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Apr. 27th, 2006 09:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petroniaI'm not quite halfway through JoJo part 5. Up to this point it's a chronologically tight storyline consisting of traveling -> battling assassins -> traveling, like part 3 but with an even flimsier putative justification (unless the boss is using them as bait to draw out said assassins). Araki begins to recapitulate the nineties in music; he's more into hip-hop than alternative rock, at any moment now I'm expecting it to turn into Def Jam Vendetta. Otherwise the character designs are so outré as to be largely timeless, the only way you can tell this was written in the mid-late 90's is that the cellphones are huge. XD
Funnily enough this is easy to imagine as a live-action film. It would really have to be directed by Miike Takeshi, though: the boys are bracingly nasty even when they're on the Path of Justice (Narancia has a twitchy knife hand, Fugo's idea of first aid is a staple gun and masking tape, Abbacchio... actually I saw this fanart in which Mista was like, "O we do that to all the newbies! It's just a harmless little hazing ritual, usually Bruno does the honours?").
For some reason I found it easier to express my opinion in the form of character blurbs:
Bruno
Outfit: pantsuit last seen on Heidi Fleiss (or was it Lil' Kim?). I dig the peekaboo lace but black tadpoles on white background are a bit eye-swimmy.
Hair: Touya Akira with barrettes. And cross-weave. Bruno has the dubious honour of being the first boy in JoJo everyone mistakes for a girl. But at least it sets his cheekbones off dramatically.
Personality: sane, responsible, and a beacon of reason. Also, mom.
Note: licked GioGio the first time he met him, but have mutually agreed not to speak of this again.
Abbacchio
Outfit: someone is making him do Advent Children cosplay.
Hair: someone is making him do Advent Children cosplay.
Personality: someone is making him do Advent Children cosplay and he hates the world for it, so y'all can go fuck yourselves.
Note: people will mention "tea parties" in connection with Abbacchio [1] - this is not an indicator of tweeness.
Mista
Outfit: out of the five, the one you can best imagine on a real boy (tight cropped sweater, tiger-print pants, combat boots), although it would have to be d'n'b night at a gay club or something. [2]
Hair: does not apply.
Personality: Happy go lucky, superstitious, not a long-term planner. Medium dumb.
Note: Peter Pan as pwnz0red by six Tinkerbells.
Narancia
Outfit: like something Tsukiono Omi would toss on for a casual night out. Leather strips are involved.
Hair: Normal mid-length anime boy hair. Bandanna.
Personality: dumb but cute. Not so much badly raised as not raised at all. Twitchily violent.
Fugo
Outfit: I think Celine Dion was mocked for wearing this to the Oscars. Alternately, a normal suit that won a pyrrhic victory over a paper hole puncher.
Hair: blond, spiky, sideways part.
Personality: supposedly genius smart, but with severe anger management issues. Twitchily violent.
Giorno
Outfit: Rococo meets Japanese schoolboy meets Prince, plus ladybugs. Has to be seen to be believed.
Hair: blond, curly, sort of Marie Antoinette with bagels. Has to be seen to be believed.
Personality: one of those. You know, the Griffiths and Reinhard von Lohengramms of the world. More precisely, each world can only do with one, that's how many places there are at the top.
Trish
Outfit: revealing. Relatively okay, even fashionable, because she's a girl. >___>
Hair: flip, v. eighties, so much so it's in again.
Personality: cool, tends to treat the boys as daddy's employees which they are, but (unlike basically every other anime/manga female in comparable circumstances) not dumb. As in, does not contravene orders and run away, does not insist she can protect herself better than half a dozen trained operatives (though she knows basic self-defense), does not attempt meaningless self-sacrifice, and when told to duck, ducks. [3]
[1] Alternately, "Giorno's Golden Experience".
