Fancy French Cheeses and PV! The Jean Pierre Polnareff Special PV!

The French! Ah, it sounds good. I mean, not good, but it sounds right. Or something. I’m not sure how to express that one, but I like it, Monsieur Joestar. And Dio’s butt.  And it still looks good. I mean the animation as well as Dio’s butt I guess. The music is a new interesting point. Suits Polnareff’s image more than the fat beats do, though, so I’m still not sure how the show’s sound direction and composition is going to go. I’m sure it’ll be トレビアン.

And that’s the end of our special character PVs as far as I’ve heard. There may be one left since there’s enough time for one between now and the 4th, but we’ll have to wait and see. Maybe a good super stand user special. Need to hear what Daniel and Terrence are going to sound like.

PVPVPVPVPVPVPVPVPV. Stardust Crusaders Noriaki Kakyoin Official PV!

Now this PV is interesting. Joseph and Abdul’s new voices were different but still relatively close to the same style as ASB. Kakyoin is the first to have a distinctly new voice style with it being much deeper. There’s also a lot more weight put into “Emerald Splash!” It’s an interesting change.

And it still looks good. Man, is the bud flesh much more gross looking than I remember, and Tower of Gray. It’s an interesting fight to pick to show off, but something like Death 13 might not give such a clear Emerald Splash to pretty up.

Almost there. We have one left to meet.

Stardust Crusaders Anime Character Special PVs Start Friday!

New content means new previews for that content. The Official JoJo anine site has gotten it’s full appearance overhaul now that the anime is getting ready to start on April 4th. This includes a new set of character pages, which is where that picture of Joseph comes from, and the promise of new PVs. Once a week on Friday starting this Friday, the official site will be releasing a character specific PV to give a little detail on each of them. I think it’s just a good chance for everyone’s favorite character to look cool for a few seconds before everyone gets to look cool in the show.

The PVs will start with Joseph and Hermit Purple, then Abdul, Kakyoin, and finishing with Polnareff. Something fun to look forward to which you can follow here. I’ll also post them, of course.

Stardust Crusaders Anime Stand Designs Special!

The core cast of Part 3’s stands have been revealed. Although you probably already knew what they looked like, and they look about the same. Hierophant Green looks about dead on the same way he did in ASB. The only differences I can see are subtle color ones. Hermit Purple looks like it’s a little richer of a purple, and Magician’s Red looks closer to a peach color than I remember. That could be a scan quirk though. Magician’s Red does have a look on his face like he just remembered he left the stove on when Abdul called it out. I wonder why he needs one…

About 2 months left, everyone. It’s getting close.

(Images from Yaraon)

“There’s a Limit to What Human’s Can Wear, so I Abandon my Svelte Waistline!”

This one has a bit of age, but it seems to have passed under the radar. Do you remember the JOJO x Japan Original Beauty collaboration from back in October? You may have seen the costumes or some of the hairdressing videos, but have you seen any of the show itself other than the promotional posters? I hadn’t, but Shiseido was nice enough to put a small video of parts of the reception party up on their channel. It’s interesting to see how big a media event it apparently was and how much more there was to the fashion than the JoJo stuff. The unique hairstyles particularly stand out.

That video was part of this Naver collection that has a few pictures of the event and participants.

Second, do you remember this picture? I dubbed it the Jonabar. It was an entry for one of the legs of JoJo Royale that struck a chord with me because I think it’s funny. Well, as it seems:

Making JoJo themed chocolate art is apparently a thing. And the art is certainly impressive. I’m not even sure how to get details like the folds in clothing or the rough sections of Josuke’s hair. You see a lot like this with the detailed art.

And there are some that are very impressive drawing wise and as full artistic sets.

Like this. This is the sort of thing I’d imagine as the centerpiece of a JoJo theme wedding. I’m mostly enamored with the detailing on the stone mask, but I like that all the sound effects, which I assume are cookies, must be handmade because they don’t have a regular shape. That’s an impressive dedication to a project. I don’t know if I’d be able to eat it.

These images come from this Naver collection. You can see a few more here. The Diego one is especially nice.

Stardust Crusaders Anime Designs Special Spread!

