Youtubing in lieu of real content (JoJo edition)

[petronia]

JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken Desho Desho?: 10,000 points for title, the rest is historic inevitability. XD

Araki-sensei 20th anniversary video interview:
part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4

I was going to translate some of it but at this point I'd have to rewatch it again. XD What I remember of it:

* When he started drawing JoJo musclemen were the thing in Japan because of Schwarzenegger et al. So he drew big muscly guys for a couple of years, made enough money to go to Italy on vacation, eyeballed some Michelangelos and thought, waitaminute. XD (It's so 18th century.)

* He thinks Josuke is his most successful creation (Jotaro is a hero one looks up to, Josuke is more like a senpai at school). If he had it to do over he wouldn't make Jonathan such a "good" boy, he'd give him human weaknesses.

* The inspiration for each part of JoJo lay in the preceding one. Part 4 came about because he set Justice in a town that was sitting there waiting for the stand users to come to it instead of going to them, and he started imagining what a town full of stands would be like. Part 5 came about because of Kira's backstory, or rather lack thereof: he had this whole thing about Kira's effed up childhood with his smothering mother and distant father but decided not to go into it because he didn't want to encourage the villain fangirls arouse sympathy for the antagonist [1]. Then someone [his editor?] was like, so why is it that you don't ever write about people's effed up childhoods? ...And that turned into part 5. orz

* People will keep asking if Kishibe Rohan is supposed to be him, he's not sure why. After he created the character he found no one wanted to come over to his house anymore. He's eaten some weird things in his time but not spiders.


[1] As a card-carrying villain fangirl I've always been a little miffed. XD Though in light of this philosophy it's interesting that he chose to go into Diego's childhood in SBR.


OTHER NEWS, PART ONE: I finished reading the third volume of Ravages of Time, ahahaha. I knew something was off with the entire scenario but it's like every time you pin it with your finger it slips. XD Death Note without the benefit of being inside Light's head. Also I'm baffled as to what kind of brain could come up with the idea of making Diaochan a trap.

That's all Charmian sent me so now I suppose I have to source the rest, but I don't want to read it in English - I won't be able to keep track of who's who in the morass of crack unless I have the Chinese in front of me. XD;

OTHER NEWS, PART TWO: ashesto pointed out last night that Anissina and Gwendal out of Kyou Kara Maou are (almost certainly) named after Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, the former ice dance champs from France. This caused instant head fanon whereby figure skating was the sport Yuuri's mom wanted him to be into, but nooo... this is so plausible I'm not sure it wasn't in canon at some point. D:

Comments

[lazulisong.livejournal.com]

God damn you people, some day I will wake up and I'll be reading JoJo and all I'll be able to think is I hate his art! I seriously, really hate his art! Why am I reading this? and I'll psychically throw sometihng at you from across the internet.

On um the note of throwing things at people I hope you got the note about the sudden edits? orz I'll update the Google Docs thing tonight once i figure out what I'm doing and drink a lot more booze.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I got it - so I'm holding off on reading it until you're done (and also because it's 3AM XD).

[sesame-seed.livejournal.com]

i'm sure charmian will be the first to point out that she has the raws up here (http://garlic.onioncornstalk.com/RavagesRaws).

okay, no, i just beat her to it. *g*

[petronia.livejournal.com]

XD

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

People will keep asking if Kishibe Rohan is supposed to be him, he's not sure why. After he created the character he found no one wanted to come over to his house anymore. He's eaten some weird things in his time but not spiders.

Oh sensei. XD

I don't know if the crackiness really comes through in my RoT posts because I started RoT, and THEN read Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But yeah, there are some things that are like DN, except that the equivalent of Light is really... many people, most of whom aren't sociopaths. (What are you referring to as the "off" element if not Diaochan one? XD)

[petronia.livejournal.com]

If you know something about RoTK beforehand (i.e. to any sane Chinese person) it's complete head-clutching crack. XD; And kind of in media res too; AFAICT the author hasn't bothered to explain how come the Sima clan is running AN ARMY OF NINJAS, or where the heck Meng and Liaoyuan Huo came from.

Trying to find a Western equivalent - it's like a rewrite of Homer where it turns out Helen of Troy was a boy and the whole thing was a giant plot by Aeneas.

[worldserpent.livejournal.com]

Haha, interestingly, it does get a bit more conventional, in that the first arc is largely full of people who were not supposed to have been there historically, about events that are not too well portrayed in the novel. But then in later arcs it's more historically based. (Like the portrayal of Sima Yi might be kind of unconventional, but Cao Cao seems to be portrayed much more normally. He shows up in volume 6, along with Xun Yu, who is one of my favorite RoT characters.) You'll have to tell me once you get there what you think of the reinterp of Lu Bu. XD

I would so read that! :D

[meril.livejournal.com]

Do you know it just took me until now to get that re KKM?

and I had already told leany75 that of course Gwendal is a male name, there's that one Breton ice dancer... :facepalm:

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I know, I don't know why I didn't get it either!

