Crossfire Tusk Emperor! ASB League Groups A and B Full Fights

More than just a highlight reel, here are the full fights for all of ASB League Groups A and B. This is a lot more telling about the progression than the highlights reel, and we get to see more of what the characters can do. Group A is, honestly, a little dry because there are three projectile heavy characters. There are long strings of fights where Johnny will pewpew fingernails, and you’ll hear “Crossfire Hurricane” more often than you’ve ever heard it before. And it’s not even particularly to their advantage. Johnny seems way more dangerous at close range than picking away with Tusk, especially considering how hard Slow Dancer’s bucking hits. That’s good because there was a time I was worried about Johnny being an easy spam character. Bruno put up a good show, depending on how well you take to his last stand revival ability. His AI does seem really keen on using that self damaging super, though.

Fights get a lot more interesting in Group B because the one character who could spam, Caesar, didn’t actually do it too much outside a few moments. And that was to his advantage because he also hits really hard. His Bubble Barrier especially did a bunch of damage to anyone it hit. Despite getting totally shut out, ACDC actually does seem decently strong, maybe just unlucky. He’s got a lot of agility where I was expecting him to be more about turtling and getting you with the veins when you got close. Jotaro’s AI isn’t doing him much service because he only seems to do stand shoot. He occasionally tries Star Finger, but it has some really long build up that always seems to get interrupted. I would have liked to have seen a bit more Polnareff.

Also, I didn’t notice until this time, but there are warning zones for some stage hazards. That’s good in general since it’ll make an idea I’m not particularly fond of anyway much less irritating, and certain specific ones that are hard to judge exactly where they hit like the poison frog rain have become much easier to understand. This isn’t true across the board. I didn’t see ones for the Senator’s Limo or Yoshihiro. I also don’t feel like I saw it for Lucy Steel or Joshuu and Yasuho, but I don’t think we got to see what it is they do, so I’ll hold off on that.

One week down, two to go. Groups C and D air next week on Wednesday.

ASB League Groups A and B Fight Highlights and Results

The first two groups of the League have gone. The results are tallied and we have who’s going to the finals. Until the full video of the fights comes out, some Nico guys have come along with a highlights reel with the results tables. There’s one video per group, and I’ve got them both on Polsy. You can view by clicking the group picture.

Group A

Group A was going to be a very telling fight for me. I’ve been wondering how Hol Horse would hold up being that he has a gun. I figured he’d have a really good chance every time to control the pace by picking away with ranged attacks whenever he needed, and I was a bit worried about that. This is also the super popularity duel with Johnny and Bruno being the two closest to winning exempt status during the voting section.

I’ll post the results below this. If you’re waiting to see the full on fights before knowing the results, you’ll just need to skip past this. Results tables are oriented horizontally, so the rows are the character’s results.

Turns out my concerns were completely backwards. Hol Horse goes down in a complete shut out and Johnny sweeps up three wins to secure his spot in the finals. Johnny isn’t reliant only on his nails, though. There’s a good amount of horse that he uses to win. Bruno squeaks by into the finals because of his special get up at the end of the fight ability. He just manages to edge out Abdul, who was kicking some serious ass but was not able to carry it all the way. Bruno and Johnny claim their popularity status with their own hands and head to the finals.

Also, we get to see our first in game situation finish at the Ghost Alley. This one takes Hol Horse when he’s finished by a super. It was weird because the transition was so sudden, but cool all the same.

Group B

This fight was also going to be telling. I’ve been worried about stands being able to totally shut down any non-stand user offense ever since the exhibition match between Johnathan and Dio. Two stands on two non-stands was a good testing ground for that, especially since Jotaro is here with Star Platinum and The World having basically the same standard stand shoot.

And my worries are mixed. Turns out the second row is the unlucky spot of the day as ACDC also suffers a complete lock out, but Caeser comes in and sweeps up a total victory for his spot in the finals. Jotaro was able to hold ACDC down totally with Star Platinum, but Caeser’s bubbles easily got inside everyone’s guard to allow his wins. Jotaro and Polnareff have a pretty even match with Jotaro pulling out a win in the end. He and Caeser will be in the finals.

