The second arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure might be the most impressed I've ever been with a show. There's a tonne to admire here. The most obvious is just how brave this is. Not only do we get rid of our iconic protagonist, Jonathan, but we shift to a completely different style of show. Where Phantom Blood was a goofy gothic horror adventure, Battle Tendency is an Indiana Jones style globetrotting adventure, with a bit of martial arts drama thrown in, travelling all around the world chasing mystical artifacts and trying to stop ancient forces whilst honing your skills.
This makes Battle Tendency feel like a completely new show: Phantom Blood had an immediately identifiable style and atmosphere that Battle Tendency completely departs from. It's amazing, as such, that Battle Tendency still feels very much like a continuation of Phantom Blood. This adventure is, if anything, even more bizarre than the previous one, but the show's internal logic hasn't changed. There's long stretches of time where nothing on screen really makes sense, but the show's so deeply and unashamedly ingrained in its moon logic that you don't really question it until after you've not been watching for a while.
It's incredibly impressive: making a shift this big you really risk alienating your audience, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure not only manages to not do this, but it also manages to keep its tone consistent by being so unabashedly different and strange.
I mentioned there's a lot to admire about Battle Tendency, and the other thing that I admire is simply how darn good it is. After feeling rather unimpressed with Phantom Blood, I didn't really expect much out of Battle Tendency. I'd probably have a decent enough time with it, but it wasn't going to blow me away. I'm glad to report that Battle Tendency is actually awesome, and much of it has to do with its protagonist.
Joseph Joestar, Jonathan's grandson, is our new JoJo. He's designed similarly, but he's a very different character from Jonathan. Jonathan is a classic goody two-shoes character: noble and straightforward, overcoming his opponents honorably simply by being stronger and better than them. Joseph's not this. He's brash and loud, and he fights dirty. He'll attack his opponents without warning, and most of his battles consist of him covertly laying traps for his foes to fall into, and manipulating them with mindgames. While Joseph can throw a punch, it's not his physical prowess that wins him fights, it's his ability to outsmart his opponents.
This means battle scenes in Battle Tendency are a lot more enjoyable than Phantom Blood. Joseph's opponents are also smart, meaning fights turn into a series of mindgames, won not on who punches better but on who knows what their opponent is doing. This allows for a lot more situations where it seems like Joseph has no way out, before revealing that he's been secretly in control all along, resulting in a satisfying feeling reminscent of the moment where Sherlock Holmes unravels the mystery for us at the end of his stories. He's also allow to fail and come across as a goof every now and again. His particularly enjoyable style of battling, as well as his more charismatic and relatable personality, makes him by far my favorite of the first three JoJos.
JoJo's enemies this time are the Pillar Men, who are allegedly stronger than Dio. This is the one aspect that I'm not particularly fond of. I really like the Pillar Men as opponents: They're physically overpowering, resulting in Joseph's battle style really shining, but they're also smart. They're also the ones with a sense of warrior's honor this time around, which is an interesting reversal of positions where it's actually the dishonorable rogue who's decidedly the good guy for once, as Joseph does take advantage of their sense of honor several times. However, they're positioned as this sort of precursor Gods, who've made the masks that turn people into vampires. This sort of makes them seem more powerful than Dio by default.
Unfortunately, they're simply not as threatening. Whilst demonstrated to be physically poweful, they don't exude the malice that Dio did, and Wammu and Esidisi are actually portrayed as semi-sympathetic. We're told that them accomplishing their goals would be apocalyptic, but we never get a taste of this. By the end of Phantom Blood, Dio had made a whole town into a hellhole full of flesheating zombies bound to his command, and was planning to march on the rest of the country the next night. By the end of Battle Tendency, each of the Pillar Men has killed one or two people, usually minor side characters. There's simply no menace there, and it not only results in the Pillar Men being worse villains than Dio, but it reflects poorly on Jonathan and the future Jotaro that they have so much trouble beating Dio when Joseph not only kills several vampires with ease but also disptaches three much more powerful creatures. This may be a case of the stakes having been set too high and not pulled off effectively.
