We Got up Early, Washed Our Faces, Walked the Fields and Got in the Turtle

You have to push creativity. Cosplaying is all well and good and very impressive in some instances, but you can always do more. This picture is from this very cool album. It starts off with the Part 5 characters in a band. I do like the image of Abbacchio with a saxophone, but the second half tells the progression of Part 5 done just with pictures of the Passione gang sitting around a card table in a gazebo. It’s well done even in the photography and the way the pictures become bleaker towards the end. Being set to PJ Harvey’s “In the Dark Places” from the Let England Shake album helps even it it does have the tritest Linkin Park lyrics pasted around the band pictures in the beginning. And there’s a fun bonus all the way at the end, so have some fun with it.

(Thanks to the post from konatsu612 Tumblr)

“There’s a Limit to What Human’s Can Wear, so I Abandon my Svelte Waistline!”

This one has a bit of age, but it seems to have passed under the radar. Do you remember the JOJO x Japan Original Beauty collaboration from back in October? You may have seen the costumes or some of the hairdressing videos, but have you seen any of the show itself other than the promotional posters? I hadn’t, but Shiseido was nice enough to put a small video of parts of the reception party up on their channel. It’s interesting to see how big a media event it apparently was and how much more there was to the fashion than the JoJo stuff. The unique hairstyles particularly stand out.

That video was part of this Naver collection that has a few pictures of the event and participants.

Second, do you remember this picture? I dubbed it the Jonabar. It was an entry for one of the legs of JoJo Royale that struck a chord with me because I think it’s funny. Well, as it seems:

Making JoJo themed chocolate art is apparently a thing. And the art is certainly impressive. I’m not even sure how to get details like the folds in clothing or the rough sections of Josuke’s hair. You see a lot like this with the detailed art.

And there are some that are very impressive drawing wise and as full artistic sets.

Like this. This is the sort of thing I’d imagine as the centerpiece of a JoJo theme wedding. I’m mostly enamored with the detailing on the stone mask, but I like that all the sound effects, which I assume are cookies, must be handmade because they don’t have a regular shape. That’s an impressive dedication to a project. I don’t know if I’d be able to eat it.

These images come from this Naver collection. You can see a few more here. The Diego one is especially nice.

The Panacotta Fugo Experience. Purple Haze Feedback English Translation!

Get the English book here! There’s also a link at the bottom, but here’s the link if you’re just here to get it.

The past is never behind you. It is the building holding you up every day. You can feel the choices under your feet. When you’re determined and confident, your footing is solid, and you can stand proud and easy. When you’re regretful, your footing is loose, and you feel like it’s going to collapse and take you with it. You can’t change the past, and, thus, you can’t replace parts of the building. You can only build more of it and hope to reinforce the weaker parts. When a chance comes along to do that, to reverse a decision that haunts you, what do you do?

Purple Haze Feedback is a light novel written by Kadano Kouhei and illustrated by Hirohiko Araki that has now been translated into English by Buddy Waters. It functions as a sequel to Part 5: Golden Wind and stars Panacotta Fugo, the character most known for being written out of the story for being too strong. Fugo is called into service by Passione now lead by Giorno Giovanna, and also powerful enough to shut down events tantamount to the Super Bowl for meetings, and told by his Number 3 Guido Mista that he must seek out and kill a member of a remnant of Diavolo’s old Passione before that faction can flood the streets of Italy with the drugs they worked to get rid of. He is accompanied by GioGio’s bodyguard Sheila “E” Capezzuto and leader of the intelligence division Cannolo Murolo on his journey to answer a single question: “Why am earning my way back into Passione and not already standing at the side of it’s boss?” A single question that is the key to everything that makes Fugo who he is and what inside himself created his destructive alter ego.

