Episode 23 “Warrior Returns to the Wind” Teaser Images

Before we start, New Joseph Face:

Lookin’ good as always

All right, now that that’s out of the way, it’s time for the reunion episode. Everyone is here!

Stroheim is back with a reinforced stomach

And he brought Speedwagon along for the ride.

Cars is so excited he let his hair down and kicked the shine into high gear

It may help that he found that free leg lying around

Wham’s a little upset that he clawed his eyes out before getting to see the group again

And Lisa Lisa’s really looking down on herself for not being able to tell him

All in all, though, it’s still fun. A bunch of old comrades and enemies coming together for one last gathering before the gods of old rise up to destroy humanity with their perfect bodies. Good times. Good times.

(You can see the rest at Yaraon, but spoiler warnings)

Episode 23 “Warrior Returns to the Wind” Preview Images and Synopsis

No extra pictures from the “Next Episode” preview today. That was a lot more Lisa Lisa and Cars focused. This deals more with the episode title since it has Wham and all.

Joseph and Wham’s showdown approaches it’s conclusion with neither warrior giving an inch. Backed into a corner by Joseph’s tactics leading to a devastating blow, Wham gears up for his final, sure kill mode. As the curtain draws, Lisa Lisa and Cars must also prepare for their duel to determine the fate of the Red Stone of Aja. They’ll fight in the Ancient Mountain Temple on Piz Bernina. The fate of the stone, and therefore the fate of humanity, rests on one final battle.

Unlike last time, everyone in this crew has been on JoJo’s before. Kazuyuki Fudeyasu’s on screenplay, Taizo Yoshida’s on storyboard, and Shin Hyung Woo and Tomoaki Kado on Animation Direction all with Director Jiro Fujimoto returning to the director’s chair from waaaay back in Episode 8. It’s going to be his first time in Battle Tendency so let’s see what he can do with the craziness.

Episode 22 “True Warrior” Teaser Images

(You can listen to the audio version of this promo here.)

LIVE FROM THE SKELETON HEEL STONE ARENA! IT’S GRUDGE MATCH ’39!

Joseph “Wild Card JoJo” Joestar

vs. Wham “The Wizard of Wind”

in a knockdown, drag out, once-in-a-lifetime chariot race to the DEATH

The crowd will be on the edge and going wild!

Calling for destruction

and BLOOD!

You can only shine like Cars by drinking the blood of your enemies, and you can only do that if you call to order your tickets NOW!

(You can see the rest of the images as Yaraon)

Episode 22 “True Warrior” Preview Images and Synopsis

WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! STAAAAAAAAAAAART!

And the Next Episode preview has all of these, so I can give you bigger ones of them all.

It’s finally time for the grand chariot duel between Wham and Joseph at Skeleton Heel Stone Circuit Arena. Joseph manages to Joseph his way to getting the first weapon, a giant sledgehammer, but Wham is undaunted, calling his opponent’s “cleverness” fleeting. Also, Cars is a huge jerk and cheats to give Wham the advantage. How will Joseph escape this unwinnable situation?!

Crew this time around is almost all new blood. The only returner I see is Shinichi Inotsume on storyboard. He’s being joined by Storyboarder Shin Misawa, a storyboarder and director on shows such as Captain Tsubasa and a ton of other ones I’ve never seen, Animation Directors Yoshifumi Terai, key animator on Case Closed and Persona 4 The Animation, and Shuichi Hara, animation director on a few shows like Solty Rei and key animator for some like Birdy The Mighty Decode: 02 (which is conflicting because that season had way worse drawing quality but generally better motion), and finally Director Naomi Nakayama who looks like she defected from Madhouse having been episode director for shows like the Marvel animes and the Devil May Cry anime. So we have a few people coming in from the key animation departments. I hope that works out because the CG chariots you can see in the Next Episode preview are not pleasant to look at. Hopefully it’s just a quick shot and we get better animation on the key points because if anything deserves it in Battle Tendency, the chariot race is the time to shine.

Episode 21 “100 Against 2 Strategy” Teaser Images

Into the depths of the Pillar Man stronghold, but the big tough vampires get to go first.

