JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure 10 – FUCK THA POLICE

Not gonna lie: I stood up and clapped at this moment. I loved this whole god damn episode, but fuck me, this sold me 100 percent on “Battle Tendency.” JoJo taking out a Tommy gun and blasting a vampire on a cold night in New York and telling the vamp to go fuck himself for murdering Speedwagon? Yes. YES. YES! Do with me what you will, Joseph Joestar. I am ready.

I’m someone who doesn’t like to raise his expectations sky high before watching something, for various reasons, but I couldn’t help but get hyped up for “Battle Tendency.” So many people have extolled its greatness on Twitter and elsewhere — would it pay off? Well, I can’t speak for the arc as a whole, but based on the first episode, yes, there is plenty of reason to be excited.

The first thing to notice, clearly, is that Joseph Joestar is a different breed of Joestar altogether. Jonathan Joestar is the gentleman bruiser, a polite, gentle young man who resorts to violence only when it’s absolutely necessary. (Of course, being JoJo, it often is absolutely necessary.) Joseph, meanwhile, seems to be more a man of the streets, wild and impulsive, but also smart and in tune with the world in his own way. I find it interesting that the episode goes out of its way to point out that Joseph was raised in Britain, since his behavior seems more in line with the hot-headed American type characters we so often see in anime. But, of course, a hot-headed British badass is fine, too.

And, of course, because it’s 1930s America, segregation is in full force and the cops are racist assholes. (Quick question for anyone who knows more history than me: Would a place that fancy have let Smokey eat in 1930s New York? I doubt that would be the case. My understanding is that appealing to pure economics (“As long as he pays, he eats.”) didn’t happen so often. You were either the “right” type of person, or your money was no good, no matter how much of it you had. But maybe it was different in certain places in New York? Or perhaps the owner is just a nice guy — or he’s truly driven by profit, which is why he’s cool with the Mafia being all over the place, too. Anyway, enough of that tangent! Just a curiosity on my part.) I like seeing that the Joestar crew are firmly anti-racist and not in a way that’s condescending or done to show what great, AMAZING people they are for being so good to the black man. Joseph is just one dude helping another out of a jam. It’s cool.

Also, name alert — Smokey is almost certainly named for Motown legend Smokey Robinson. Will he be the new Speedwagon figure? I like his pluck, and you definitely need a normal sort of fellow to stand around and be amazed about how FUCKING BANANAS the heroes and villains are. And another thing: I’m actually going to be sad that Erina will likely disappear from the story soon! Wow, it took just a single episode for my whole opinion of her to turn around. Evolving into a badass grandma who I could ABSOLUTELY see as a steely mob boss will do that for a gal. And Speedwagon as an oil baron? Capitalism hasn’t been this moe since Kaiji!

Erina, you are the coooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooolest~

Look, people, I’m going to drop any pretense of coherency. There is just too much I enjoyed about this episode. JoJo caving in the face of racist asshole cop. JoJo using the ripple to break the other cop’s finger with a BOTTLE CAP and swigging the drink down afterward. The flashback to the plane hijacking. JoJo predicting every move of the Mafia henchman and then fearlessly destroying the leader. JOJO TOTING A FUCKING TOMMY GUN WITH HIM AND BLASTING A VAMPIRE. (Yes, I know I mentioned that already, but it’s so great that it has to be mentioned again.) And, perhaps most of all, the fact that this is turning into more of a globetrotting adventure. It’s like the evolution from Uncharted to the second game, where it has the grand, globe-spanning setting it probably should have had in the first place. I can’t wait for Joseph to hightail it to Mexico!

One more fun thing before I go, though! There is an amusing anachronism in this episode: In this flashback, Joseph Joestar of the early 1930s is reading a magazine/comic with a Get Smart-based ad on the back. For all of you who are unaware, Get Smart was a 1965-70 comedy series that satirized the secret agent genre that had exploded with the James Bond flicks. It was created by Mel Brooks (yes, that Mel Brooks) and Buck Henry and starred Don Adams, whom I am sure is most well known to you all as the voice of Inspector Gadget. But that’s not all!

Yes, the ad on this episode is based on an actual Get Smart ad! My peek at the manga reveals Joseph was reading a Superman comic, so SOMEONE on the JoJo anime staff is either a Get Smart fan, really into old American advertisements or possibly both! This has no real bearing on anything; I just thought it an interesting detail that caught my eye during the course of the episode.