Yeah, that’s pretty good. I don’t remember if a super big character design overhaul was part of the changes rumor, but this should quell at least that part. Everyone looks good. I particularly like the attention to facial expressions especially on Joseph and Polnareff. I don’t see anything about voice actors, but that’s supposed to be announced at an upcoming event mentioned in that pink block on January 22nd. Seeing Abdul’s angry eyebrows only emphasizes how much I want him to still be voiced by Masashi Ebara, so hope for good news.

By the way, most of those times deal with the special New Years rebroadcast marathon of Parts 1 and 2. Far as I can tell, they do not deal with a potential air time for the anime.

(New HQ scan with confirmation for April 2014 courtesy of Vish in the comments. Thanks so much!)

[Edit: Oh, and here’s a fun picture from Yaraon comparing the current anime designs to the previous OVA designs:

You know, I’ve never watched the 2000 OVAs not through the Antfish filter, but I might want to to mine for Polnareff based forum avatars.]

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.

“I Was Busy Being Purple in the Corner.” All Star Battle Campaign 2 All Costumes and Colors with Origins

Another campaign, another slew of unlocks, but we’ve also just passed one by. For those of you curious, Vish has another compilation of every new costume and color from ASB Campaign 2 with their origins as to the original work and whose ass you need to kick to unlock them. There’s lots and lots of characters to go through, 22 total this time. Like before, you can thumb through them however you want by using the annotation menu to skip to your preferred character.

The depths of JoJo alternate clothes and colors to plum are deep, and do you have to have gone far to catch them all. I barely even noticed purple Kakyoin on that one cover, and I’d never heard of that artbook that one Jotaro costume came from. I assumed it had been from some Stone Ocean cover I’d forgotten about. Your fandom combing continues to impress, ASB Team.

It’s Not About Hairstyles. It’s About Dedication to the Costume.

There was a big post ASB Launch event back on the 1st. The event was held at Yoshimoto Mugendai Hall and was just an excuse to sit back and have some fun with the fandom. There were even stage events including a big, cosplay photo shoot. Someone was nice enough to post those images, and it’s cool to see what costumes are being pulled out. You have your normal main character costumes, but there are some costumes pulled from places I wouldn’t have guessed.

The guy dressed as Pucci? That’s his actual hair. It’s not make-up or an effect. He actually shaved his hair into that shape. The Jotaro guy is dressed up to be with the Part 3 guys, but since they had him around, they pulled him in.

Santana was not expected in that outfit. Or at all. I guess if you were expecting Santana, you’d probably have to expect him in that outfit, but the Joseph there was apparently not ready for the big diaper man and couldn’t not laugh.

This was the first one that caught me by surprise, and it’s the biggest one. The people are posing by part, so that guy in the center has to be an SBR character, but I couldn’t remember him by his outfit. That’s actually someone cosplaying Dr. Ferdinand, user of Scary Monsters. He’s the one responsible for turning Diego into everyone’s favorite Dinosaur Cowboy. Not bad.

So, how do you feel about the new live action Iggy? Boston Terriers actually do have the big ears like that, but it might have been hard and possibly dangerous to train one to eat gum, so this guy’s going the extra mile. I really like the solidarity between the guy who’s Alessi and the guy who’s Death 13? Can’t use your scythe out here? Don’t worry buddy! I’ll let you borrow my murdering axe.

There’s a lot of cool details going on in this picture. The Josuke and Okuyasu reading manga like in the commercials, the Harvest guy holding up a giant 100 yen coin, the Rohan with the Heaven’s Door puppet, the Highway Star guy even putting the checkering tape over his face. This is cool. I think that guy with the fishing pole is supposed to be Toyohiro Kanedaichi, user of Super Fly. I don’t totally recognize him, but getting a radio tower inside the hall would probably be pretty hard, so it’s cool.

Double Narancia Fury! Anyone who cosplays Diavolo gets praise just for making his weird mesh shirt thing. The guy playing one of the Pistols is also fun. I like the glasses he used to make their unique eyes.

I wonder if Josuke is so pissed because he doesn’t et to be the center stage Josuke this time. JoJolion Josuke gets to pose with the Part 4 guys because he’d be by himself otherwise.

Is anyone else uncomfortable with the axe wielding maniac being behind anyone?

(Thanks to the JoJo F2C for posting these. Original article from a Nico Blog)

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!