“Oh, you’re a vampire. That’s so cute.”

“Joseph, we’re on a tight schedule, so if you could let me handle the gnat?”

Anyway, it’s time to face Cars and Wham for the last time.

With dry tears on our face and a fire in our hearts, we march forward to end the battle that created new enemies, stretches back through our family lines, and claimed a dear friend.

And what better way to honor the memory of Caeser than defeating his killer in greatest sport of civilization.

Vampire Horse Chariot Race

Yes. Yes! We’re at the next stop on the “Things in JoJo’s that need to be animated right now” train. I’ve been waiting on this fight to start since the anime started. I won’t tell you why if you don’t already know, but this is when things get crazy. Everything up to this point has been whatever compared to what we’re about to see. How do you feel about it, Joseph?

“I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you. I’m not touching you….”

As always, you can see more at Yaraon.

 

Episode 21 “100 Against 2 Strategy” Preview Images and Synopsis

Is everyone ready? I know it’s hard, but there’s still work to do.

Single face close up shots <3. It makes it look like Wham is watching this scene unfold between Joseph, Lisa Lisa, and Wired Beck while he really just wants to go take a nap.

After painfully putting their mourning for Caeser on hold, Joseph and Lisa Lisa move further into Cars and Wham’s stronghold only to find themselves faced with 100 VAMPIRES. Joseph, not giving a shit about vampires at this point, offers to duel Wham instead of fight them. If Joseph wins, he and Lisa Lisa walk with the Red Stone of Aja. If Wham wins, Cars gets to kill Lisa Lisa with no resistance. The duel will take place on the night of the full moon in the Skeleton Heel Stone, an ancient arena and circuit. Just from experience with the manga, this is one of the best fights in JoJo’s. Not in Part 2; in the series as a whole. I would be more excited, but I think my body would explode from it.

Staff is all returners. The only name you may not recognize immediately is director Hitomi Efuku who previously directed Episode 5. She’s also working on the storyboards with Yukio Nishimoto who’s back from Episode 12. Screenplay taken care of by Yasukawa Shogo. Animation direction is being handled by Shinya Kawano and Kentoku Tsukuma, and we all hope they can give us something even half as nice as the animation from the last episode looked. That was some good fight motion, and if any fight in this series needed money put into it, it’s Joseph vs. Wham.

Episode 19 “Race to the Cliffs of Death” Teaser Images

Ok, full stop: This is the best image set for a JoJo’s episode we’ve gotten yet because it contains this

and this

and this

and this

I’m sorry if you didn’t know about the full extent of Stroheim’s cyborg body. Usually I would hold back ones like that for just the link to Yaraon, but I couldn’t help it. Look how excited he is to be a cyborg Nazi. And that picture of Cars just had me on the floor immediately. I mean, I love Joseph and all, but that is the single best expression we’ve had yet.

These ones weren’t as stand out as those, but there are some other fun things going on.

A better version of a preview image from a few days ago

More stats!

Look at how little of shit Joseph gives. “Super blade coming at me. What, should I be impressed?”

Episode 19 “Race to the Cliffs of Death” Preview Images and Synopsis

I was starting to wonder if they were going to release these before the next episode premiered.

Originally, this was a worse image, but that guy who uploads the Next Episode previews did get to it. Still only the one shot, but it’s really the only shot you need.

Oh, that Cyborg Stroheim’s looking so good. Sorry about that weird subterfuge with the title from last time, but Cyborg Nazis aren’t the sort of thing you can throw in someone’s face. You gotta ease into it.

The synopsis is awesome because it sounds like it was written by someone who’s trying to describe JoJo’s to a friend who’s never seen it before. The Red Stone of Aja has fallen into Nazi hands. Cars kills the detachment with the Stone in his pursuit of it but is stopped by Stroheim, a man who blew up to kill a previous Pillar Man but is fine because the Nazis can make people into cyborgs even if they’re at the epicenter of a two story fireball. Joseph can only watch as the two fight it out, but what’s going to happen when the fight makes it’s way to the CLIFFS OF DEATH?! I love this series.

