Jojos Bizarre Adventures S1E1 Television 

Five Thoughts on Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure‘s “Dio the Invader” and “A Letter from the Past”

By | July 10th, 2020
Posted in Television | % Comments

Hello. I have been a fan of the work of Hirohiko Araki since encountering some of the middle chapters of the first “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures” arc in the pages of Shonen Jump way back when. This manga has been around for 30 plus years, running either weekly or monthly. It has spanned across 6 or more generations and spawned a couple of alternate universes in that time. For me, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is a comforting nostalgic body horror action adventure I’m happy to revisit in these chaotic terrifying times. I may be a bit biased, I may may overlook some iffy storytelling in the process of reviewing this, but taken as a whole the animated series, as it stands at the end of the fifth story arc, is an amazing bit of storytelling.

“Dio the Invader” and “A Letter from the Past” are the foundation myth in this horror fueled tale. Two families become bonded because of a horrible accident, the lies of one man and the honor and belief in human nature of another other brings their children and a terrible artifact together. These two young men, thrown together by tragedy and coincidence, become rivals and in their conflict release something vaguely vampireishly evil into their steampunkish world.

1. Ok. Lets get some things out of the way, or let’s tell 19 years of melodrama in about an hour

The people who adapted Hirohiko Araki’s long running story wastes as little time as possible racing to get to the juicier, more exciting parts of the story. “Dio the Invader” starts with the horror show flashback accident that took the life of the hero’s mother and brought the destinies of the Joestar and Brando families together. We are then hit with a montage of scenes that introduce us to our future hero and villain, Jonathan Joestar and Dio. These scenes treat us to the horrible things Dio does to make Jojo’s life hell. Revisiting the manga, I can say they included most of the story, some of it rearranged and a few bits excluded, but overall it’s very faithful. I’m glad the one change from the manga was toning down the terrible thing Dio did to Jojo’s dog, Danny. It’s a terrible moment in the manga that runs well beyond where it need to. We get a season’s worth of story and development pretty much in this one episode. Reading it and watching it several times, these moments do work but the storytelling is a bit abrupt, trope heavy, and heavy handed at times.

2. Adaptation. Adaptation. Adaptation

For those who are fans of the manga and the ever changing, body bending style of Hirohiko Araki, this show is a joy to behold. The team behind the animation is amazingly faithful to the storytelling of Araki and bringing his vision and style choices fully in the screen. I’m really impressed by the animation really capturing my memories of the manga in such vivid detail. The ‘Phantom Blood’ story arc drew a lot of its visual DNA from the martial arts classic “Fist of the North Star” which was still running in Shonen Jump when Jojo started. Those influences are very much part of the animation. David Productions embraced the feel of manga down to layering visual sound effects into the background and foreground, creating a unique feel for the show.

3. Jojo Sono Chido Sadame (translated sometimes to Destiny of that blood)

I’m one of those people who has to watch the opening credits of a show, and this opening is an example of something I occasionally go to watch on its own. The song itself is a great, hard rocking anthem which is particularly suited to Jojo, given the number of characters Araki named after rock bands, singers, and songs across the stories. The credits animators seem to assume its viewers know the story like the backs of their hands, and are thrilled as hell to be telling it. Initially, they throw in animated visions in panel format from future stories getting the attention of the long time fans. The montage of images tells a 3D version of several of the iconic mythic scenes from act 1 in both animation and that flashing panel montage style. Both the images and the music move in a punchy, stylish blood pumping manner. It’s got teeth to it and is easy to fully appropriate.

Continued below

4. Villains or Frenemies

Whether it took a long time setting up Dio as the villain or not, there is no question that Dio is a consciously evil, manipulative sort. He covers it up as best he can, acting the part well enough to fool people, but he is undeniably a bad person. Even when we’re given peeks int his horrible childhood and the abuse he suffered, its hard to justify the cruelty he so easily commits. Had the show taken more time establishing some of the moments, particularly his open clumsy melodramatic lament of his similarity to his drunken lout of a father, it might have not been as glaringly campy. The other bit of cringe-y camp storytelling brings in a long running fixture of the Jojo universe, Robert EO Speedwagon (he’s named after the rock legends much like Dio being named after Ronnie James Dio) In Mighty Shonen Comic fashion, the honor and gentlemanly attitude of the hero wins over one of the men who tries to defeat him. In most battle centric manga/anime, the fight between Jojo and Speedwagon and his gang should have lasted an episode at least but their fight is little more then a couple strike footnote to get us to the next plot point. Araki and the animators at David Productions had no time to fuss about it, as they have bigger fights just on the horizon.

5. Now, the Mask

From the opening accident sequence to the end of the second episode, an ominous stone mask is prominent in the story. The opening credits feature it over and over and over again. It’s more than a McGuffin, it’s the item that really starts this myth off and it deserves its place of prominence. We learn so much about it in “A Letter from the Past” and, oddly, one fact escaped me until this last viewing. It was apparently the property of Jojo’s mother; I don’t think that is ever mentioned again, but it’s a curious fact. The other fact that is really interesting is how, of all people, Dio sees it as simply a torturous method of killing someone and, for him, particularly Jojo. It makes one wonder about the alternate universe where that happened instead of the tragedy that did.

Despite my love for this show and the great stories to come, there is a lot of heavy handed ‘tell over show’ moments in these episodes. If you’re watching this for the first time, it might be a slog but there is so much good storytelling to come.


//TAGS | 2020 Summer TV Binge

Greg Lincoln

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