Notes on JoJo part 5, cont.

[petronia]

Beginning with part 3, the arch-villain of a JoJo arc has always had some sort of fucked-up time paradox-based ultimate attack. The worrisome part of this is that Killer Queen: Another One Bites The Dust is more complicated and harder to grasp than The World by a degree of magnitude, and King Crimson is harder to grasp than Another One Bites The Dust. If the pattern holds the ultimate arch-villain attack in part 6 will collapse space-time in a reverse Big Bang, and the readers will throw up their hands and go make themselves a gin and tonic (I'm not joking, I really suspect this is what happens and that's why it goes AU afterward D:).


El Boss Man: you begin to realise after a while that he's not solely motivated by safety concerns (it's not paranoia if they're really after you, and the myriads gunning for Diablo most certainly exist), but because his... sense of self?... is entirely predicated on the disjunction between his current self and what he might have been in the past - or the man who at that time existed in his stead. That's the source of King Crimson, if indeed all stands must have a subconscious derivation: the monomaniacal desire that what came to pass be utterly erased, that the link be impossible to draw through time and space. I'd be interested to know how long he's had Doppio around, actually (he looks Trish's age, but that only means as much as you want it to).

...But no, more importantly. What is up with his character design?!? Sure, volume 60 seen it all blahblah, but the spider-woman black lace shirt! The hair! Not only is it inherently baffling, it breaks the no-polka-dots-with-stripes rule!

&&& he wears lipstick but that passes nearly without comment. What pains me more is that for the longest time it was Bruno in there. Which brings me to--

Mista in Trish. Which was clearly the hottest thing to have happened to Mista since forever, or the White Album fight at least.

Pistols: Hi Mista you are looking hot today, can we touch you. :D x 6
Mista: Um, guys--
Trish: EWWWWWW YOU HAVE B.O. AND THERE'S HAIR GROWING OUT OF YOUR KNUCKLES EWWWWWWW GROSSSS.
Mista: ...
Mista: Well, excuse me for being a smelly hairy MAN I'm su--
Trish: WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING.
Mista: What, nothing!
Mista: ........It's just you've given yourself a wedgie from running arou--
Trish: BITCH KEEP YOUR HANDS ABOVE THE WAIST OR I CUT YOU.
Mista: ...

Everyone gets wince-inducingly damaged in this series but Mista seems to have a preponderance of "On the bright side, this solves the problem. On the not so bright side, in three seconds this is going to hurt like a motherfu--OW" scenes. (Giorno has a preponderance of Langorously Expiring Narcissus poses. Srsly I think he spent the entire Narancia vs Squalo/Tizziano fight aesthetically dead. Also spotted some Adonises and a couple of Pietas in there; the story takes place in Italy you see, it's only natural it should look like Italian paintings.) Mista is kind of uke to the universe, though. T_T He's not really uke by way of character but I can't explain it better than that. The moral of his backstory - indeed of his entire short life including series events - is that if you go with the Flow the Flow will bring you, if not to where you want to be then to where you're supposed to be. The catch is that you may be in danger of getting raped at points in-between.

But yeah, this does remind me of Howl's Moving Castle, or DWJ endings in general - a lot of people running around shouting and doing confusing things to other people all at the same time, while actually being some other person or combination thereof. And I DDDD:ed quite a lot because I have as much affection for Polnareff and Chariot as any right-minded reader of part 3 and cannot bear to see Araki be m33n to them. Then when he had everything on the verge of wrapped up he seemed to abruptly realise he won't ever be drawing these characters again OH NOES D: and proceeded to insert the sort of side story most mangaka reserve for Jump special issues or fanbooks, just to have more stupid lunchtime conversations about eating Narancia (...) and Fugo being eye-rolling and Mista being cute and Buccellati being himself. It was pretty great though, I applaud the gambit, ends things on a philosophical note. XD


Speaking of kotatsu, er... how about that Gold Experience Requiem. ^^; It's clever, you have to admit.

Gold Experience
1) Neutralises the effect of physical attacks through equal and opposite force (automatic).
2) Gives "life" to inert matter.

Gold Experience Requiem
1) Neutralises the effect of any attack through equal and opposite force (automatic).
2) Collapses "life" to non-existence.

That is, for a time-based attack like King Crimson it simply "rewinds" whatever it was that was done, and Giorno doesn't even need to be conscious in the interim, any more than he was in control of Lucas getting bashed over the head with his own shovel. So if time stop were used on him, it probably would go off like that comic where Giorno barely noticed anything had happened apart from being confused that GoldExp Requiem had suddenly popped out. XD;;

As for #2 Giorno/Araki himself is only able to circumscribe rather than describe, through metaphor, but it makes sense in a... I thought of the goddess Kali, actually.


Pairings: I kind of like Bruno/Trish. Yeah. >_> This is canon, actually, in an... extremely understated way (i.e. if the series had that kind of fandom there would be wank over whether it was canon or not, because the Buccellati/Abbacha and Fugo/Trish shippers would DENY ALL). He's completely professional and she's coltish and standoffy and they have more pressing fish to fry and nothing's said in the other's hearing and he saves her life at the expense of his own and it's just doomed from the start, pretty much. All of Araki's het pairings are insane and/or tragic and/or doomed, when he can be bothered to put them in, and indeed words like "tragic" and "doomed" feel like overstating the case because it's hardly given the emotional centrality of Tristan und Isolde (apart from Jonathan and Erina). But maybe for that reason, I end up shipping them all. =_= Even Kira and his not!wife, they were so cute in a... a... I got nothing.

I also like Giorno/Mista, which does not seem to be weird fandom-wise, but is kind of weird for me. XD (I remember now what I wanted to point out - Mista is uke because Araki says so. -_- The disturbing thing is that the Bast "stuck in the middle with you" episode was yanno, a gay joke, anyone can make a gay joke, but no one could've come up with the post-White Album gag without at least some cursory exposure to yaoi doujinshi.) And I have to keep back notes on the other possibilities, for fic, but it is really one of those "mathematically combinatory" series. XD;;


Due to detour into dragons etc. have barely started reading part 6, but let's take a look at the premise. Or better, engage in a mental exercise:

Name the number of Weekly Jump series you can think of that have

• a female protagonist. Not the main love interest or the most important character besides the hero, the POV protagonist.
• a teenaged female protagonist?
• a buff, asskicking teenaged female protagonist who neither looks nor behaves conventionally schoolgirl-cute?

There are reasons why this is. It doesn't take much mental effort to come up with reasons why this is. Araki has always done the opposite of coasting on 'moe' value, evidently sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't (not plot-wise, survey numbers-wise). Whatever the hell you want for as long as you can get away with it before they motion to take away your office. XD;; Whereas Inoue Takehiko slammed the door after himself, he is ARTIST and will rent his own thx. (I love Inoue as much as the rest but he has that air of taking himself and his work seriously, whereas Araki is more like "Well yeah it expresses MY INTIMATE CREATIVE GESTALT but it is also INHERENTLY RIDICULOUS, nothing contradictory about that, think for 1 x minute pls peons.")