[2] That's discounting his hat. One day I will make a poll with pictures and ask people to vote the top three best and worst hats of JoJo, but today is not that day... In flashback Mista's hat is an ordinary b-boy tuque, so it's not inconceivable that it evolved its present shape like a tamagochi (or, indeed, like a stand), out of necessity, because he keeps bullets in it for hands-free reloading. The arrow acts as guide. On a practical level this is cool but it looks really dumb - I mean I love Mista but. XD;; The first time he did it I could not stop laughing. Some years ago I caught a couple of episodes of this fantasy anime at a university club showing; the show being utterly mediocre, all I remember about it is that the gunslinger heroine kept bullets in her cleavage and was able to reload using BOOBIE BOUNCE. If Mista were a girl, that would totally be her signature move.
I would oekaki that but I don't think I'd pull it off.
[3] Note that Araki sez he can't write women. Possibly he means "can't write women as the alien species men think they are, therefore resorts to writing them as actual people".
***
Sticky Fingers is a lot more powerful than it seems, but that's because the description is wrong. XD It doesn't create "zippers", it creates "localized warp spaces that behave according to topological rules most easily conceptualized through the visual metaphor of zippers in fabric". <--(BY Fugo, after which he is stared at blankly)
Thinking about it, even if you run a zipper down a brick wall, you wouldn't be able to get through the opening, because the edges have no give. So you also have to make changes to the area surrounding the zipper. It's evident from the visuals of the manga that Sticky Fingers doesn't so much distort the matter constituting the wall itself (as Crazy Diamond might do) as it distorts the "grid" within which the wall exists - Euclidean space, in other words. Hence the trippy Escher-esque effect. XD I mean, doesn't it just sound more impressive to say Bruno's stand power is creating dimensional wormholes? Not to mention it sidesteps the question, what sort of person must he be way deep down for his innate superpower to be "zipping/unzipping things" (when I mentioned this to Erin she said, "He must have been popular in high school.").
(The proof is that Sticky Fingers can zip things into other things without squishing either container or contents. Basically, it's like poking a piece of plastic cling film with your finger until it bulges, then pinching off the top to create a "pocket" - the cling film being 3-space. Thus Polpo's jewels are not really "in" the urinal in a conventional sense, because topologically speaking the inside of your pockets are on the outside of your coat.
Of course, topologically speaking a coffee mug is a donut.)
As well as the sheet-like warping of surrounding space, the "zipper" expresses the idea of set-connectedness. XD If the edges are joined and Bruno turns Sticky Fingers off, the hole disappears by itself, even if the object is unwound like an apple peel. If the edges aren't joined, the object remains in two pieces. This is intuitively obvious because one imagines Bruno "zipping the hole closed", but he doesn't ever actually zip the hole closed by pulling on the zipper tab (and more importantly, no one else can pull on the tab and close the hole either). It just makes it that much easier to conceptualize.
Araki has said stands themselves are essentially extended visual metaphors, because you can't really draw the cause-and-effect of psychokinesis. Like, why would Silver Chariot need to drop its armour in order to get around faster? It's not like it technically weighs anything. But this expresses that whatever mental energy Polnareff was expending on defense+ has been switched to speed+.
Eh, that's as much as I can manage tonight I think. XD
EDIT -- Having read through to the end of 56, I have to say, the easiest way of conceptualizing King Crimson's power is to think of it as Sticky Fingers along the fourth dimensional axis. :0 If you blink and lose several seconds, it's a "hole"; if you meet yourself coming and going, it's a "pocket". It's not the same as The World/Star Platinum, which is more like... moving asymptotically close to light speed with total disregard for relativity. But the day I have to worry about relativity w/r/t JoJo...
Also: Bruno. WHAT. *flaps hands helplessly*
Funnily enough this is easy to imagine as a live-action film. It would really have to be directed by Miike Takeshi, though: the boys are bracingly nasty even when they're on the Path of Justice (Narancia has a twitchy knife hand, Fugo's idea of first aid is a staple gun and masking tape, Abbacchio... actually I saw this fanart in which Mista was like, "O we do that to all the newbies! It's just a harmless little hazing ritual, usually Bruno does the honours?").
For some reason I found it easier to express my opinion in the form of character blurbs:
Bruno
Outfit: pantsuit last seen on Heidi Fleiss (or was it Lil' Kim?). I dig the peekaboo lace but black tadpoles on white background are a bit eye-swimmy.
