The last poster set we got was only a few samples. Someone on Naver was nice enough to get pictures of the entire poster set in the train. There are some really interesting character portraits.
Like Bruford who looks very correct drawn in modern Araki style.
Or like how this picture gets kind of dark once you realize it’s Dio carrying Danny somewhere.
But the one I’m really impressed with is this. I liked the chemical chains when they were done small, but this one goes through the first three Parts with some impressive attention to detail. It’s not that close up, but if you look, each character hexagon is properly connected to the characters they have relationships with according to how close they are or how similar they are. This may be why they had to do this so soon because working a Part 4 or 5 chain set into this would just be huge offshoots from Dio and Old Joseph, and that poster would be enormous, and I’d want a copy to put on my ceiling.
JoJonium 3 is the next one on the way. You know what that means. Once again, “JoJonium wants you” to write their binding band slogan. For 3, the band will feature Joseph and Santana, though this has Dio on the cover. This will be the last volume for Part 1, so I assume we’ll also be transitioning to Part 2. You can find the submission form here. Same rules as before. 30 character slogan limit, 10 character pen name limit.
Also, to promote JoJonium, this series of posters are going to be plastered all over Shibuya Station, the busiest of all stations, between December 2nd and 8th. I really do like the chemical chain model used for Dio and Jonathan. Those would get really complex if you started doing them for later Parts. I’d like to get a higher resolution version of the full table, but that’s all there was. I can only make out a few like An as Anubis and Jo for who looks like George the first.
[Edit: The image of the table now links to a bigger, clearer version of the poster from the train as gotten by volavolavola Tumblr. And SaberKatana in the comments was nice enough to offer a partial list of the characters in order from right to left starting at the top. Quoted:
S = Stone Mask
Jo = George Joestar
Mj = Mary Joestar
Jo = Jonathan Joestar
Da = Dario Brando
Di = Dio Brando
Dn = Danny
Ep = Erina
Ze = Will Zeppeli
Sw = Speedwagon
Pc = Poco
Ps = Peggy Scott-Adams (okay I had to look up her full name)
Wn = Wang Chung
Jr = Jack the Ripper maybe
Br = Bruford
Ta = Tarkus
Ms = OMG is that Mary Stuart?
To = Tonpeti
Dr = Dire
St = Straits
Do = Doobie
Pa = Page
Jn = Jones
Bo = Bonham
Sx = Styx
Jo = Joseph Joestar
Cz = Caesar
Li = Lisa Lisa
Sw = Speedwagon again
Ej = Erina Joestar
I’ll start working on the other half. There’s a few faces I don’t recognize outright, but I’ll be back with it soon.]
Quick note about JoJonium. The final touches are being put on JoJonium #1 and #2 as we move on to #3. That’s what that “11.1 Renewal OPEN” is all about. Tomorrow, the official site will change to reflect that we’ve moved issue and that we’ve started another cover slogan contest. Last time, we designed for Jonathan and Dio on #1 and Will and Bruford on #2. Next time, we’ll probably get Joseph and Cars then maybe Caeser and Wham?
As those are being prepared, preordering #1 and #2 is available from Amazon Japan. There’s no official images yet, because of the slogan contest I imagine, but you can order #1 on this link and #2 on this link. They’re actually quite cheap at only ¥1,400 a piece, though that’s due to the piecemeal way it’s coming out. If #1 and #2 are all about Part 1 and that’s a continuing trend, then this will come out to a hefty sum.
Can you recognize that at a distance, even once you’ve looked at the bigger resolution? I’m sure you can tell it’s the core cast of Part 3, but do you recognize the style? With the coming of the new Part 3 anime, we’re now in a unique position of compare and contrast to how a JoJo’s anime was handled way back when. It’s been 20 years since the first OVAs came out, and 13 years since the second ones. It’s going to be a few months before we can compare them down to every detail, but the art styles are nice and available for Parts 1 all the way up to 5.