I have a hard time believing that Straits is gonna be our main bad guy this time around. There’s gotta be a Dio OR THE DIO waiting somewhere in the wings. I might even be disappointed a bit if this is not the case.

Yeah, I don’t think Straits is dead by a long shot (bullets don’t kill vampires!), but I’d bet on that vampire (?) frozen among the masks in Mexico being the main villain, with Straits as an upper-tier mid-boss.

I fucking adored this episode with one caveat: that scene of Jojo drinking his soda should have been accompanied by the music from those infamous 90′s Diet Coke adverts (yeah, I know it hadn’t been invented yet, but whatever!). Just a little something for the ladies.

As someone who has read this part of the manga relatively recently and knew exactly what was going to happen, this adaptation was above and beyond anything my wildest dreams could have conjured. David Production is taking an already-awesome manga and improving on it in every way.

Especially all the artistic flourishes that they took with the lighting and color and texture to give it a very modern-art feel. It’s like they saw Araki’s super-fabulous art and thought, “this isn’t NEARLY fabulous enough.” So they turned it up to twelve and made it even more eye-poppingly stylin’. Not to mention that Part 2 already dialed up the level of JoJo poses from where it was in Part 1, and seeing them brought to life in the anime was delightfully giggle-inducing.

And then Taku Iwasaki’s music came in and melded perfectly together with the wacked-out art style and crazy action and it was just… yes.

Oh right, and also cool things happened in this episode, but I already knew about those from the manga. I will try to refrain talking about the plot because I’ll probably spoil something by mistake.

What I will say is that by this point in the manga, I thought Joseph was a pretty cool guy. But every chapter I’ve read so far has raised the bar on his character even further into the clouds. So believe me when I say, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Just… everything about this adaptation takes the over-the-top manga and makes it even more balls-to-the-wall ridiculous and I am running out of colorful adjectives and I cannot wait to see what happens when things get even more… well… bizarre.

Yep, it’s not the most well animated show, but the art really makes it stand out. It reminds me a lot of the recent Lupin III TV series like that: Even when it was poorly animated, I still loved looking at it because the art was so unique.

“There is an amusing anachronism in this episode: In this flashback, Joseph Joestar of the 1920s is reading a magazine/comic with a Get Smart-based ad”

So it doesnt seem anachronistic to you, that he is reading a comic at all ? Whatever its contents ? Surely there werent any mass-produced comics in the 20′s, all they had then were newspaper strips and the like.

” It was created by Mel Brooks (yes, that Mel Brooks)”

It is very surprising that Mel Brooks, for once, made something that was merely average, and not shit, like most his other stuff is. Zeus, Mel Brooks is a shitty comic/writer.

I’m still not sure where the hell that Tommy Gun came from, but it’s a little difficult to care at this point. Joseph’s introduction is everything I hoped it would be, and can’t wait to see everything else he does get into the anime.

I also find it interesting that more people have enjoyed the Smokey Robinson reference than those who have complained about there being a black character named “Smokey Brown”. I thought for sure that would have been a major complaint.

A giant man must have giant pockets. That’s my explanation for the Tommy gun, and I’m sticking to it!

As for Smokey, did this episode ever make reference to his last name? Maybe the narrator mentioned it … I honestly don’t recall. But just calling him Smokey is an obvious reference to Smokey Robinson, so I didn’t mind it much.

Actually, one thing I do recall about America is that in 1929 they had the Wall Street crash, causing the biggest depression in American history. Things were so bad I don’t think life would be like how it was portrayed in the anime, but then it does lend credence to the restaurant serving anyone as long as they pay, they were desperate times.

As long as they were in the company of Whitey, black folks could eat in non-black establishments in New York. There wasn’t an official “No black folks allowed” policy, but being in the company of a white person made the difference between their soup being either mostly lentils or mostly assorted dubious juices.

Racism in New York was actually one of the most interesting segments of my Race and Ethnicity class.

On the episode itself, the whole thing made me incredibly happy from start to finish.

So yeah, I finally watched it (or finally caught up to Jojo). And yes, I’m still looping the last minute or so with Joseph Joestar, in Gintoki’s (Tomokazu Sugita) voice, pulling out the Tommy Gun and basically about to screw Straits over. Probably. I might need help for this, someone stop me from looping this scene