(Thanks to JoJo F2C for posting these videos. You can also view them there if you prefer it to Polsy.)

All Star Battle PV 5 Manga Comparisons

There’s been another manga comparison’s video uploaded to Nico, this time for the 5th preview video. It gives you a real appreciation for the amount of work that was put into just studying the source material. I imagine a whole room of CC2 interns having to skim decades of manga to make sure that the arm position on Narancia’s taunt in just right.

That said, what really impresses me with this comparison is the attention to detail on facial expressions.

Though this one stands out because I’m disappointed I didn’t realize the bubble shield would be based on the shaving scene

And I just think Bruno kicking Josuke in the balls is funny.

You can watch the whole video here.

(Thanks to the JoJo thread for posting this)

 

 

The All-Star Battle League! Who Will You Cheer For?

So I was doing a little digging on Naver, and I stumbled across a graphic like this. I had no idea what it was, so I looked into it. You remember the announcement picture that there was going to be a new character announced officially on the 19th? I didn’t look into then, but I found out that that graphic came from the BandaiNamco site for the Official “All Star Battle League.”

It turns out that the event the character announcement is going to piggyback off of is wide scale CPU 1-on-1 tournament held on UStream the channel for which I can’t find so it may not exist just yet. That graphic comes from that you can go to this page and pick a character you intend to cheer for when they’re in match. What you do is pick the character you want from the grid, then you’ll get a hash tag for that character, for example: Kira’s is #jojoasbl_kira, you can use to post a tweet for to show your support. You’re only allowed one vote per day per account.

So it is a massive popularity contest that is not going in the direction I expected at all. That graphic up there is a screengrab from today’s voting set. Johnny Joestar is leading the pack by almost 100 supporters over Johnathan at 2nd place. The totals are added to the previous day, so Johnny came up to 1337 to to take the lead as he and Johnathan were tied yesterday at 534.

Here’s the whole list of characters and their totals for today the 11th:

1. Johnny Joestar 1337
2. Johnathan Joestar 1280
3. DIO 1237
—————————
4. Bruno Buccelatti 1222
5. Josuke Higashikata 1159
6. Caeser A. Zeppeli 983
7. Noriaki Kakyoin 948
8. Jotaro Kujo 917
9. Rohan Kishibe 910
10. Joseph Joestar 862
11. Yoshikage Kira 767
12. Jolyne Kujo 741
13. Diavolo 709
14. Giorno Giovana 645
15. Gyro Zeppeli 612
16. Narancia Ghirga 546
17. Koichi Hirose 518
18. Okuyasu Nijimura 507
19. Guido Mista 501
20. Jean P. Polnareff391
21. Cars 311
22. Wham 222
23. Hol Horse 221
24. JoJolion Josuke 209
25. Mohammad Abdul 198
26. Hermes Costello 193
27. Akira Otoshi 183
28. ACDC 163
29. Will A. Zeppeli 152

The participants that I’ve seen have all been Japanese, so this may be a good indicator of character popularity in that group. I had no idea Johnny was so popular, and Bruno is in a position to overtake DIO of all people. I’m surprised, and it’s important to know because at the end of the vote when the event starts, the top three characters will be seeded so as to be exempt from preliminary matches.

Important in that you’ll know which characters people wanted to see with the best chance to be #1. Now that you know, will you throw your hat in someone’s corner and cheer? Supporting your favorite is only a # away.

(Image from BandaiNamco’s All Star Battle League Official page, © BandaiNamco and CyberConnect2. Thanks to yuduki_magia for posting this on Naver!)

I Said Buy the DVDs! Collection of All JoJo Blu-ray Commercials

One of the NicoTube channels has put out two collections of all the JoJo Disc commercials. One for Part 1 and one for Part 2. They aren’t subtitled, but you can pick up on the context of Santana being confused and Stroheim being as loud as possible. I particularly like Lisa Lisa saying you can’t become stronger without buying JoJo Blu-rays. If you’re going to have fun with a series, you might as well go full on with the commercials too.

