The Great Battle of Sound and Sound vs. Dora and Dollar. The Koichi and Akira Famitsu Special!

Yes. The full disclosure on Koichi and Akira in ASB is here. You’ll get to see all the moves, all the models, all the Okuyasu and Josuke getting their asses kicked you could hope for. And doubly cool is that mikestrider from the JoJo forums has already released a full translation of the article. I’ll cross post that to here, so if you’d like, crack open this link in a new window and read along. As usual, I won’t include all the images because this post would be gigantic if I did, but I will include the Great Heat Attacks.

Koichi Hirose and Echoes Acts 1 – 3

CV: Romi Park

Battle Style: Stand (Echoes)

Making his debut in Part IV. Awakened as a Stand User after receiving “The Arrow” from Keicho Nijimura. His Stand can evolve to Act 2 and Act 3 to match his mental growth. Act 1 can create sound effects and attach them to any surface/object, and subsequently make the sound it creates repeat itself. In Act 2, the sound effects are only created from the tail, and by touching the created sound effect with the tail the user increases its effectiveness. And finally, Act 3 has the ability to add weight to objects it hits, increasing their gravity.

Special Attack:
“The sound of cicadas goes through stone” (Transliteration; Researching the Japanese line referred me to a common spring haiku)

Attacking with ACT1’s tail, numerous sound effects appear over one another, quite literally it’s telling the opponent to “soak it up!”.

Special Attack:
“Dojuuu” *sizzle*

ACT2 throws this “sizzling” sound effect into the enemy, and when hit the opponent receives fire damage.

Throw
“Dohyuuu” *whoo~sh*

The opponent is grabbed while ACT2 releases the *whooooosh* sound effect, literally sweeping the enemy off their feet.

Counter Attack
“Dogg~on” *booo~m* (kinda)

Koichi charges the sound effect for a shockwave within himself, it releases on the enemy if they attack him.

Special Attack:
“Boyo-yo~n” *Bou~nce*

ACT2 leaves the sound effect for “bouncing” on the floor. If the opponent passes over it, they get sent flying upward.

Special Attack:
“S-H-I-T” (ACT3.)

Special Attack:
“What’s with this air pressure!?”

While in Body Mode, ACT3 comes out very quickly and sends out a shockwave to blast the opponent away. You also take some damage, but the opponent is sent further away from you.

Special Attack:
“Beat them, ACT 3!”

Special Attack:
“I can’t forgive you”

Unique Attack:
“Stop I~t!”

Taunt
(Yes, hmm..)

Heart Heat Attack:
“Echoes 3 FREEZE!!”

The damage of the move itself is low, but it weights down the opponent forcing them into a crouching positiong for a certain period of time, so their movement is limited. After the pre-determined time elapses, the opponent is released. Caution though, even though there’s ample time, the opponent has some capacity to reduce the amount of time their stuck crouching.

Great Heat Attack:
“Did I really show some growth??”

A continuous attack performed by all three ACTS. Starts off with ACT1’s sound effect attack. Then, ACT2 intensifies the previous sound attack to further the damage. Finally, it ends with a physical attack from ACT3 while saying “get heavy”, applying all damage at once.

Akira Otoshi and Red Hot Chili Pepper

CV:Showtaro Morikubo

Battle Style: Stand (Red Hot Chili Pepper)

Making his debut in Part IV, he was given Stand power from Keicho Nijimura, but Akira killed him, took the Bow and Arrow, and started making more Stand Users. His Stand, Red Hot Chili Pepper, absorbs electricity and can move any place where there is a power supply. It is a remote Stand, yet it can become quite powerful if it absorbs enough electricity.

Unique Move:
“Charge”

Akira has a special “Electric Power” gauge above his HH meter. His performance changes depending on how much the gauge is filled by. If the gauge is at 0%, it has to be recovered or else he can’t use his Stand. With this unique move, he takes out a battery to charge his electrical power. It can be used at will when needed.

Special Attack:
“Spit Fire”

Calls out his RC plane, and RHCP comes down from it to attack.

Unique Taunt:
“Light Hand Method”

A special taunt for accumulating his HH gauge.

Special Attack:
“I’m closing in on you!”