Hair: Touya Akira with barrettes. And cross-weave. Bruno has the dubious honour of being the first boy in JoJo everyone mistakes for a girl. But at least it sets his cheekbones off dramatically.
Personality: sane, responsible, and a beacon of reason. Also, mom.
Note: licked GioGio the first time he met him, but have mutually agreed not to speak of this again.
Abbacchio
Outfit: someone is making him do Advent Children cosplay.
Hair: someone is making him do Advent Children cosplay.
Personality: someone is making him do Advent Children cosplay and he hates the world for it, so y'all can go fuck yourselves.
Note: people will mention "tea parties" in connection with Abbacchio [1] - this is not an indicator of tweeness.
Mista
Outfit: out of the five, the one you can best imagine on a real boy (tight cropped sweater, tiger-print pants, combat boots), although it would have to be d'n'b night at a gay club or something. [2]
Hair: does not apply.
Personality: Happy go lucky, superstitious, not a long-term planner. Medium dumb.
Note: Peter Pan as pwnz0red by six Tinkerbells.
Narancia
Outfit: like something Tsukiono Omi would toss on for a casual night out. Leather strips are involved.
Hair: Normal mid-length anime boy hair. Bandanna.
Personality: dumb but cute. Not so much badly raised as not raised at all. Twitchily violent.
Fugo
Outfit: I think Celine Dion was mocked for wearing this to the Oscars. Alternately, a normal suit that won a pyrrhic victory over a paper hole puncher.
Hair: blond, spiky, sideways part.
Personality: supposedly genius smart, but with severe anger management issues. Twitchily violent.
Giorno
Outfit: Rococo meets Japanese schoolboy meets Prince, plus ladybugs. Has to be seen to be believed.
Hair: blond, curly, sort of Marie Antoinette with bagels. Has to be seen to be believed.
Personality: one of those. You know, the Griffiths and Reinhard von Lohengramms of the world. More precisely, each world can only do with one, that's how many places there are at the top.
Trish
Outfit: revealing. Relatively okay, even fashionable, because she's a girl. >___>
Hair: flip, v. eighties, so much so it's in again.
Personality: cool, tends to treat the boys as daddy's employees which they are, but (unlike basically every other anime/manga female in comparable circumstances) not dumb. As in, does not contravene orders and run away, does not insist she can protect herself better than half a dozen trained operatives (though she knows basic self-defense), does not attempt meaningless self-sacrifice, and when told to duck, ducks. [3]
[1] Alternately, "Giorno's Golden Experience".
[2] That's discounting his hat. One day I will make a poll with pictures and ask people to vote the top three best and worst hats of JoJo, but today is not that day... In flashback Mista's hat is an ordinary b-boy tuque, so it's not inconceivable that it evolved its present shape like a tamagochi (or, indeed, like a stand), out of necessity, because he keeps bullets in it for hands-free reloading. The arrow acts as guide. On a practical level this is cool but it looks really dumb - I mean I love Mista but. XD;; The first time he did it I could not stop laughing. Some years ago I caught a couple of episodes of this fantasy anime at a university club showing; the show being utterly mediocre, all I remember about it is that the gunslinger heroine kept bullets in her cleavage and was able to reload using BOOBIE BOUNCE. If Mista were a girl, that would totally be her signature move.
I would oekaki that but I don't think I'd pull it off.
[3] Note that Araki sez he can't write women. Possibly he means "can't write women as the alien species men think they are, therefore resorts to writing them as actual people".
***
Sticky Fingers is a lot more powerful than it seems, but that's because the description is wrong. XD It doesn't create "zippers", it creates "localized warp spaces that behave according to topological rules most easily conceptualized through the visual metaphor of zippers in fabric". <--(BY Fugo, after which he is stared at blankly)
Thinking about it, even if you run a zipper down a brick wall, you wouldn't be able to get through the opening, because the edges have no give. So you also have to make changes to the area surrounding the zipper. It's evident from the visuals of the manga that Sticky Fingers doesn't so much distort the matter constituting the wall itself (as Crazy Diamond might do) as it distorts the "grid" within which the wall exists - Euclidean space, in other words. Hence the trippy Escher-esque effect. XD I mean, doesn't it just sound more impressive to say Bruno's stand power is creating dimensional wormholes? Not to mention it sidesteps the question, what sort of person must he be way deep down for his innate superpower to be "zipping/unzipping things" (when I mentioned this to Erin she said, "He must have been popular in high school.").
