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)

JoJo Blu-ray Vol. 6 Art and the JoJo Blu-ray Ultimate Bonus

Once again, it’s about time for a new volume of the JoJo Blu-rays to come out. This new set comes in a lovely red with a lovely ACDC and Lisa Lisa duet on the front. This disc covers episodes 16 through 18, from Joseph and Caeser’s training at Lisa Lisa’s castle to Cars’s encounter with Stroheim. The unique bonus that comes with it is the original design t-shirt you see there.

Second, do you remember the Johnathan and Dio art card that was displayed with every volume of the blu-rays? That is the concept art for a figure that will be used as the bonus for buying the whole set of Blu-rays.

The image comes from the JoJo Anime Twitter hot off the heals of their recent JoJo raDIO event. I hadn’t thought about how they’d have to account for scaling since the concept art uses manga proportions, but the figure looks pretty nice. It’s a Medicos figure, so it will likely be a high quality item, though there’s no information for it that I can find on their website. How it will be distributed, I’m not sure. Maybe maybe you have to get all of the blu-ray box tops and send them into davidproduction.

Vol. 6 launches on Friday, and our next launch is the 26th of next month.

(Images from JoJo.Anime and JoJo Anime Twitter. © Hirohiko Araki, LUCKYLAND Communications, Shueisha, davidproduction, Warner Bros., and Medicos Entertainment Ltd.)

JoJo Vol. 5 Blu-ray Box, Disc, and Mousepad Art

The art isn’t out by the anime twitter or the official site, but like usual, someone, this time in the JoJo anime thread, managed to sneak a picture of the box set out. This will be the box set with episodes 13 through 15 on it. Like all the box sets, it comes with a bonus item rolled in. It was Leicht Verwendbar for Vol. 4, but we’re out of new soundtracks for the moment, so this time it’s that little Pillar Men Relief mousepad. A cute bonus, and maybe it can strike a conversation during office work or look judgmentally at you while you look up unscrupulous things on the internet. Wham would not approve of actions like that.

This set is due out May 31st.

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?

No JoJo, No Life. Volume 4 Blu-rays with Leicht Verwendbar Launch Today!

Just to remind everyone, the Vol. 4 Blu-rays enclosed with Leicht Verwendbar launches in a few hours. Tower Records in Shibuya and the anime twitter have already gotten into the mood with that big ass poster set around their entry gate. It’s not really the same as the Santana statue from last time, but this is a big deal event for them to be using that space for the posters.

Anyway, for those of us not really in a position to attend the launch, the Blu-ray and the DVD do come packaged in with the new OST. That means that if you’d like to own it directly, you can go ahead and order it from Amazon JP, who have the cover and disc art that you can see unlike the anime website. If not, the YouTube playlist should be up pretty soon. I’m not sure how fast after [Musik] came out that the YouTube playlist did, but it shouldn’t be too long.

JoJo’s Blu-rays Full Release Schedule

That is the cover of the Vol. 3 DVD. I don’t think I’d posted that. The purple and cyan looks nice. I’d never posted that here, and I didn’t want to deprive you guys of Dio when there’s plenty to go around.

The official anime site has released a schedule of all the future blu-ray releases. It’s the same place that has all the pictures of the boxes and goodies that come with them, but only the ones that have been released have pictures. The rest are still just the “NOW PRINTING” block. It also tells us what episodes are going to be in each one, so here’s the schedule for all the blu-rays that are yet to have been released

Vol. 4 (Episodes 10 – 12): April 26th
Vol. 5 (Episodes 13 – 15):  May 31st
Vol. 6 (Episodes 16 – 18):  June 28th
Vol. 7 (Episodes 19 – 21): July 26th
Vol. 8 (Episodes 22 – 24): August 30th
Vol. 9 (Episodes 25 – 26): September 27th

Basically, every new blu-ray/DVD will be released on the last Friday of every month until the last one in September. That also means that August gets to be the month JoJo’s comes to your house and breaks your bank account in half. Nicely enough, though, because Vol. 9 will only have two episodes, it will come at a ¥1,050 ($10.55) discount. It’s nice to see the discs come down in price since there will be less on it even if it is still really expensive. Maybe consider it a grace for your continued support of the show.

(Image © Araki, Shueisha, Luckyland, Warner Bros., and davidproduction. Make sure and visit their site for information about all the goodies you get based on your distributor of choice.)

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.”

Episode 25 “Birth of the Ultimate Lifeform” Teaser Images

There’s my boy. Or can you say that Cars is a boy at this point. I’m still disappointed that the SEX USELESS doesn’t shoot out of his crotch as a sound effect, but seeing it down there in all caps as part of this scene pulled directly from the manga makes me pretty happy.

I’m not doing tons of preview images here because we’re busy with the con, but you can always check out all of them at Yaraon.

Ahem, if I may. FUCKING PIRANHAS! FUCKING PIRANHAS! FUCKING PIRANHAS!

For the honor of all JoJo and also GeJo!

So yeah. That’s all right? Yeah, I’m wondering about the special announcement too. I haven’t seen anything on Yaraon, forums, JoJo Twitter, or the anime official site other than that the Vol. 4 Blu-rays are now up on Amazon and a wild comment on Yaraon mentioning wondering about Part 3. We may have to wait until the subs come out because it’s inline or something that wouldn’t show up in screenshots. Don’t worry. It’ll come.

JoJo Blu-ray 4 and it’s Amazing Second Tracklisting for [Leicht Verwendbar]

That’s not the album art. That’s actually something pertaining to the Vol. 3 Blu-rays, but there isn’t any album art or the Vol 4. Blu-ray materials on the page for it.

The official page for the Vol. 4 Blu-rays is up, kinda. Certainly, we’ve got more changes and improvements to look forward to in the near future, but what about any other special bonuses? Well, alongside [Musik], there will be another Battle Tendency OST released as a bonus with the Vol. 4 blu-rays. The JoJo’s Anime site has put out both a tracklist and a few preview tracks. Here are the tracks from OST Battle Tendency [Leicht Verwendbar]:

1. Old Town
2. Bolt *
3. Quirk
4. Tense
5. Maze
6. Bargain
7. Skew
8. Pulse
9. Backfoot
10. Hike
11. Constrain
12. Abyss
13. Gambit
14. Il mare eterno nella mia anima ~Lunetta~
15. Master ~acostic~
16. Hellcrimb
17. Master
18. Ancientry
19. Chaos
20. Fend Off
21. Demon
22. Develop
23. Awake*
24. Mystic
25. Appearance*
26. Affection

* Preview clip available

Again, I don’t really know what most of these titles associate to other than “Il mare eterno nella mia anima ~Lunetta~” and what I can gather from the preview clips. “Awake” is the track that usually plays when one of the Pillar Men does something devious or cool in a fight. “Bolt” I think is either the music that played when it was showing downtown New York or when Joseph was biking through the desert. “Appearance” I’m not sure what is at all. It sounds like music that would play when Joseph is turning around a desperate situation with a cunning plan. Not exactly specific, is it?

This whole package will drop on April 26. Make sure and keep an eye out for it.

(Image © Warner Bros., davidproduction, Hirohiko Araki, Shueisha, and Luckyland. Thanks to a comment in the post about [Musik] that reminded me I hadn’t posted about this one yet.)