[sub-divided.livejournal.com]

I love Josuke too!

Oh good, so part 5 does get to it. I was worried that after so many hints of horrifying trauma the arc would just end without explaining why Diavlo has a split personality and the ability to utterly erase a single moment.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It doesn't really explain why. XD I think he meant Giorno's effed up childhood, to be honest (they were asking him, why Dio's son).

[youkofujima.livejournal.com]

Sensei, sensei, I'd want to come over to your house!

Okay, maybe not.

But it's kinda interesting how every preceding part is an inspiration to the next. What of Part Six, I wonder...made SBR? O_o other than the obvious.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

What I got from the interview was that the end of part 6 wasn't planned. =_= "So then I thought, what's the logical conclusion of a power like that? If time started going faster, and faster, and fasterfasterfasterfaster... you'd come to the end of the universe and loop the loop! ...So I drew it."

Other than that I don't know why SBR is what it is, other than he felt like it. XD

[vonbrigthi.livejournal.com]

Yayyy, thanks for the links to the interview! Even if I can understand two words out of a bajillion. XD I also keep looking at the SOUL'd OUT X Araki interviews and staring at his silver tie. And and. I keep thinking that green polo shirt is from this season's Uniqlo polo shirt lines. I'm fascinated by the illustration in the background, and the horses. *easily distracted and dokry* orz

Huh, I find it interesting that he didn't want to write Kira's history. I mean, I thought we got some of Dio's history back in part 1, didn't we? And people love Dio anyways (though I suppose not out of sympathy). I suppose there's a different level of EVIL in Dio vs Kira as villians. It's kind of funny that you can feel sorry for Kira in some ways anyways (kind of... um, aside from the serial killing and all XD ). I blame Killer Queen. He shouldn't have designed such a cute Stand!

Josuke lurrrve! Although, he's so dorky and young for a senpai... I also agree with Youko in that I'd visit Araki's house, but probably definitely not Kishibe's. Unless we get to read Pink Dark Boy.

PS

[vonbrigthi.livejournal.com]

And the HaruhiXJojo mashup is just crack, like, like Hiro's blog from Heroes. O_O

[supplanter.livejournal.com]

If he had it to do over he wouldn't make Jonathan such a "good" boy, he'd give him human weaknesses.

What he means to say is that he'd put him in ultra low-rise pants, amirite.

I do kind of wonder what pt1 would look like now, if he weren't actually doing SBR.  Well, Johnny's got plenty of problems, so. 

(Oh yeah, is that where vol3 leaves off? XD;;;  I wish I'd known anything about r3k before starting RoT, though, because when it got to the black page I was just kind of "... and so?" orz)

[angrybabble.livejournal.com]

look, "human weaknesses" clearly includes "being unable to keep your trousers up"! It's a noble flaw!!! XD But yes, I read this as "I would make him a skanky manwhore just like all the others." XD

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'm guessing Johnny is his attempt at redoing Jonathan. XD

No, volume 3 leaves off at Luu Buu. Which is crack even in the context of RoT itself, so. XD

[supplanter.livejournal.com]

Hm, but when was this thing put out?  If it was the 25th anniversary of araki-sensei's first publication, then buso poker was 1980 (according to wiki), whereas SBR was already moving from Weekly Jump in 2004.  So wouldn't he have been actually speculating on literally doing johnathan over, since he already, uh, figuratively had Johnny on the page?

Oh, is it? XD;;  I get my RoT/R3K lulz solely through cross-referencing characters to ikkitousen. orz

[galerian-ash.livejournal.com]

Thank you for translating those bits of the interview! Really interesting, I must say. "no one wanted to come over to his house anymore" Awwww, poor guy XD

Another reason to believe Gwendal and Anissina were indeed named after the skaters, is the cat that Gwendal adopted early on in the series. Compare that one (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v78/galerian_ash/nabaa.jpg) to this (scroll down a bit) (http://home.snafu.de/figureskating/anissina-peizerat/photos/office.htm), and you have a fairly close match.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

I'll probably try to sit down and transcribe as much of it as I can, when I have time. ^^

......I don't know if I should be disturbed at the fact that the author was, was stalking Gwendal Peizerat's fansite cat photos? (I don't think anyone else in KKM is named after a figure skater... or are they.)