The Return of JoJo’s Project! HQ Vento Aureo English Chapter 50!

Look who’s back! Good to see you, actually ok English translation. Yes, the new Part 5 scans are back on schedule, so you can see it in better quality with a better translation. This current release, as according to the JoJo Project post, unfortunately does not have the cover or Araki’s author blurb, but it will when we get the full volume release.

This release is Chapter 50 that has Mista’s first fight. I really like Mista’s face when he starts firing into the room through the window shutters. It’s such a good look of, “Yep, just another mobster day.”

You can read more details from JoJo Project Tumblr and download the volume here.

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)

Bizzarre Avventure 2000: A Story of GioGio

It’s been about a year since the last time this guy came up. Remember the super impressive Part 4 AMV made almost entirely of manga pieces? The same guy is back to bring you another really impressive use of still image animation. Seriously, he manages to out animate some of the shows I’ve tried out this year just in the movement he manages to put into Giorno’s hair, especially when he gets Gold Experience Requiem. Throw in a few MUDAMUDA moments and overlay a SOUL’D OUT song I don’t know by name, and you’re good to go.

JoJo’s OVA and Movie Character Designer Commemorates the New Anime with New Designs

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 the 90s 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.

Man, My Face Looks Dumb When I Punch Me

All right, I think this is the last post set like this where we have the unique dialogues or effects from someone’s something. I think. There might be something I’m forgetting or that may be introduced later on with DLC characters, but this is it for now. This is everyone’s mirror match dialogue with subtitles. Some of them are unfortunately a little generic. Jotaro, Dio, Cars, Abdul 1and a few others could all work in any other context, and Hol Horse 2’s could also work with Mista. The really good ones are Koichi 1 and Rohan 2. I like how much more exaggerated Koichi is than everyone else, and Rohan’s good with the “subtle” commentary about plot structure. This is also the first time I’ve seen the alternate Hermes costume. Didn’t expect the skirt.

Not the highest level of distortion on that one. Maybe Giorno has trouble doing it to his own face. This is the compilation video of all the close up/slow motion punches by Gold Experience. Pucci’s is kinda cool because GE has to gingerly hold Pucci’s cheek I guess so the gravity doesn’t let him get away. It looks so gentle before the slow dislocation of his jaw. Okuyasu has my favorite one, though, because he looks so sad and shocked as though he never expected to be punched by Giorno of all people. Come one Giorno. You used to be a bro, and now my face is on the other side of my head. Josuke’s going to be pissed that he has to fix this.

I Want You to Get Back to the Rainbow in the Roundabout! ASB Manga Comparisons for PVs 2, 3, and 6

Not much longer now. In commemoration, JoJo’s fandom is going crazy. One crazy is that someone dug up and brought together all the manga comparisons videos for the PVs we’ve missed. I’ve posted the videos for PVs 4 and 5 before, so now we get PVs 2, 3 and 6.

They’re Nico, so I need to link them. Each of the pictures links to the video.

PV 2

This video has comparisons for Wham, Giorno, Mista, and Joseph, and most Joseph. He takes up most of the end of the video with his unique track. Each of these videos contains different music than normal. The ones from before I remember only having “Roundabout.” Some of these use them, but also other tracks. Wham, Giorno and Mista are all played over “Get Back” by The Beatles, but Joseph is played over “Eat It” by Weird Al.

I’m impressed with working in the soda shot. Giorno’s poses are taken a lot from volume covers. Wham and Mista have some interesting ones, but we’ve seen Mista before. It makes me happy to see the very smiley Pistols, though. They are so happy riding those bullets. You also get to see a few comparisons beyond the manga with Joseph’s sprite from the Part 3 game and some models from the Part 5 game.

PV 3

This is when you really get to see that the comparisons aren’t just to the original manga. It says “OVA Version Respect?” so it’s not confirmed, but the comparison is easy. It’ll more obvious when you see it in motion in the video.

