... Harsh but true. Iraqi doesn't like dogs very much. Poor Iggy. You know what? Jess, thank you for reminding me because I also wanted to shout out another podcast that after a long hiatus literally just came back today apparently. So perfect timing. Their podcast is called Jojo's Bizarer Explaner.

And they very explicitly, you know, look at the queer context of the show. They usually go episode by episode, but lately they've been doing manga because they've been talking about Steel Ball Run, which You know, we haven't talked about much, but Steel Ball Run is extremely gay. And besides the fact that they love, you know, Jojo in general, they specifically look at the, the queerness of it and sort of the counterculture aspects to it. And I think all three of the people on the show are themselves some flavor of queer. So I really do recommend going, looking up for Jojo's bizarre explainer. And, you know, they've got plenty episodes you can just go back to and listen to. And they're making new ones.

So good on them. That sounds good as hell. Also good people I follow, at least most of them. Yeah, Simmons, Darius, yeah. And finally, here's your plug for Retronauts, a podcast that I will say has become increasingly gay over the past few years. I'm very happy about that. I don't have anything to do with that, but I, yeah, I am really glad about the direction this show has been taking. So please check us out on your favorite podcast.

podcast platforms, except Spotify, which sucks. You can also subscribe to us on Patreon. That is the main way this podcast is supported financially and allows us to have guests and pay them. It's really cool. Cover art that we pay for because of your support through Patreon. That is patreon.com slash Retronauts. When you subscribe at the basic level, you get every episode a week ahead of the public release. at a higher bitrate quality with no advertisements.

And if you subscribe at the $5 a month or higher level, that's where the good stuff really kicks in. As Diamond mentioned, you get their weekly column and mini podcast. And you also get biweekly exclusive patron-only podcasts about a myriad of topics, myriad topics, I guess either way is acceptable these days. And that is $5 a month at patreon.com slash retronauts. So anyway, this has been the first of possibly many JoJo's Bizarre Adventure episodes here on Retronauts. And the next thing you're going to say is I can't wait to hear more.

Be the round about The words will make you out and out I spent the day your way Call it morning, driving through the sun And in and out of the funny