There's very little else to criticize in Battle Tendency. Joining Joseph is the best cast of side characters from the three arcs I've finished. When I say this, I mainly mean Caesar Zeppeli, whose changing relationship with JoJo is one of the best depictions of male friendship in anime. It starts of troubled, but they slowly gain a respect for each other that can only be earned when you don't initially get along. Caesar is much more of his own character than anyone in Phantom Blood whose name wasn't Jonathan or Dio. There's things that define him other than his relationship with JoJo, but through their friendship he learns to look at them in a different light. Caesar is complex and nuanced, and it takes most of the entire arc to completely understand him.
We also have the enigmatic Lisa Lisa. She's not a very interesting character per say, but she is basically a perfect badass. Her purpose isn't to exercise the audience's brainmuscles as much as it is to be cool as fuck, and she accomplishes her purpose perfectly. I don't mean to sound dismissive here: a great badass is much harder to write than it's given credit for, and I have nothing but respect in just how well it's pulled off here. Lisa Lisa never comes across as the author desperately trying to please their audience: she just appears to be a naturally badass human being, and that's all she needs to be.
The more minor characters are also handled considerably better than in Phantom Blood. Speedwagon is back, but we get more of a sense of his interiority. He's not entirely defined by his relationship to JoJo anymore: you get the feeling that he feels a debt to Jonathan and is trying his best to uphold that, as well as caring deeply for Erina and Joseph for his own personal reasons. Erina also makes a return, with much more personality and a deeply entertaining relationship with her grandson. She's dry and sharp, not afraid of scolding Joseph when he deserves it, but with a rather odd (and surprisingly logical) sense of what's appropriate and not. We're also introduced to Smokey, who is barely in the show, and Stroheim who is a likeable nazi. Let me repeat that: Stroheim is a genuinely likeable nazi. If that ain't some impressive writing, I don't know what is.
Overall, Battle Tendency is an incredible improvement from Phantom Blood. Not only is it incredibly bold in just how much it changes, it also round out the edges on Phantom Blood's storytelling. The best thing about this arc is the battles. As you'd expect from a shonen battle manga adaptation, most of what happens is people fighting other people, but these are battles so mindgamesy and over the top, with a protagonist so likeable, that it stands separate from the crowd. Whilst far from flawless as a whole, Battle Tendency's battles are some of the most enjoyable in all of anime, and that makes this worth a watch in and of itself.
8/10
Whilst its numerous flaws hold it back somewhat, Battle Tendency's absolutely fantastic battles make it stand out.
This makes Battle Tendency feel like a completely new show: Phantom Blood had an immediately identifiable style and atmosphere that Battle Tendency completely departs from. It's amazing, as such, that Battle Tendency still feels very much like a continuation of Phantom Blood. This adventure is, if anything, even more bizarre than the previous one, but the show's internal logic hasn't changed. There's long stretches of time where nothing on screen really makes sense, but the show's so deeply and unashamedly ingrained in its moon logic that you don't really question it until after you've not been watching for a while.
It's incredibly impressive: making a shift this big you really risk alienating your audience, and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure not only manages to not do this, but it also manages to keep its tone consistent by being so unabashedly different and strange.
I mentioned there's a lot to admire about Battle Tendency, and the other thing that I admire is simply how darn good it is. After feeling rather unimpressed with Phantom Blood, I didn't really expect much out of Battle Tendency. I'd probably have a decent enough time with it, but it wasn't going to blow me away. I'm glad to report that Battle Tendency is actually awesome, and much of it has to do with its protagonist.
Joseph Joestar, Jonathan's grandson, is our new JoJo. He's designed similarly, but he's a very different character from Jonathan. Jonathan is a classic goody two-shoes character: noble and straightforward, overcoming his opponents honorably simply by being stronger and better than them. Joseph's not this. He's brash and loud, and he fights dirty. He'll attack his opponents without warning, and most of his battles consist of him covertly laying traps for his foes to fall into, and manipulating them with mindgames. While Joseph can throw a punch, it's not his physical prowess that wins him fights, it's his ability to outsmart his opponents.