(The proof is that Sticky Fingers can zip things into other things without squishing either container or contents. Basically, it's like poking a piece of plastic cling film with your finger until it bulges, then pinching off the top to create a "pocket" - the cling film being 3-space. Thus Polpo's jewels are not really "in" the urinal in a conventional sense, because topologically speaking the inside of your pockets are on the outside of your coat.
Of course, topologically speaking a coffee mug is a donut.)
As well as the sheet-like warping of surrounding space, the "zipper" expresses the idea of set-connectedness. XD If the edges are joined and Bruno turns Sticky Fingers off, the hole disappears by itself, even if the object is unwound like an apple peel. If the edges aren't joined, the object remains in two pieces. This is intuitively obvious because one imagines Bruno "zipping the hole closed", but he doesn't ever actually zip the hole closed by pulling on the zipper tab (and more importantly, no one else can pull on the tab and close the hole either). It just makes it that much easier to conceptualize.
Araki has said stands themselves are essentially extended visual metaphors, because you can't really draw the cause-and-effect of psychokinesis. Like, why would Silver Chariot need to drop its armour in order to get around faster? It's not like it technically weighs anything. But this expresses that whatever mental energy Polnareff was expending on defense+ has been switched to speed+.
Eh, that's as much as I can manage tonight I think. XD
EDIT -- Having read through to the end of 56, I have to say, the easiest way of conceptualizing King Crimson's power is to think of it as Sticky Fingers along the fourth dimensional axis. :0 If you blink and lose several seconds, it's a "hole"; if you meet yourself coming and going, it's a "pocket". It's not the same as The World/Star Platinum, which is more like... moving asymptotically close to light speed with total disregard for relativity. But the day I have to worry about relativity w/r/t JoJo...
Also: Bruno. WHAT. *flaps hands helplessly*
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no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 12:45 am (UTC)I was actually going to do a poll on my LJ like your hat poll, but for outfits and for hairstyles. XD Unfortunately I then started inexplicably liking the outfits and realized I was too twisted to properly run such a poll. I mean I went from "Fugo's outfit is the ugliest thing I've ever seen, Mista's is #2, and Annasui's is #3" to "awww those clothes are all sort of cute and stylish in a horrible, horrible way!"
Actually good cosplay really makes them look good too! Especially Fugo's. It's shocking. I haven't seen any good annasui cosplay yet but if the wearer were hot I bet it would be EXTREMELY SEXY. Mista's is probably the most consistantly hideous no matter who is wearing it or what color it is, though the game colors most people use as canon are REALLY BAD. Red/blue hat and sweater with white/black pants is fine, but with LIGHT BROWN BOOTS?! Oh god, someone shoot him now, that is a CRIME. If I ever draw him and his boots are featured I will make them a sane color, like black, blue, or red. >_>;
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 01:08 am (UTC)Damn straight someone needs to run a poll.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 03:53 am (UTC)I never thought it was a bra, though, I thought it was... attached to the suit? Or the top of a half-slip. Not that, uh, the top of a half-slip is much more respectable than a bra.
The best way to do the poll is simply to provide names and links to scans of each character. XD That way even people who have not read JoJo can provide an opinion. Also it would have to be checkboxes, pick top three, because it would be too difficult to OPO. XD
Yeah, with Fugo's or Annasui's it's completely dependent on whether the view through the holes is desirable. XD;;;
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 04:56 am (UTC)And yeah, I was gonna do it something like that. Well, do you want to do it, or shall I? XD XD XD For "best hats" I TOTALLY SUBMIT JOSEPH'S HATSTACK! I think it's awesome! XD Well and the hairhat of course. And then there's... er... *tries to think of other non-horrifying hats* uhhhhh. Caesar's headband? XD Oh I guess there's speedwagon's bowler too. And the Zeppeli pimphat. You know, the one puu says rejected Caesar because when he showed up in it, he had on a bowtie with no collar shirt. XD; If we include part 7, Gyro and Mountain Tim have good hats!