If you haven’t recognized the style yet, these were character design portraits done late last year and early this year by Junichi Hayama, the lead character designer on the90s and 00s JoJo’s OVAs and the ill fated Phantom Blood movie. Supposedly, these were made in commemoration of the new anime, and someone on Naver collected them in further commemoration of the new Stardust Crusaders anime.
I criticized Hayama’s style when we got those scans of the PB movie character designs by saying something looked off about the faces. The only way I can describe it is that from the front, they look really wide like they’ve been slightly inflated or something. It was most noticeable on his Jotaro and Part 1 Dio, but from the sides, and with later characters, it doesn’t look quite as bad. To the contrary, he’s got a pretty nice eye for small detail. If you look at Giorno and Dio together, you can see that he took the time to make sure they have similarly shaped eyes. You can also kinda see a similar feel in appearance between Josuke and Joseph.
Most of the collected drawings focus on Part 3, but seeing Hayama’s Part 2 designs is also pretty interesting, and I wouldn’t have expected him to go for Josuke and Giorno. You can check out all the images on Naver.
A small PV, but I like the music in it. It’s got a nice intensity to it. I’m a little disappointed that the periodic table at the beginning is a real periodic table and not one made of Jo like icons since the PV goes through the trouble to make them for other characters, but whatever. It doesn’t say too much about what’s going on in JoJonium, but it is a good way to start the hype.
What is an even better way to start the hype is audience participation. If you’ve been to the official site, you’ve probably seen the phrase, “JoJonium wants you!!” Well, that’s because this artbook is going to use user submissions to flesh it out a bit, and we’ve reached the first hurdle of that. Until the 15th, you’ll be able submit a phrase for the cover band’s slogan/”catch copy.” For JoJonium 1, you’ll be submitting something to lay over Johnathan and Dio. For JoJonium 2, it’ll be something for Will and Bruford. I’m not sure what the differences are at the moment, as both are listed as being about Phantom Blood, so we’ll have to wait on that. You can submit something 30 characters long, very limiting in English but less so in Japanese, and your up to ten character pen name. You can also pick either small, medium, or large font. It’s very cute that if you go over the limit on the phrase, the counter changes to “MUDA MUDA.” The pen name one will just not let you type more than the limit. It reminds you that it’s a pen name, but it will be published alongside the slogan. Importantly, there’s a demo image that will show you how it will kinda look on the cover so you can see it in action. If you’ve got something, give it a shot in any language. If it’s good, it could get in.
I don’t know how long this will stick, so drink it up now while you’ve got the chance. And you need to. Antfish is really good at pouring malice into his Dio voice. It’s going to be fun seeing where that goes when Dio is pulling MUDAMUDA on the castle balcony. At this rate, I could see it being one or two more before getting to Part 2. I can’t wait to see what Abridged Straights is like.
Oh, and just to let you know, the second episode is back up. It probably has been for a bit, but if you haven’t noticed like I didn’t, it’s ready to go.
Nothing else is taking that long, so why would this? This is the full playlist of all the current character themes for characters that are not Iggy, Fugo, and Baoh. It does have Fatty and both Kiras. I think that means this playlist is more robust than the Star Platinum Disc because I don’t remember that having Fatty or regular Kira, just the internal characters. As for the tracks, they’re pretty good. I especially like the villain tracks. I wouldn’t have figured Pucci for the hard metal type, but I’m into it. Kosaku’s is good because it sounds like a final boss track for a video game like an RPG maybe. Same for “DIO’S WORLD,” though it’s a totally different type of music. Maybe that’s less an RPG and more one of those whipping platformers, but I like it.
Ok, let’s start these off with the video I can embed. This is a special circumstance of Josuke’s Insulted Hair Mode where he doesn’t run out of his invincible rage. This is apparently a story battle against Rohan for Josuke, and this is a really good representation of what it is that happened during that fight. That combo meter just keeps on going forever. I was almost disappointed that it didn’t reach 500, but watching Josuke in his unstoppable rage is always fun.
Now to the other two. These are Nico, so through Polsy we go [Edit: Nevermind. YouTubes are go. I will leave the Polsy links for completion sake. The Josuke one even has subtitles. And now the Joseph one does too.]. This first one is the full collection of every character’s insult for Josuke’s hair. This includes Fatty, but this was apparently too soon to get Iggy and Fugo in on the fun. There’s also a demo of Insulted Hair Mode being used at the end, so check that out as well.