When I heard about Feedback, I thought it was going to be very straightforward. “Fugo beats up the drug trade” sounds like a fun romp through JoJo’s to me. Give them some crazy stands to get some good fights, and we’re good to go. And it turns out that I was totally right. Purple Haze Feedback does have a very straightforward plot that doesn’t stray too far from that concept. There are little complications here and there that strive to make the most of the JoJo’s and Italian settings. There are parts that almost read like a tour guide to Italy, but always used in service of the scene and is only awkward for a moment. For instance, Team Fugo has to travel to Sicily at one point in pursuit of their target, and the narrative takes a moment to tell us about the Sicilian history of Nazis and WWII. You might be able to see where I’m going with Nazis and JoJo’s, but if you can guess the ultimate payoff for it, you’re reading ahead.

No, Feedback is a character driven narrative, and that’s what makes it shine. The story is largely focused on Fugo’s character arc, but each character around him is written to strengthen that arc while still feeling like full characters themselves, even the old Part 5 characters. Fugo’s meetings with Giorno and Mista go a long way in fleshing the two of them out. Mista gets some fun lines like, “I only survived because I’m a super lucky mega-nice guy born under a blessed star, but you didn’t have that to fall back on,” and his fear of four is driven to such an insane degree that he won’t even touch two because it’s half of four. Giorno appears only briefly, and sometimes the story does sometimes dote a little hard on him, but his ability to unlock the potential in others and make others want to support him is shown far more effectively than it was in most of Part 5.

And that’s just those two. A fair portion of the story is flashbacks to Fugo interacting with Bruno’s gang, including that fateful scene outside the chapel, and his perspective and inner monologue help give Narancia, Abbachio, and especially Bruno development as well. The new characters are done well too, mostly through effectively tying their personalities and personal histories to their stands, as Part 5 did, while keeping them interesting powers in fights. Angelica Attanasio’s Night Bird Flying, named for the B side of “Dolly Dagger” by Jimi Hendrix, allows her to make targeted people experience a bad acid trip on the spot as a reflection of her desire to force the pain of her crippling drug addiction onto others while using that to grasp even the smallest moment of the human warmth through understanding she so desperately lacks. Massimo Volpe’s Manic Depression, named for the Jimi Hendrix song, allows him to either make super drugs out of salt or to get so high he turns into Ron Perlman because his family crushed his life before he could do anything about it causing him to have no dreams or belief in the future. The stand designs are fantastic, and I don’t just mean the descriptions. Araki did good on the stand design, too.

That’s Volpe’s Manic Depression, and it’s legitimately the most unsettling stand design in the whole series while also managing to be a good reflection of it’s user. As a zombie newborn, it’s future is dead, exactly as the user sees it. And then the fights are still nice. Transition to mostly text didn’t stop the fights from being plan based and nicely visceral, so no worries about that.

I only have two real gripes with Feedback.  One is that the fanservice can feel a bit arbitrary. In particular, there’s a cameo from a character that feels like the author just wanted to have that cameo and came up with a way to justify it afterwords. It’s used to make a point effectively, surprisingly, but it’s still jarring at first. The other is that the language can get a bit flowery, so there’s descriptions that make you pause and laugh at the prose. The one that stands out the most is towards the end when Fugo’s inner monologue describes Volpe with, “With him, all paths lead to blackness in the depths of a bottomless
crevasse carved in the side of a glacier!” It’s honestly hilarious how overwrought that is, like the author, for a second, thought he may have lost you on that Volpe is a bad dude.

They’re small complaints, though. As a JoJo fan, Purple Haze Feedback is definitely an enjoyable read. I barreled through all 173 pages in one sitting without having to think about it, and that’s the highest praise I can offer. Buddy Waters did a good job with the translation, a spelling error or two aside. The language sounds natural, the Italian locals are identified effectively to make sure the names correspond to the right places, and it reads well. You can download the torrent for the English book here. Please enjoy it.

(Thanks to Frolic-Chronis Tumblr for posting the news and the torrent link)

“Blue Suit: Check. Zippers: Check. Disembodied Head of Interrogation Fodder: Checkmate.”

Medicos Entertainment is bringing you a new JoJo’s figure with a new color for Bruno. The figure is expected to run in late January at the pretty modest price for a figure of ¥4,200. It’s set to be around 16cm tall with moveable nylon joints and looks to be the kind of figure you’d expect out of the Medicos JoJo’s line.