Worst hats... won't it be a tie-up between Abbaroth's kappa hat and Mista's faggy faux-executioner hood? actually it reminds me of those medieval peasant hoods (forgot the name of them). you know, like poor townspeople are always wearing in like robin hood movies? XD only like way more flamboyant. XD Oh and Johnny's hood. SIGH. (Actually I've started thinking Johnny's outfit is cute. HOW DOES ARAKI TWIST MY BRAIN LIKE THIS?!)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 01:05 am (UTC)One of the very nice things about Jojo is how damn competent everyone is. No heroes where it's a mystery as to how they manage to defeat the villains day after day. Even though Narancia is not as smart as the other characters, he does manage to survive battles using his own talents; same with Mista. (Also Mista's hat scared me when I first saw it.)
Yeah, the description of Bruno's power is wrong; it's just that Araki is really into fashion this time round so it manifests as a zipper? Or something like that. Bruno is actually extremely powerful.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 02:39 am (UTC)I think he just said "puts zippers into things" because it's more succinct? XD
Man, I should make a giant batch of polls on my website. XD But the problem is that new horrifying shit comes out of Jojo all the time! Maybe I should limit it (like "In Parts 1-5, whose hat is most horrifying?" because tragically several horrifying hats/costumes are in parts 6 and 7... in fact EVERYONE IN PART 7 WEARS A HAT. Or almost everyone. In the interview they even asked him about it: "sensei, what's up with all the hats?" and he was like, "Oh, uh, well, you see, it's a RACE OUTSIDE and they uh have to protect their heads from the elements!!!" and I'm like I AM SO SURE YOU CONSIDERED THE WEATHER WHEN YOU DESIGNED THEM ALL WEARING THE LEAST PROTECTIVE HEADGEAR EVAR AND HALF OF THEM LOOKING ALL SKANKY AND PARTIALLY NAKED. I think he just got tired of drawing freaky hair and decided to move on to freaky hats. XD
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 03:32 am (UTC)(Next up on Warhol-inspired stands: the Velvet Underground banana!)
Hahaha but see, you begin to follow his logic after a while. It's a spaghetti Western, of course everyone has a hat on. :P
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 07:27 am (UTC)(Where are these interviews that you all keep talking about? I want to read them.)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 04:07 am (UTC)(Giorno is the same age as Tezuka! I have no idea why I just said that.)
This combination of menacing brutality and WAFFy boybanderism is really why it reminds me of WK fandom, because I'm on the Schwarz fan side of things and it's entirely predicated on this selfsame psycho killer/dorky roommates dialectic. XD And yeah, while Narancia is slow on the uptake (he takes a long time figuring Kraftwerk out) he has a sort of animal cunning Okuyasu doesn't - Narancia is street through and through, and instinct leads him to the correct path.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 07:31 am (UTC)Hmm, but is the dorky roomates stuff for Schwartz as canonical as it is for the Passione group? Because they're the heroes, here, and it's not fanfiction, the quality is somewhat different.
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 03:53 am (UTC)(Actually if you buy the later JoJos on Amazon they try to bundle it with Death Note? Like, "Hmm, you seem to like un-WJ-like WJ series!" XD)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 07:59 am (UTC)Ahahaha. Well, JoJo is not really as unlike regular WJ series, it's just free of many of their flaws. Thinking about it now, I think that the 'contemporary' WJ plot pattern does have some flaws...