Second video, the whole collection of every Joseph “Your next words are” quote. There’s apparently one for everyone. Like the above, I’m not solid enough with listening to translate for you, but having Joseph call Zeppeli on “HEY, BABY,” Valentine on his “Dojyaaan,” and Abdul on his “YES, I AM,” down to imitating his voice were pretty cool. Oh, and there was that we get to hear Sugita pull a “WRRRYYY” on Dio. That was pretty fantastic. Once again, this is soon enough to contain Fatty but not Iggy or Fugo. That’s too bad in this case. Since he was able to WRY on Dio, I would have loved to hear him say, “Your next words are… Woof.” If he used actual words, that means Joseph can hear Iggy’s inner monologue, and that would mean Joseph can read the minds of dogs. Ok, that would be fine too.
The eternal struggle of a man and his surrogate brother/new body’s great great grandson. ASB League’s final match comes down to one of the most iconic struggles in JoJo, and there’s lots of fists and a few knives. AI Dio really doesn’t know how to handle his time stop power. Jotaro starts off all right, but he goes for the heavy ORAORA for a while. It does him all right here and there, but Dio’s pretty good for getting inside the wall of fists, and that’s why he’s the King of JoJo. I’m still hoping for a crowning ceremony.
Just for fun, lets get a few hands on demos going. Iggy and Fugo were announced not even that long ago, so a PV and a demo were in order. This isn’t so much a match as a messing around with the two, but you get to see some of the characters’ moves. To compensate for Iggy’s height, it looks like he just has a hitbox bigger than his body. Fugo’s landing hits in the air above Iggy’s head, but that seems reasonable so you don’t have to crouch during the whole match against him. The Fool makes it a little more obvious, so it may be that the hitbox is based on Iggy with The Fool out since you’re likely to fight with it on anyway.
I finally manage to not guess traps on a character, and he uses them. Fugo gets the ability to put down clouds of his virus. Due to the low quality of the video and that it happens at the very end, I can’t really tell the kind of damage it does. It looks like it turns your health bar purple, and that happened to Fugo and Iggy. Not hurting yourself with that could be an issue.
Finally, let’s have a full on exhibition. Two matches for fun between voice actors, let’s say. These two matches are played by the character’s voice actors, Kazuyuki Okitsu (Johnathan) vs. Wataru Hotano (Josuke), and Hermes vs. Mitsuaki Madono (JoJolion Josuke.) Only Hermes is played by someone else being played by Kendo Kobayashi.
I love seeing these player matches. It’s almost like the game runs at a higher speed when there’s real people playing it. Johnathan vs. Josuke is especially fun. The combos the two pull of, the fluidity of how the combat moves. The combos the pull into their HHA are really satisfying. It’s cool.
Some new ASB Commercials. The second one is pretty normal, cool yelling and lots of action from the game, and second one has a totally awesome time stop effect. Shouldn’t have taken the pose and jumped in the air, lady. That was a dead give away for being Dio. And that guy was way too smooth looking with his pose not pull Jotaro Time and catch you. Should have pretended to be a bird. Jotaro shouldn’t even know what that one looks like.
The last poster set we got was only a few samples. Someone on Naver was nice enough to get pictures of the entire poster set in the train. There are some really interesting character portraits.
Like Bruford who looks very correct drawn in modern Araki style.
Or like how this picture gets kind of dark once you realize it’s Dio carrying Danny somewhere.
But the one I’m really impressed with is this. I liked the chemical chains when they were done small, but this one goes through the first three Parts with some impressive attention to detail. It’s not that close up, but if you look, each character hexagon is properly connected to the characters they have relationships with according to how close they are or how similar they are. This may be why they had to do this so soon because working a Part 4 or 5 chain set into this would just be huge offshoots from Dio and Old Joseph, and that poster would be enormous, and I’d want a copy to put on my ceiling.
One Pixel Jump 