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)

25th Anniversary JoJo’s Artbook This April

Cast your memory waaay back to the JoJo’s Year 25 Jump All Star sketch collection. Unfortunately, most of the images are gone now, though I think you can still find Yusuke Murata’s Jotaro if you root around in old posts. What could be better than a large outpouring of professional fanworks as an artbook? Well, official artbooks are also pretty good.

Make sure and give the page long enough to get to the awesome JoJo emblem themed countdown clock. Each numeral is represented by an emblem of the protagonist of that part except for 0 which is a peace sign and 9 which is Kira from Dead Man’s Questions but he’s a skeleton. At time of writing, it currently reads “Joseph, Jolyne, Joseph, Joseph : Johnathan, Johnny, Josuke, Jotaro” or 26 days, 22 hours, 17 minutes, and 43 seconds. Obviously, those last three emblems change pretty quickly. Also, JoJolion Josuke apparently wears shorts, and I must have forgotten about it.

So what’s that all a countdown to? A JoJo’s 25th Anniversary Art Book: JoJoveller. According to that banner from the official JoJo’s site, information on it will come out with the April Issue of Ultra Jump on March 19th, which is 26 days and change from when I’m writing this. You can keep up with the clock for right now at the official site and hopefully some preview art once the book itself is ready to ship.

(Sourced from the official JoJo’s Website. It’s on an ad, though, so it’s hard to source. Just go to the JoJoveller site.)

What Would the “Happy Birthday” Stand Power Be?

The year is 1986. A young manga artist hot off the heels of your manga about psychic worm-infested blue men, and you think it’s time to start something new. It’s a new time in your creative career, and you want to make something with a character with an alliterative name.

Where do you really go after this?

If that was you, you were Hirohiko Araki and you made the incredible JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. You might have noticed from the metric ton of posts in the “JoJo’s Year” category that we’re pretty big fans of the series. We’ve been keeping this place filled with stories about The Animation, creator interviews, fanworks, even making two small podcast series where we discuss the manga and the anime. I’d like to think we’ve said a lot about the series.

And yet, I never feel like we could have said enough. Every podcast leaves me wanting that we’d mentioned that other thing during this fight or this character moment. Talking about the anime makes me wish we could go into the details of later parts and how great they’ll be when animated. News stories like Taku Iwasaki and Lotus Juice doing the music for Battle Tendency lights up my imagination for how great it’s going to just sound let alone animate. Everything I say is just a drop in the bucket for how much fun we want to tell you we have with JoJo’s. And now it’s the 26th birthday of the first chapter. JoJo’s has been serialized since 1987, but it first ran on December 2nd, 1986.

So what can I say hasn’t already been said? Plenty. A year of nothing but talking about JoJo’s would be the only way to cover it properly, and that would never compare to experiencing it directly. So join me in saying the one thing we all really need to say.

Happy Birthday! No matter how many more years you give us, we’ll enjoy every single one of them.