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 07:33 pm (UTC)Example 1 (http://www.chthonian.net/teehee/giogio_63_054.jpg) (where the Brando booty is on full display, despite the fact that he's kneeling)
Example 2 (http://www.chthonian.net/teehee/giogio_63_074.jpg) (at the end, his hair comes out of its braid and is just blowing everywhere in the wind. orz
Somehow, his modded uniform just really works on him. =_=
no subject
Date: 2006-04-28 06:31 am (UTC)Re: Giorno - If you ever have any confusion about part 5, just consider the fact that a photo of Araki's worktable had this CD (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000002LE6/ref=m_art_li_2/104-1380945-5828744?%5Fencoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=5174) propped up as inspiration. Yes. Quite. Yeaaaaaaah.
re: Mista - I think it's sort of adorable that two of the Pistols seem to hang out with other people; I think it's #6 that is often riding shotgun on Bruno's shoulder and the wussy #5 who liked Giorno? Mista, buddy, you better rein in your subconscious there. >D (At the end of part 5 there's a sidestory with Rolling Stone, and Bruno's on like the fifth floor and Mista's on the ground floor and he REALLY HAS TO TELL BRUNO SOMETHING IMMEDIATELY so he shoots six times into the air up the stairwell.
"Pistols! o_O"
"WHEEEE! :D HI! BTW WATCH OUT!"
re: Bruno - Dude, all my favorite characters in every arc have ONE IMPORTANT SHARED CHARACTERISTIC. D: (I was about to exclude one and then I realized that no, actually, I can't exclude him. orz)
Although now all I can think of are those hilariously wangsty JP comics where Bruno is all "IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME I WANT YOU TO TAKE CARE OF THE GROUP" to Abbacha (the fangirls nickname him Abba-cha for...er...obvious reasons >D), and Abbacha wangsts, because remember, he is in love with Bruno but Bruno dumped him for the n00b! oh it is all so tragic!
Don't worry that Bruno will disappear any time soon; I think Araki was torn between his urge to KILL and his love for Bruno (his #3 favorite character?) so he compromised. XDDD
I love your explanation of Sticky Fingers; I never thought it out that completely but of course that's precisely what it does. If you can explain KC's power in a way that makes sense, PLEASE, I'M ALL EARS. I can't make his explanation jive with things like Bruno, or the cat walking over Giorno and him not noticing it...actually, Bruno's the big glaring flaw in the explanation. But I think we can make it work if we assume that part of that is Gold Experience doing what it does, since Giorno really really wanted it to. (Maybe???)
One of these days I should post a bunch of the songs/bands that JoJo references, because man, it's so awesome and it saddens me if you don't get them too. Like, King Crimson's special-est powar is called "Epitaph" and has nobody heard King Crimson's "Epitaph?"
One day I want to go to...Rohan's....house...and make him cook for me while I flip through his record collection and his travel knick-knacks. I think it'd be fun.
(If you haven't read part 7, he sort of reaches the modern era with his references, like "Ferdinand" and the racehorse "Hey Ya!" and so on. Of course, "Mrs. Robinson" is a man.)
no subject
Date: 2006-04-29 03:43 am (UTC)Normal, sane writers do things like having the character hang around in transparent blue spirit-form, at one with the Force, dispensing advice. I'm just saying. >_>
(Unless the series proceeds to inform me otherwise I'm going to assume Bruno's current state was caused by GioGio!? Because it really has nothing to do with King Crimson's power, whereas I can see GoldExp causing something like this if the timing were "just right". Like, with Josuke, Crazy Diamond returns things to their former state, but it doesn't work if it's been too long and the pieces are too far away - so he can't bring people back to life because within split seconds of death the soul "goes somewhere" beyond Crazy D's sphere of influence. Whereas GoldExp is a blast of physical life force, and metaphysics don't come into it at all. Giorno can shape the effects but if he's more or less thinking, "Fix the holes, now get up and walk"... yanno?
The other theory is that this is the vampire heritage in GoldExp acting up again. YOU NEVER KNOW. I mean, it's not like Giorno's tried to create an army of darkness by punching a bunch of corpses with his stand.
...Now watch he's going to attempt it within five chapters. This is what usually happens when I try to theorize from this manga. XD)
I don't really know King Crimson. XD Actually I'm not usually up to Araki's references when he goes classic rock, apart from knowing the names of bands and albums. I do better with the funk/disco and the top 40 randomosities.