From the union of action, horror and glam-rock comes JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures, the wackiest shonen anime to grace the shelves. Get ready for twenty-six high-definition episodes of muscles, mayhem and makeup that, like its heroes, comes wrapped in purple while remaining the manliest thing possible. So strap on your fingerless gloves and get ready to save the world from bad men in guyliner in this most bizarre of bizarre adventures! 

Even the most casual fans of Japanese media have encountered JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures somewhere. It’s inescapable. Despite never making the frontlines in mainstream media like Dragon Ball, Naruto or Bleach, JoJo is one of the most influential (and longest-running) manga in publishing history, with this DVD collection being only the most recent animation adaptation. 

Yet don’t let the “shonen” label fool you—JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures is NOT your typical boys’ manga. True, it has the fights, the gotta-beat-em-all structure and plenty of crazy hair and costumes. But the fights are gorier, main characters die left and right, and everyone looks like a national football team wearing 80’s workout gear that was caught in an explosion at the hair-gel factory before colliding with David Bowie. 

And BOY HOWDY do the Bizarre Adventures earn their title! The storylines uniquely capture the whimsy of after school make-believe games while adding a level of violence that would put Mortal Kombat to shame. There are familiar tropes galore, yet you’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like a coalescence of a million gleefully silly things that somehow becomes the most awesome, macho manga experience ever.  

This set follows the plotlines of the first two arcs of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures manga: Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency.
Phantom Blood is the shorter story, comprising only the first nine episodes and introducing us to the first JoJo, Jonathan Joestar, and his soon-to-be-legendary enemy Dio Brando. The story opens with JoJo’s kindly father surviving a carriage crash and mistaking his would-be looter for a rescuer. After the man’s death, the grateful Lord Joestar adopts and raises his son Dio alongside his own son, JoJo. Yet, though Dio earns the admiration of everyone around him, he’s secretly a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath out to steal JoJo’s inheritance. 

The first arc, Phantom Blood, starts with a bad-seed plot where Dio lives to torment his newfound brother, Jonathan Joestar. This lays the groundwork for a long-running grudge to be played out in the future between Dio and the Joestar bloodline. And it kicks into high gear when Dio discovers the ancient Stone Mask, a device capable of granting inhuman power and vampiric immortality! (Specifically through cranial acupuncture!) As Dio casts off his humanity, JoJo must likewise cast off his aristocratic lifestyle and learn a secret technique—the Hamon energy of the sun generated by breathing! For only the sun can kill a vamp, and Dio’s got a fair bit more than money in mind now that he has eternity to consider… 

Battle Tendency, meanwhile, skips forward in time to the life of Jonathan’s grandson, Joseph Joestar. In this JoJo’s storyline, we meet the creators of the Stone Masks: the Pillar Men, who used humans as food. Their tombs uncovered, these ancient brutes arise from a multi-millennia slumber and want—what else?—power and control over humanity. And seriously, these guys are nasty! Their ability to manipulate their own bodies is on a level greater than even Dio, such as folding themselves into tight spaces, externalizing bones to use as weapons, even attacking with their own prehensile veins. (And that’s just for starters. Sweet dreams, kids!) Yet this JoJo’s tougher too—he’s no kindly gentleman like his grandfather. He’s used Hamon his entire life and knows a thing or two about reading his enemies. Let’s hope that’ll be enough! 

Fittingly for such a crazy tale, this series boasts some gorgeous animation. Though the characters themselves have complex designs, these and the various larger-than-life surroundings receive fantastic translation to motion (admittedly with a fair share of keyframe-light dialogue sequences). The combat is likewise camp classic, yet the epic scale and feel never falters—these animators know how to use a budget!

What distinguishes this adaptation most for me, however, is its amazing recreation of the manga’s trademark atmosphere. At the foreboding entrance of the latest villain, looming “sound effect” text crawls across the screen to echo the soundtrack. Hatch-marks and screentone effects suddenly “interrupt” the characters’ monologues. At particularly pivotal moments, the colors suddenly turn neon, creating the same tense feeling as the manga’s dramatic penwork. Even thoughts and dialogue echo over various scenes here, mimicking both the speech bubbles and the subjective flow of comic-book time. I’ve never seen anything like this on the screen before. There’s a reason that the opening sequences feature heavy usage of images from the manga— you feel like you’re stepping into the pages themselves!

This set also comes with some of the nicest goodies I’ve ever found in a DVD Box. Packed in with the discs are a set of glossy cards depicting each member of both main casts striking various supermodel poses. These cards pair nicely with a book of sample keyframes from every episode, giving a rough look behind the scenes. It also elaborates on the staff-credits, complete with director’s commentary about production. These fit snugly in a very sparkly cardboard case, blinged-up so it can stand out from the rest of your collection. 

Here’s the thing about JoJo's: it knows exactly what it is and it commits. Silliness prances hand-in-hand with grim determination through a field of blood-spattered flowers. It’s fun and the best kind of fun—you’re never sure if you’re going to burst out laughing…or bite your fingernails to the knuckle in anticipation.

You can go on a bizarre adventure by picking up the box set available here! 

Blu-ray Set 1
English & Japanese / English Subtitles
Episodes 1–26
Special Features: 168-page Booklet, 9 Art Cards, 1080p HD, Art Gallery

by Chris Turner