JoJo’s for the Late Adopter! Compilation BD/DVDs with Bonus Now Available

Did you get the JoJo blu-rays? If you’re kicking around that kind of money, I envy you quite a bit, but only from that angle. The BD/DVD angle we might be able to meet halfway on.

As Part 3 approaches, you have another chance to not only get the blu-rays, but to get them on the cheap with some bonuses. Warner Home Video is releasing 3 compilations of the first JoJo’s season and they are available for preorder through AmiAmi and Amazon JP. There are three total, 1 Phantom Blood and 2 Battle Tendency all for the low low price of about ¥5,500 for the BD version and ¥4,500 for the DVD version.

But that’s not all. These are the limited editions, and they come with some fabulous bonuses. These bonuses include complication CDs of JoJo raDIO, special illustration booklets, a clear sleeve and stand, all the previous commercials, a special label like the above picture, and cast and crew commentary on the show and JoJo. The only thing I haven’t been able to find is confirmation of the English subtitles the first BD set was supposed to have. No saying one way or the other, but give it a look all the same.

(Thanks Jason. Sorry it took me so long to follow you up on that.)

JoJo raDIO Episode 11 Transcript… Sorta

JoJo fans are often the best. You remember JoJo raDIO I take it? When it was first announced, I was hoping that someone would pick it up for translation but knew that wouldn’t be that likely since it would be a massive block of dialogue being a radio show. Well, maybe I was being a bit pessimistic. Drakonia Tumblr has, for a bit now, been releasing synopses of the videos. Here’s the most recent one for Episode 11 where they had Takehito Koyasu on. Quoted directly:

JOJOraDIO vol.11!

This week’s guest is Koyasu Takehito, the voice of Dio Brando himself!

Ueda-san starts off with a listener’s message from a 30 year old male who became a JoJo fan back when Part 4 was still being published, and his wife got hooked by the new anime.

Then Ueda-san invites Koyasu-san (mentioning how he himself is nervous and excited). Koyasu-san says that many of his fans mentioned JOJOraDIO, how interesting it was and how they wanted him to be one of the guests. Then they have some laughs about how this radio always gets funny when you try to talk seriously. Koyasu-san says that he’s known JoJo for a long time, he started reading it even before becoming a seiyuu, but wasn’t much of a fan. He attended auditions for the new anime and he decided for himself that if he gets a role, it has to be Dio. He also mentions how as a child he thought that JoJo manga was more of a horror kind (the stone mask scared him quite a bit), but when he reread it as a grown-up he understood that it’s absolutely different. He also wondered what Araki-sensei (as an adult) thought while creating the manga and whether he wanted children to read it. Then Koyasu-san talks about reading works from the point of view of a character he’s going to voice (Dio in this case) and how it brings new colours to the setting. He says that for JoJo he only scims through the anime scripts without reading them thoroughly, because after reading the manga it’s enough for him. He just takes notes of short/long phrases, and then goes all out at the recording because the atmosphere in the studio demands just that – raw hotblooded action.

Koyasu-san says that working on JoJo anime was a pleasant and fun experience for him, mostly thanks to Okitsu Kazuyuki and his acting as the main protagonist. Initially Koyasu-san intended to give Dio the leading role but ended up having to keep up with Okitsu’s Jonathan, and it was really refreshing for him. He even thanked Okitsu-san for that after the recording.

Then Koyasu-san talks about the cast, how all the cast and staff members were “looking in the same direction” and aiming for the same goal (and this is what made working on JoJo anime different from his previous works where everyone seemed to work separately), and how tiring it was despite being interesting and pleasant. Then they discuss the recording process, differences in interpretation of character roles, Iwanami-san’s requests concerning certain lines and such. Koyasu-san also mentions how at first he thought that Dio was more cool and composed, but it turned out he was about as hotblooded as Jonathan (and even his inner monologues had to be loud and obnoxious).

