[GrimZata]

I finally got around to finish rewatching the recent JoJo anime, I had stopped for a little while since I got All Star Battle in the mail before finishing it. Anyway, here my thought on the anime as a whole.

Part 1, Phantom Blood, is a little weak compared to some of the later parts, but I still think it holds up pretty well as a story even now, more than 25 years after it was written. The rivalry between Jonathan and Dio is one of the best parts of PB, and really the whole focus of it, Dio is a very charismatic villain and well written character, and while I admit he has his flaws, Jonathan is easily my favorite character from this part, I guess it just has something to do with his determination, he's a true hero. Other characters, specifically Zeppeli and Speedwagon are also pretty great. In the end everything comes together as a short, but interesting story that sets up the events of the later parts.

Part 2, Battle Tendency, is pretty great, it's probably my third favorite part. I really like the whole story it had going with the respect between true warriors, and Cars' showing that he didn't have the true warrior's spirit in his battle with Lisa Lisa towards the end, just further shows how evil he was. As much as I like the cast from Phantom Blood, I thought that Battle Tendency's was much stronger, for one thing, Joseph is easily one of the best protagonists from any anime or manga I've seen, unlike a lot of battle series' protagonists, like Jonathan, instead of just punching or using some over powered weapon without much thought, he plans and thinks of how to beat them, most of his battles are much more battles of wits rather than of strength, for one thing he manages to beat the Cars after he had become the Ultimate Life Form and was essentially a god. Stroheim, Joseph's cyborg nazi ally is another great character, he's mostly played as more of a comedic character, but when it comes down to it, he probably helped Joseph more than any of his other allies. Caesar and Lisa Lisa, Joseph's other two allies are pretty good characters themselves, but not some of my favorites from the JoJo series.

As for the villains, the Pillar Men, Cars works really well as a main villain, being incredibly powerful, and just downright evil. ACDC was okay, but he didn't do much. Wham on the other hand, was definitely one of my favorite characters in the entire part, possibly even the entire series, and definitely my favorite of the Pillar Men, his whole warriors' code and his respect for Caesar and Joseph as warriors was just great. The narration during his death about Joseph having a "bizarre friendship" with Wham is one of my favorite scenes.

Overall, It's a pretty great adaption, it changed almost nothing from the manga, there were a few small things cut out here and there, but it's nearly perfect and incredibly accurate. This is actually what got me to go ahead and read the whole manga, sometime around when Phantom Blood episode 7 aired, and now it's become my favorite anime/manga series.

Now, David, where is the Stardust Crusaders adaption!?