Lava Veins and Sun Lasers. ACDC and Caeser Zeppeli All Star Battle Preview Images

By seeing ACDC attacking with his lava vein tendrils, you’re seeing about half the way he attacks. With the exception of the just ejecting the lava blood from his body in a spray, his moves are either normal kicks and punches or hitting with the veins. The last one is part of his ultra and is based on the manga where he tried to hit Joseph with all of them at once. Not to say that it’s bad that ACDC is based around his primary weapon or anything….

It’s just that, as he must be compared to Caeser, ACDC isn’t bringing as much to the table in creative power usage. Caeser gets the Bubble Cutter, Bubble Lenses, and the big bubble trap as part of his Bubble Launcher power. I know it’s because ACDC only fought once and so only gets so many moves, but he comes off lacking. Also, Caeser’s jump seems to be based on how he gets in a chair. ACDC’s crying doesn’t have shit on that for style.

You can see the rest of the images over at Famitsu.

(Images © Famitsu, Luckyland, Shueisha, Araki, and Cyberconnect2)

More Italy! More Bubbles! More Caeser Zeppeli!

You know, last time this happened, the characters on the sides swapped with the character on the front. It’s all right, Caeser’s way more important than ACDC. Still, you can see a little more of ACDC’s moves exercised on Joseph in his pictures. Lots of veins stabbing and some fire here and there. It’s mostly a new Caeser spread with more moves from the bubble gloves, though. Looks like he’ll have a move where he just covers the enemy in them and then maybe they explode.

That’s the second spread on these two, so I’m pretty sure the in depth article on it should be soon.

The Second All Star Battle Commercial will Bring You to Tears!

I’m glad I read Part 3 so I know what’s going on when YES explodes all over the screen.

Ooo, a little gameplay footage of Caeser, ACDC, Joseph, and Wham. I like that Joseph gets his tommy gun, and I’m really interested to see how ACDC’s crying is going to enter into gameplay if only because I don’t know how you could make that a move. It’s got to be one of his heat moves, but I want to know what it does because that didn’t lead into a special move in the show or manga. Maybe it’s a distraction from the veins that are sneaking up behind you. It’s probably a counter.

It’s looking good so far, and I’m always up for watching Okuyasu getting clocked in the face. I wonder if, when we get to the end of this commercial battle between Terrence and Jotaro, it’ll be younger Joseph instead older Joseph helping Jotaro cheat.

The Blood is so Hot, but The Bubbles are so Cool. Caeser and ACDC Revealed for All Star Battle!

Oh, hello. So there is time for more character reveals in ASB. Good, I need me some Bruno. For the time being, though, let’s fill out the Part 2 roster a little bit and get ACDC and Caeser. ACDC only has one move shot in there, an ultra with his boiling blood injection veins, but Caeser has a few more. You can see him covering ACDC in a cloud of bubbles and also using the bubble lenses to make a redirected beam of sunlight. Joseph’s also chillin’ in the corner. Not sure why, but he’s probably using Caeser as a way to distract ACDC from the ultra violet flashlight he’s about to jam in his spine. Actually, that would be interesting if ACDC gets a desperation/low health saving move where he’s a brain and then turns into Suzie Q or maybe possesses his opponent to make them punch themselves repeatedly.

Look forward to that inevitable Famitsu special where we’ll learn more.

Episode 18 “Stroheim’s Counterattack” Teaser Images

What do you prefer? Suzie Q:

or sexy shots of Lisa Lisa getting ready to take a bath?

Yeah, you’re just going to have to imagine those because guess what I’m not putting on the blog. You can see them here along with the other pictures at Yaraon, but spoiler and NWS warning.

Actually, this one could be considered the Suzie Q Special Episode because so many of the pictures of her.

She’s not really used to the attention

Oh, don’t worry. Joseph is around too.

With Suzie Q that is

And his totally sweet new ride

Also, Cars has given up his life of murder and immortality searching to become a detective

And also Baoh