Episode 3 gets brought up again (no surprise here, really), Koyasu-san says that it felt as if studio itself was on fire during the recording, he even had kind of a hallucination that they were really surrounded by flames, and felt like he himself was not Koyasu Takehito voicing Dio, but he WAS Dio and he WAS fighting there (a thing he’d never before experienced during 26 years of his career). Probably, the pacing and tempo of the anime itself helped build up the tension and gave them some kind of adrenalin rush, he says. It was also the most fun episode for him to work on, other ones didn’t bring that much joy and satisfaction, and Dio from episode 4 onwards was like a new and different character for him, one closer to Stardust Crusaders DIO (he even pronounced it as an acronym – dee-ai-oh).

Then they discuss Dio, how he doesn’t learn from his mistakes and remains too arrogant for his own good even through all of the Part 3, and how Jonathan always stands in Dio’s way and wastes his life interfering with his evil plans of world domination XD Also Koyasu-san said to Okitsu-san “You became so great all thanks to Dio. Be grateful to him! Be grateful that he made your life so fun and florid! And die feeling that gratitude!” (テラ子安www). Well, he does understand feelings of villains, after having voiced so many of them. “Do those heroes of justice have nothing else to do but mess with my villanous schemes? They really should get a life!”

Also, usually Ueda-san finishes the talk with “Next time <guest name> will speak about even deeper JoJo love”, but this time he changed it to “Dio love”. Nice touch.

Next week it’s still Koyasu Takehito.

Wow, this one turned out MUCH more detailed than usual Can’t be helped, though, ‘cause I adore Koyasu and I absolutely loved him as Dio.

Quite a brick of text, isn’t it? Not that that’s a bad thing by any stretch. If you’ve been interested in JoJo raDIO but haven’t been able to pick it up, go give Drakonia Tumblr due attention for putting these out and give the synopses a read through.

Episode 17 “Spring an Intricate Trap” Preview Images and Synopsis and JoJo raDIO Episode 1

And this time, nicely, all the preview images for the next episode are in the “Next Episode” preview, so here’s a bigger version of them.

Who needs color overdrives when you can perfectly control your body down to the last cell?

The episode synopsis is pretty simple this time. It breaks down pretty much to, “Joseph is about to complete his training with Loggins, then ACDC shows up before they can have the final exerise. Can Joseph beat ACDC?”To give my own take on it: you remember when we got the pigeon scene in Caeser’s first episode? That was one of my “Can’t wait to see that animated” moments of the show. This episode will have the next one.

I think this episode has some important animation because it’s got a massive four animation directors this time. Akira Takahashi, Kenji Yokoyama, Tomoaki Kado, and Hotani Yukitoshi. Yuta Takamura is directing, Kazuyuki Fudeyasu’s on storyboard, and Taizo Yoshida’s written the screenplay. They’re all preview crew for JoJo’s, so this episode’s being given the expert’s treatment.

And that’s not all. Remember JoJo raDIO from last night? I thought that was just going to be an audio file, again, like a podcast, that might play on a player on the main animation site.

Not at all. It’s actually a YouTube video and gets it’s own subsite. If anyone out there is itching for a fan translation project, this one is ripe for the picking.

Speedwagon Broadcasts Cooly: JoJo RaDIO Starts Tomorrow

If you’ve visited the JoJo’s the Animation site main page recently, you’ve probably seen this banner at the bottom.

I was originally skittish about posting about this because I wanted to make sure I knew what it was first, but from Tweets and the official news page, it looks like more than I would have expected. On the surface, it looks like it’s something like a staff podcast for JoJo’s, which would be cool, but it’s not that simple.

JoJo raDIO is going to be a radio show hosted by Yoji Ueda as Speedwagon interviewing the staff and cast of JoJo’s The Animation. So I guess it really is a staff/cast podcast, but hosted by Speedwagon. The episodes will be posted as that banner on the official site, and they start on the 28th at 6PM, tomorrow in Japan. That’s 4AM Easter Standard Time in the US.

Speedwagon’s first guest is Kazuyuki Okitsu, voice of Johnathan Joestar. Since this is essentially an interview, maybe we’ll get lucky and get a transcript by one of the subgroups. Nutbladder likes to leave in commercials, so it seems right up their alley.