The End of Our Journey to a Volcano. JoJo’s Vol. 9 Blu-rays Cover and Bonus and Official Re-airing Date

With all the commotion over ASB, I wasn’t even thinking about these. I completely didn’t even talk about the last one that came with the Santana USB drive, though I think I’d mentioned the drive itself before. Anyway, the final volume of the JoJo’s blu-rays. It comes with a picture of Joseph and Cars, probably Ultimate Cars. The DVD equivalent only has Cars, meaning that the DVD’s managed to never repeat which character they used for the cover. Vol. 9 contains the final two episodes and comes with two bonuses. One is the final cereal box top you need to get the special Johnathan and Dio statue, and the other is the art book of key animation drawing from Battle Tendency. As before, the disc launches on the last Friday of this month, the 27th, and is actually cheaper than all the previous sets by ¥1,050, so look forward to completing your collection.

But that’s not the end of the JoJo’s fever. After the launch of this blu-ray, it will be October. A lot of new fun Fall shows are starting up that month, but rebroadcasting happens too. JoJo’s: The Animation will be re-airing on BS11, an independent and satellite based TV network, at 7PM on October 5th. It’s likely they’ll be using the original airing cuts since they’ll need to use the censored versions for prime time, and going back and applying the censoring to the blu-ray cuts would be awkward. If they do use the blu-ray cuts, though, that would be cool.

I actually already knew about this, the Anime Twitter and BS11’s Twitter both posted about it back on the 7th, but I figured I’d let it go since most everyone who reads here isn’t in a position to watch Japanese TV. I bring it up now because I’m seeing people touting it as the preview show before the Stardust Crusaders anime.  Are they right? I don’t know. Shows getting rebroadcasted isn’t that weird, and it doesn’t always lead to new things. I always hear, “There’s no way they won’t make it because Part 3,” whenever it gets brought up, but I still haven’t seen any confirmation of it from davidproduction, Warner Bros., Shueisha, LUCKYLAND, or Araki. The only thing we have is the ending with Jotaro and those two teaser pictures (1, 2) from back on April 1st. The guy who posted those did say they weren’t edits. I think we can take away from that that the JoJo’s Production Committee within davidproductions probably wants to make a Part 3 anime, but I still haven’t heard anyone say, “Yes, we are definitely going to do it.” I’ll I can offer you is to put your hands together and hope the rumors are right.

JoJo Blu-ray Vol. 7 Art and Special Bonus

The JoJo anime site is quick to the punch this time. They’ve released the box art and the special bonus image this early into the month. This Vol. 7 with Caeser and Wham spans episodes 19 to 21, “Race to the Cliffs of Death,” “Caesar’s Lonely Past,” and “2 on 100 Strategy.” The extra is this cell phone strap with replicas of ACDC and Wham’s poison rings. Another piece of cosplay to anyone out there with enough bravado to play the Pillar Men.

The standard DVD features a blue halftone Caesar that looks very nice. Two more volumes to go.

(Image from JoJo.anime. © Hirohiko Araki, Shueisha, davidproduction, Warner Bros., and the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Production Committee)

The JoJo’s Blu-ray Vol. 4 Extraaaaaaavaganza!

Everyone’s up in the spirit of JoJo’s now that the Vol. 4 blu-rays are out.

And look at that beautiful art. You should be excited.

Yes, this box set is a bigger deal than I originally thought. On top of that it comes with Leicht Verwendbar, it also comes with a ticket enclosed for the big JoJo’s event on July 23rd. That event will be attended by Okitsu, Ueda, Kawasumi, Sugita, Sato, and Tominaga. For those of you who will be in Japan in that area, you can read more about where it’s going to be held here.

Also, it was a launch event. There were lots of people there, and Takuya Sato wrote about it on his blog. He got to meet Araki and take this cool picture with his fictional grandfather, Yoku Shioya.

He talked about having fun and how the role of Caeser has been a high point of his career.

So it’s been a pretty fun showing. The JoJo spirit is getting whipped up strong with this release. I don’t imagine we’ll see this for the next few releases. Maybe for the last one. Hopefully for All Star Battle. Definitely for that event in July. I hope that spirit never falters.

(Pictures from the JoJo Anime Twitter and Takuya Sato’s personal blog.)

Edit: Razakin down in the comments shared something that came with his copy from CD Japan.

It was taken with a camera phone, so please excuse the slightly washed look. I wonder what these are. They look like bookmarks, and one of the distributors was offering bookmarks with these characters as their unique bonus, but those are different in shape and display. It’s cool all the same. Did anyone else get a unique prize?

JoJo’s Blu-Ray Vol. 4 Box and Disc Art and Leicht Verwendbar Disc Art

The official anime site, at time of writing, still has the image for the Vol. 4 blu-rays listed as the “NOW PRINTING” gray block. It’s ok, though. The guys over at SRWZ have us covered.

Well, mostly. I’m not sure what it is that will be in that “Event Now Printing” gray paper flap, but the discs and box art are all there. Seeing Joseph with the tommy gun is always satisfying, and it’s nice to see Speedwagon. Most interestingly, though, is the second disc there which should be the CD for Battle Tendency OST Leicht Verwendbar. The art looks like Cars, ACDC, and Wham posing with the Red Stone of Aja, which makes sense considering that “Awaken” seems to be the most sought after track on that disc.

A closer look at all the cover art. Like always, I believe the full color is blu-ray and the halftone style is standard DVD. I like the halftone for Joseph a lot because it’s easier to see the tommy gun. It also helps that halftones make a lot of sense as a style choice because of the whole 1930s New York thing. I could totally see that picture of Joseph under a headline of “Man Guns Down Streetside Bar in Tragic Vampire Attack.”

Phantom Blood Blu-Ray Clean Up and Volume 2 Covers

The buzz around the JoJo’s The Animation blu-rays has started again fresh. When the original episodes aired, a lot of them had that weird shadow censorship where a lot of the screen was blacked out to cover gore and violence. The blu-ray/DVD release took care of that.

Chariot driver from Episode 1

On top of that, the animation has been generally fixed up. I’m not usually the type to notice off facial designs, but side by side with the improved version, it’s hard to miss.

Yes, it’s much better, and I never even noticed something was up in the broadcasts. You can check out a few more changes here.

On top of that, ahtn Tumblr grabbed some pictures of the new DVD cover and Blu-ray cover for Volume 2.

DVD Covers

Blu-ray covers

I’m really liking the DVD cover. There’s just something really attractive about the way it looks kind of like newsprint with the shading done in halftone. It’s a little easier to see Will’s intense expression on the Blu-ray, though, since it’s closer to his face. Speedwagon looking good for those glamor shots they took after his raDIO debut.

If you have the money, you might look into these.

Edit: And people have. The sales charts have come out for today and the JoJo Volume 1 blu-rays are the second highest selling discs. You can also look at some of these charts. Apparently, there are places already selling out. It might have something to do with people feeling Santana staring at them when they go into Tower Records in Shinjuku, but these are also Amazon. It’s shaping up very nice.

Edit Edit: Yaraon has also put up a few of the images of DVD changes and clean ups. They have a few more of the violence and gore edits as well as the faces and coloring fixes.