So what sets this figure apart from the rest because you know I only talk about figures if something odd is going on? Well, this one comes with accessories.

Specifically, it comes with a zipped up Mario Zucchero head. You’d remember him as the user of Soft Machine. There are also the extra hands for different positions, the zipper portal probably for posing, and I’m guessing that other face for Bruno is a wholly different head for him since it looks like the hair is in a slightly different position as well, but seriously. This figure comes with a disembodied head that’s intended to be used as such. I assume one of those extra hands for Bruno can hold onto it and wave it around while standing in a cool pose. Now that sounds like the kind of figure that would get people’s attention in a collection.

(Thanks to the posts from Araki-JoJo and Medicos for the news)

Yes, Give Us all the Awards, and then a Train so Our Glory May Roam the Land!

So, lots of cool JoJo’s stuff has happened recently.

1

This is from an official Famitsu magazine. You see what you think you see. It’s a perfect score. All Star Battle joins the illustrious rank alongside twenty other games to have ever gotten a perfect score from the magazine. How much stock you want to put into that is up to you. Jojo’s fandom may have helped anticipation, but it may have also added extra scrutiny for how much JoJo CC2 was able to converry. It also seems to be the first fighting game ever on the list of perfects. All in all, the 21st on a list of perfect games going all the way back to Ocarina of Time is not bad.

2

Remember these guys? The OPs for JoJo’s: The Animation were nominated for a CEDEC award based on for their skill of blending 2D and 3D animation while managing to capture the unique look of “The JoJo’s World” for fans across many decades. They won. If you remember, the competition was scattered since “Visual Arts” meant a lot of things, but other nominees included things like NHK’s Tokyo Station Vision, Square-Enix’s Real Time Tech Demo for Agni’s Philosophy, and Konami’s new FOX Engine that will be used in MGS 5. So, yes, that does mean that, at least in the visual department, JoJo’s is cooler than a TV station, most JRPGs, and Big Boss. If someone draws a fan art of Araki sticking out his tongue and pulling down his eyelid at Kojima and Nomura, we may have to declare them King for a Day.

3

Yeah, the game gets its own train. This isn’t an ad bought to run on a train. This is specifically the JoJo’s Train. It’s such a big deal that it has its own website and a spin-off logo. The train is running publicly on the Yamanote Line between August 26th and September 9th. These aren’t the only decals, either. The list of pictures shows there is a decal for each main protagonist and antagonist except for any of the Pillar Men and Valentine, though it also doesn’t show one for Bruno who’s right there, so they may just not have added them to the list. Dio gets to be on there twice. You know why.

I’d call that a pretty good sweep, and I’m sure there’s even more to come.

ASB League Quarter and Semi Final Full Fights

Much faster. Maybe someone put these up early last week and I just never noticed until yesterday, but we now have a Nico video of the fights from today’s stream. [Edit 1: And also two YouTube videos now] This includes the Quarter and Semi final fights meaning that we are now in the finals. The last match will take place a week from today on ASB Launch Day.

I know the AI matches aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but these are actually not bad matches outside a few of the normal hiccups. No one can pass through Star Platinum’s Impenetrable Wall of Fists, and Kakyoin and Johnny continue to shoot like the CPU can’t decide if it wants them on auto-fire, but the exchanges are a lot more active. Dio manages to put the hamper on Kakyoin by warping to him. He’s up against the green stone wall with Kakyoin both shooting and effectively trapping him, but once he turns it around with his Knife Heat, he rallies like a train. That knife super really hurts.

Jotaro vs. Koichi has some decent exchanges, though it takes more than half of Koichi’s life bar to get there. You will hear more ORAORA than you have ever heard before, but once Koichi manages to get in, there’s some decent back and forth. It helps that watching Star Platinum’s grab where he holds the opponent up by the scruff of their neck and then hurls them into the ground is very satisfying.