We have a few returners on staff which is thinner than the last few episodes. Shinichi Inotsume is back from last episode and writing the screenplay again, Masashi Abe is directing and doing storyboards which is really cool because he also worked on the old JoJo OVA, and Hirohide Shikishima is the only newcomer on the staff and he’s working with Morita Minoru on animation direction.

It’s been a bit since these have shown up and it was only two days until the episode instead of most of the week. I hope you’re looking forward to it because this fight gets interesting, and not just because of the cyborgs and the lasers.

(As an aside: I’ve said before that my translation skills are not exactly existent, so I still use Google Translate to help give me an idea of what’s being said. It works well enough because I can read some Japanese, know the story well enough from having read it, and Part 4 trained me in parsing a bad translation, so when Google translates エイジャの赤石 or “Red Stone of Aja” as “Proof of Teenagers,” I know well enough to not post that Cars has given up looking for the Stone because he’s more interested in reclaiming his awkward high school days. I know that’s not technically a DUWANGLE, but I’m calling it one anyway.)

Episode 18 “Stroheim’s Counterattack” Teaser Images

What do you prefer? Suzie Q:

or sexy shots of Lisa Lisa getting ready to take a bath?

Yeah, you’re just going to have to imagine those because guess what I’m not putting on the blog. You can see them here along with the other pictures at Yaraon, but spoiler and NWS warning.

Actually, this one could be considered the Suzie Q Special Episode because so many of the pictures of her.

She’s not really used to the attention

Oh, don’t worry. Joseph is around too.

With Suzie Q that is

And his totally sweet new ride

Also, Cars has given up his life of murder and immortality searching to become a detective

And also Baoh

Episode 18 “Corps’s Counterattack” Preview Images and Synopsis and Phantom Blood OST 2: FUTURE Release Date and Previews

Ooh, now this is a sticky wicket. The title of this episode spoils something pretty big, so much so that I actually fudged the translation a lot to take the spoiling part out. It’s interesting because the synopsis makes no mention of it and the images aren’t so forward about it either. Maybe the site wanted to leave it a mystery as much as they could? Well, it doesn’t matter. Anyone who saw the “Next Episode” preview would already know, so if someone’s bothered by the name, I’ll correct it.

The only bigger image I was able to lift out of the “Next Episode” preview this time is this one, and the timing is a little off.

But another “Awesome Pictures of Joseph” candidate makes it worth it.

Team this time is nothing but alums. The big thing is that this episode has the huge number of three directors like the last one had so many animation directors so that ACDC’s crying looked exactly right. Shingo Uchida, who is also on storyboard, Yoneda Mitsuhiro and Tsuda Naokatsu are all directing. Naokatsu and Uchida are the interesting ones because they haven’t been around since directing Episode 6 and 1 respectfully. Oh, did I say that the last episode had a lot of animation directors? Yeah, this one has five. Hotani Yukitoshi, Kenji Yokoyama, Kyoko Kotani, Shin Hyung Woo, and Madoka Ozawa are all animation directors. I can understand why, I know how important what’s about to happen is, but man that’s a lot of people. And they left all the screenplay up to Shinichi Inotsume. They could have probably gotten him at least an assistant, or at least given his assistant a credit.

While the synopsis isn’t really that straightforward about the thing that made me mess with the title, it is pretty straightforward about ACDC. It breaks down pretty much to ACDC comes back to attack Lisa Lisa, Joseph and Caeser have to fight him, and, in the process, they learn that Cars and Wham are in St. Mortiz, Switzerland plotting to get the Red Stone of Aja. Leaves a lot of room for speculation as to how ACDC is going to be fighting those two considering his condition.

That’s not all though. The official site has announced the release date of the second OST.

FUTURE

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: The Animation OST Phantom Blood: FUTURE, is, on top of being quite a mouthful, going to be released on February 22nd. It’s probably going to be packaged in with whatever blu-ray release is scheduled for that date as the last OST, DESTINY, was packaged in with the first blu-ray. On top of the announcement, the page also has previews of a few of the tracks on the album if you’d like to check those out.