After grabbing onto the opponent, releases a torrent of electricity at the both of you.

Counter Attack:
“Aim here! Right here”

Taunts the opponent, and and if attacked RHCP blows back at them.

Special Attack:
“The power of a jet engine!”

Attacks the opponent with overwhelming power.

Special Attack:
“Upon reflection, I’m strong…”

Additional attack after “The power of a jet engine!”. Sends the opponent flying with a direct attack.

Special Attack:
“I’d like to see a knock ou~~~t!!”

Additional attack after “The power of a jet engine!” A big wind-up attack that hits from overhead.

Special Attack:
“High level Whack-A-Mole”

Throw:
“Increase the power!” (Normal Throw)

Taunt

Heart Heat Attack:
“I only need this little finger to beat you!”

An electrified RHCP closes in on the opponent from the ground, the final blow is an uppercut with his pinky.

Great Heat Attack:“I’m getting de~spera~~~te!”

A Stand Rush at impressive speed. Akira starts playing guitar, while his Stand performs a continuous rush of attacks from all directions. The opponent meets with a singular strong attack at the end. Akira finishes playing after the attack is over, and he is just in his own world with an “entranced” look on his face.
Morioh Town Stage

As previously reported, there are stage gimmicks in many stages. A “Lightning Strike” hazard can be triggered near a downed sign board. After Rohan reads in Hayato’s memory about lighning strikes, he is surprised to say the least, lightning falls after this moment. This scene is sure to make fans smile.

Lightning strikes randomly in 3 locations in the stage, and deals shock damage if you’re struck. However if RHCP is hit by lightning, Akira’s “Electric Power” gauge recovers.

I’m going to be interested to see how they work the electricity gauge recovery by being hit by lightning into strategy. The move names continue to please with “S-H-I-T” and “High Level Whack-a-Mole.” It looks like that Koichi using different Echoes for different special moves rather than having one Echoes or whatever was the right guess. He’s also set up to have some traps like you’d expect from the Echoes power set. Akira’s move where he summons stage lights from nowhere, “Light Hand Method,” is one of the best moves I’ve seen so far. If you end up playing Akira, using that battle once a match would be appreciated. Seems good to me. Looking forward to whoever’s next.

(All images from Famitsu. © Famitsu, Sheisha, CyberConnect2, LuckyLand Communications, Hirohiko Araki, and Namco-Bandai. Thanks to mikestrider for his work on the translation.)

Akira and Koichi Preview Speads 2

In the battle of “Sound vs. Sound,” we don’t need any color.

So we get a little more information on Koichi and Akira in good old black and white. The bulk of the information you can get out of it is from Koichi’s page. Akira just seems to have his guitar and lightning and lightning while he rocks out on his guitar. That’s fine and all. It’s what you should probably expect from Akira, but Koichi having all the Echoes acts is what catches my eye. We were talking about it in the main JoJo’s thread and the idea that Koichi could act as a stance based fighter was brought up. He’d have Act 3 and would have projectiles in one stance, because Act 3 retains Act 2’s version of the sound effect power, and be something like a brawler in the other stance by using Act 3’s gravity like power. With Act 1, that idea sorta goes out the window. What’ll probably happen now is what’s happening with Johnny. Koichi will have moves from all Echoes forms, and it’ll just change to use the appropriate move. I wonder what it is that Act 1 will do. I know that Koichi was able to drive a guy crazy by putting loud sounds in his ear, but I feel like the combat applications are pretty limited when compared to Acts 2 and 3. I guess we’ll see.

I don’t remember who’s going to be voicing Akira, it’s too small in the picture for me to read, but Koichi will be voiced by Romi Park. That’s fun because she was Giorno in the Part 5 PS2 game. I hope they have special dialogue because of that. It makes sense for them to have special dialogue anyway. Maybe throw a little in-joke on the pile.

“He put ‘clonk’ on my guitar and now it sounds like a cowbell….” The Koichi and Akira V-Jump Spread

See, there’s the V-Jump page. Didn’t expect it only about four hours from the page telling us about Koichi and Akira, but whatever. The picture itself is a little lacking because you can tell it’s a picture taken with a camera rather than a scan. I’ll replace it as soon as a full scan becomes available.