The video contains the comparisons for Polnareff, Kakyoin, Josuke, Okuyasu, Abdul, Hol Horse, and Dio. The other characters get “Roundabout,” as per normal, bu Dio gets his own in “Lock Up the Wolves” by, who else, DIO. You start getting a lot more of the sprites in this one since we have so many people in the Part 3 game here. Also, watching Okuyasu getting hit in the face by a flowerpot is still funny.

PV 6

That picture doesn’t work as well if it isn’t a .gif. It says, “Is the motion respect for the Part 3 game?” So, again, there’s no definite confirmation, but man does it look similar. One other detail that’s nice is that the texture on Dio’s eyes does that flowery splitting before shooting the beam. Very nice detail.

This video contains the comparisons for Phantom Blood Dio, Rohan, Kira and Kosaku Kira, Koichi, Otoshi, and Enrico. On top of possibly pulling from the Part 3 game, we also see a lot of other pulls from places like the between chapter doodles, an album that Killer Queen posed on once apparently, and Otoshi’s jumps being based on general guitarist jumps including one used specifically by Eddie Van Halen. Very cool.

Oh, and if you’re looking for a little more Rohan, there is also this other comparison video made by someone else in a different style. It compares a few of the other same points, but also goes into the referenced dialogue as well as poses. It uses a few songs. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan, some Boyz II Men song I don’t know, and “Dream Police” by Cheap Trick. It’s a cool video.

Three days. Just a little more push, and we’re good to fight!

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All Star Battle Opening Video!

So this is what everyone was praising so much. Yeah, it’s pretty good. I’m always up for jazzy music like this. The visual in the very beginning part with all the protagonists is fantastic. It is as though they watched the anime OPs and said, “We can do that. We already have the models anyway!” The style is emulated pretty well and looks very good. I do love the little detail that Tusk opens the way to the next part of the intro by prying open the walls just like in Johnny’s fight with Valentine. Joseph twirling the JoJo Crackers is always fun. Giorno gets a little glossed over. He’s there with his pose, and then suddenly Jolyne. The intro of the main villains is pretty nice. Seven over all, meaning that Dio gets to go twice, and the darker colors spilling in was a really nice aesthetic touch. And then it’s just everyone kicking some ass. Not a bad way to do it.

I know this isn’t the highest quality version just yet. I’ll replace it if another one comes along or if this one gets taken down. Ten more days, and a lot of you may just have the ability to watch it whenever you want. I take it anticipation is high right now.

(Thanks for mentioning the video in the comments, SStefania)

ASB League Groups C and D Full Fights

Watching the full fights for this one is making me think and notice a few more things. I didn’t realize until this time that the stage hazard has a zone on the floor where you have to stand to make it start. It takes a little bit of being there too. That’s good because it means that if you’re careful enough, you can probably go the whole match without triggering them. I’m still hoping for an option to just turn them off, but this is something.

I’m also really hoping for an option where you can turn the damage up or the health down and also to make the special gauges rise slower. I’m sure that there will be, I remember it being in other fighting games I’ve played, but these matches are a little long and dry. I think the real problem is that stand characters are overly stand reliant, Echoes looks like an impassable wall and Rohan can pull off his supers way the hell too easily, and I’m not sure if that’s an aspect of the AI players or if the game is geared towards that. I’d like to see if human players would rely on the same tactics of throwing out stand attacks over and over in the hopes that the opponent will fall into them. The worst offender of that is the fight between Jolyne and Koichi that ends in a time up. By contrast, Will and Wham’s fight is more interesting overall because they have to be in each other’s faces, times where Will decides to do ripper cutter spam not withstanding.

To that end, I think this game would benefit if they took further cues from the Capcom JoJo’s game and brought back the stand meter and stand breaks. I’m not saying it has to go full on P4 Arena where stands are only used for special attacks and can’t just generally be out, but cutting down on how much the characters can use them might help bring the fighters closer together instead of that back and forth stand shoot stuff.

Anyway, now you can actually see why Giorno lost his match with Gyro. It looks like a bad move on the AI’s part because he jumped back and did the tree thing instead of just hitting him. The more I watch these, the more I wish we were watching human players play. Maybe after this tournament thing is all over.