Dio vs. Caeser was probably the best one, though. The speed, the fuck your projectiles attitude that Dio has, the time stop. It was nice. Dio stoms all over Caeser, but it’s nice to see their close up exchanges early on in the fight. The time stop is a good showing. They handled very well the way that it works with the opponent moving normally as their being hit but freezing after the damage animation is over. Good detailing.

And thus it comes down to the touch of destiny. The finals will be Jotaro vs. Dio for the crown of the JoJo’s Throne. The final match and the game itself run a week from now. You can also look forward to a video of the whole stream officially from NamcoBandai probably somewhere between Friday and Tuesday. I’ve heard there are some more fun host shenanigans.

[Edit 2]

There’s the shenanigans. The beginning part is them using Johnathan to show off Customize Mode, specifically the placing of sound effects. It looks like we won’t be able to make our own clouds. You have a set list of words/sounds you can pick from and can mess with their dimensions however you like. No covering Johnathan in 「ゴゴゴゴゴ」 it would seem, though that one is probably one you can pick form the list.

There are two bonus player “fights.” I say “fights” like that because these are being used for specific demoing of moves and features. Not that that’s a bad thing. You get to see Johnathan’s alternate outfit as inspired by that one manga cover as well as a few combos from him and Part 1 Dio. The big showing, though, is our first look at calling Stairway and C-Moon. The way it works in gameplay is sort of like King Crimson in the Part 5 game seemingly without a time limit. Pucci and Stairway move at normal speed where the opponent moves at something like half speed. They can presumably fight back, but they are offensively gimped. It’s the reward for the difficulty of pulling it off. On top of being a giant target while doing that floating away, you also have to build the Green Baby meter up to call C-Moon in the first place. Pucci does have a move to build it, and C-Moon does persist between matches, so I see it being used for claiming match point if it doesn’t end up being too cumbersome.

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)

 

 

ASB League Episode 1 Full Stream and Tournament Roster

That’s Jotaro delivering the character cards to one of the hosts. It’s so satisfying when he says “ORA” while putting the box on the table.

Somebody on Nico was nice enough to record and upload the full first episode of the ASB League Stream. It’s about 45 minutes, and you can view it through Polsy. If it ends up on YouTube, I’ll embed it then. Unlike what I thought, the stream is a full on show where three guys discuss ASB while also playing the fights. That’s part of why it’s so long even though there’s only the two.

The big reveal is all the preliminary groups have been drawn. That’s what our dear Jotaro is carrying in that box. They were drawn at random into 6 groups, A through F. A through D have four fighters, E and F have five fighters. The top two fighters from each group will be taken into the final brackets except for group F. To fully fill out the 16 slots, the top three will be taken from F. Here’s the full list.

Group A
Bruno Buccelatti, Mohammad Abdul, Hol Horse, Johnny Joestar

Group B
Jotaro Kujo, ACDC, Jean-Pierre Polnareff, Caeser A. Zeppeli

Group C
Yoshikage Kira, Wham, Rohan Kishibe, Will A. Zeppeli

Group D
Gyro Zeppeli, Jolyne Kujo,  Giorno Giovana, Koichi Hirose

Group E
Joseph Joestar, JoJolion Josuke, Hermes Costello, Narancia Ghirga, Akira Otoshi

Group F
Okuyasu Nijimura, Noriaki Kakyoin, Diavolo, Cars, Guido Mista

Each group has them discuss someone in the group’s popularity as well as reading a tweet from one of their cheerers. It’s fun to see all this fandom bandied around.

The exhibitions are over. The next streams are going to be determining who has a chance to be the top character of All Star Battle. Our next fighting group will be Group A, so who are you placing bets on? If Hol Horse and Johnny can use their range effectively, I think they’re pretty suited to moving onto the top 16, and Hol Horse more than Johnny. Then again, Bruno has a move that perfectly sets him up to deal with projectiles which sets him up to do well against everyone else. This’ll be fun.

(Thanks for posting the video to JoJoF2C. You can also watch it there if you prefer it to Polsy.)