In the meantime, it looks like Koichi is saddled up with Echoes Act 3. I don’t know if that means that he’ll only have Act 3 or if he’ll be able to progress through the different acts like what we’ve seen Johnny do with Tusk. I hope it works that way because the sound effect power of Act 2 is too awesome a JoJo power to not put in the game. For Akira, I didn’t know that Red Chili Hot Pepper was supposed to be gold. I always pictured it being blue with maybe some yellow. Then again, I pictured Stone Free green and it was colored blue, so that means that because I envision Diver Down as pink, it’ll end up being green. I’m not that concerned with how he’ll work. He’ll shoot lightning. If his normal attacks involve him whacking people with a guitar, though, I’ll be pretty pleased.

Look forward to the improved scan of this spread and the Famitsu article with all the details. I think it should be out this month.

“Dude! Okuyasu! You’ve gotta see the new JOJOveller book!” JOJOveller Commercial 1

You probably remember the JoJolion commercials with Josuke, Okuyasu, and Koichi reading Jump comics on the sidewalk? Why not keep going with that. We’ve got the first official JOJOveller commercial from our favorite high school kids. Personally, I love when Echoes Act 3 craters the book. You gonna talk about JOJOveller in Morioh, you better be ready to fight. Throw that Jump on the table, lets go. Such good style.

Edit:

This is the intro that plays when you visit the official JOJOveller site’s front page. I think there it’ll infinitely loop. This is a clean video. When viewing it on the page, it would be cluttered with menu items. I don’t know if the person who uploaded this ripped this themselves or found it, but he did also post a link where you can download the music in the video’s description. Make sure and fJOJOollow the video back to YouTube if you’re interested.

Preorders for JOJOveller Now Open!

We’ve run out the clock. It’s time for JOJOveller. (Sound Warning)

A massive compilation cap to everything about the 25th Anniversary of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Artwork, documentaries, interviews, the works. It’s all here.

The Artbook

The JOJOveller Artbook focuses mainly on Parts 6 through 8. It contains some stunning artwork in the same vein as the artwork in JOJOmenon. Also, it blows up because Kira got into the production line.

The Stand Book

You know how there were little readouts on the Stands in between chapters that gave a brief overview of a Stand’s ability, powers, and whatnot? This is going to be that, but so much more comprehensive. Power ratings, ability comprehension, various artworks, and all for every single Stand that has appeared since Part 3.

The History Book

The History “Book” is actually a book and video interview with Araki. Go back in time and look at everything JoJo including Araki himself stepping back and looking at his whole 25 year magnum opus where he will apparently be revealing classified JoJo information that we’ve never heard before. Maybe he’ll explain how Gold Experience Requiem works.

The Documentaries

There are two documentaries in this collection. The first one is the JOJOmenon video that was part of an Ultra Jump release a little bit ago. They put up a new, more robust preview video.

The second one is a little sitdown with Araki at his desk walking us through his creative process in “The Making of JoJo.”

The amount of artistic media that he goes through to make his artwork. I never would have guessed he uses airbrushes.

Special

This isn’t as much part of the book itself as the PV I embedded up at the top. The big deal for this page, though, is the bonus images. All these pictures that I’ve been using are on the page, but what they are is the physical JOJOveller book being affected by different stand powers. You can probably guess what most of them are. The site will release all these pictures on a schedule as wallpapers for desktops. Currently, the only available ones are Echoes Act 3 and Cream. They’re all available in two sizes. The next one, the exploding one, will be available on the 26th.

So how do you get it? Reservations for copies are now available through a number of different sites and also a printout order form you presumably mail in to somewhere. I would go through the Amazon page. It’s going for the heavy price of ¥20,000 ($209) and here’s the big part: JOJOmenon will officially ship on September 19th, but preorders are only being accepted until Tuesday May 7th, Japanese Standard Time. If you’re looking to own, you need to move fast.

Edit: There will also be information released alongside Chapter 19 of JoJolion in the most recent Ultra Jump.

(All images Copyright Luckyland Communicaitons, Hirohiko Araki, and Shueisha)