The final groups, E and F, will stream next week on Wednesday.

ASB League Groups C and D Highlights Reel

The Nico recording highlights are up, and I’m starting to sense a trend in these fights.

Group C

Group C was another grouping of stand vs. non-stand. Rohan was  of particular interest to me because when this game was being announced, Rohan was someone I was sure wouldn’t make it into the roster. Heaven’s Door is cool and all, but it didn’t seem like it would be suited to a fighting game.

As before, if you’re waiting for the full stream to see who won, be aware I’m posting the results table below the link to the fight.

Turns out I was totally wrong because Rohan is the taker of today’s first blowout victory. His ability to seal away parts of or all of your attack just destroyed the opposition. Part of that is probably that the CPU doesn’t take into account that they can’t do any moves, so after getting hit with the seal, they’d just sit there twitching while Rohan hits them in the face. That let him get strong rallies where he might have otherwise lost.

Kira vs. Wham was a pretty nice fight because the technique is very key. Kira is suited to keeping his enemies away and picking at them with bombs where Wham is a close range brawler. Once Kira was able to get him away and use Sheer Heart Attack to deal with Wham rushing towards him, he had a better command of the fight, but when Wham was in his guard, there wasn’t much he could do.

Will was fine. His moves are pretty good, and I like that he has a good agility. It just didn’t serve him too well in this fight. Rohan and Kira move on to the Top 16.

Group D

Stand users abound and also a horse, which I think is a fair balance. Based on how well Johnny was able to do with Slow Dancer, seeing Gyro fight on horseback was going to be interesting. Giorno was also important because him having GE Requiem was a cause for concern with how ridiculously powerful it is.

Not that it mattered at all. Not even with that he is invincible while transforming could Giorno get away from being the one shut out in this group. That’s the trend I’m noticing. It’s confusing, though, because his fight with Gyro ends with him getting a counter that knocks Gyro off Valkyrie, but then he loses. I don’t get it.

Koichi is this group’s star. His ability to keep his opponents at a distance is what allowed him to completely control every match. The only person who really had a good beat on him was Jolyne, who is suited to barricading herself while hitting the opponent with her longer than normal range stand shoot. She also combos very well into the baseball move. Koichi’s, I guess, zoning is what makes him able to wreck everyone.

Gyro is somewhat lopsided. He does fantastic while on horseback, completely wrecking Giorno’s shit in the first half of their fight, but the moment he fall off, he doesn’t seem to be able to handle himself as well. This is why Jolyne and Koichi were able to handle him so well, and may be why Giorno lost if he did which I’m not sure about. With their longer range moves, they were able to knock him off very effectively which kept his stronger mode largely held down. Koichi and Jolyne move to the Top 16.

Look forward to the full stream video sometime this weekend and the Groups E and F fights next week.

(Thanks to JoJo F2C for posting this. You can also watch the videos there if you prefer them to Polsy.)

Edit:

As a bonus, remember the punchable Friend Frog?

Yeah…

Araki and GUCCI Art Exhibit Teaser Images

The Araki-JoJo Twitter along with another one related to Shueisha has released a few pictures from the exhibit in Florence that starts tomorrow. They’re all of the paintings that are being presented, and each one has a theme. The one you can see above there is a Part 5 themed one, which I expect to be particularly popular riding off the setting of Araki and GUCCI’s collaboration. Speaking of, there’s a corner for all the Jolyne in GUCCI fashion pieces, a JoJolion corner, and a Japan aesthetic corner. It’s also amusing that the twitter refers to the Part 5 pieces as “Team Buccelatti.”

This is 28 of the intended 60 pieces that will be displayed at the exhibit. I’m not sure if it’s only going to be paintings or if there will be any displays like what we saw in JOJOmenon. It’s supposed to be Araki’s exhibit rather than a JoJo one, so it will probably only be like this. I wonder how much influence the fashion label venue will end up having.