This means battle scenes in Battle Tendency are a lot more enjoyable than Phantom Blood. Joseph's opponents are also smart, meaning fights turn into a series of mindgames, won not on who punches better but on who knows what their opponent is doing. This allows for a lot more situations where it seems like Joseph has no way out, before revealing that he's been secretly in control all along, resulting in a satisfying feeling reminscent of the moment where Sherlock Holmes unravels the mystery for us at the end of his stories. He's also allow to fail and come across as a goof every now and again. His particularly enjoyable style of battling, as well as his more charismatic and relatable personality, makes him by far my favorite of the first three JoJos.
JoJo's enemies this time are the Pillar Men, who are allegedly stronger than Dio. This is the one aspect that I'm not particularly fond of. I really like the Pillar Men as opponents: They're physically overpowering, resulting in Joseph's battle style really shining, but they're also smart. They're also the ones with a sense of warrior's honor this time around, which is an interesting reversal of positions where it's actually the dishonorable rogue who's decidedly the good guy for once, as Joseph does take advantage of their sense of honor several times. However, they're positioned as this sort of precursor Gods, who've made the masks that turn people into vampires. This sort of makes them seem more powerful than Dio by default.
Unfortunately, they're simply not as threatening. Whilst demonstrated to be physically poweful, they don't exude the malice that Dio did, and Wammu and Esidisi are actually portrayed as semi-sympathetic. We're told that them accomplishing their goals would be apocalyptic, but we never get a taste of this. By the end of Phantom Blood, Dio had made a whole town into a hellhole full of flesheating zombies bound to his command, and was planning to march on the rest of the country the next night. By the end of Battle Tendency, each of the Pillar Men has killed one or two people, usually minor side characters. There's simply no menace there, and it not only results in the Pillar Men being worse villains than Dio, but it reflects poorly on Jonathan and the future Jotaro that they have so much trouble beating Dio when Joseph not only kills several vampires with ease but also disptaches three much more powerful creatures. This may be a case of the stakes having been set too high and not pulled off effectively.
There's very little else to criticize in Battle Tendency. Joining Joseph is the best cast of side characters from the three arcs I've finished. When I say this, I mainly mean Caesar Zeppeli, whose changing relationship with JoJo is one of the best depictions of male friendship in anime. It starts of troubled, but they slowly gain a respect for each other that can only be earned when you don't initially get along. Caesar is much more of his own character than anyone in Phantom Blood whose name wasn't Jonathan or Dio. There's things that define him other than his relationship with JoJo, but through their friendship he learns to look at them in a different light. Caesar is complex and nuanced, and it takes most of the entire arc to completely understand him.
We also have the enigmatic Lisa Lisa. She's not a very interesting character per say, but she is basically a perfect badass. Her purpose isn't to exercise the audience's brainmuscles as much as it is to be cool as fuck, and she accomplishes her purpose perfectly. I don't mean to sound dismissive here: a great badass is much harder to write than it's given credit for, and I have nothing but respect in just how well it's pulled off here. Lisa Lisa never comes across as the author desperately trying to please their audience: she just appears to be a naturally badass human being, and that's all she needs to be.
The more minor characters are also handled considerably better than in Phantom Blood. Speedwagon is back, but we get more of a sense of his interiority. He's not entirely defined by his relationship to JoJo anymore: you get the feeling that he feels a debt to Jonathan and is trying his best to uphold that, as well as caring deeply for Erina and Joseph for his own personal reasons. Erina also makes a return, with much more personality and a deeply entertaining relationship with her grandson. She's dry and sharp, not afraid of scolding Joseph when he deserves it, but with a rather odd (and surprisingly logical) sense of what's appropriate and not. We're also introduced to Smokey, who is barely in the show, and Stroheim who is a likeable nazi. Let me repeat that: Stroheim is a genuinely likeable nazi. If that ain't some impressive writing, I don't know what is.
Overall, Battle Tendency is an incredible improvement from Phantom Blood. Not only is it incredibly bold in just how much it changes, it also round out the edges on Phantom Blood's storytelling. The best thing about this arc is the battles. As you'd expect from a shonen battle manga adaptation, most of what happens is people fighting other people, but these are battles so mindgamesy and over the top, with a protagonist so likeable, that it stands separate from the crowd. Whilst far from flawless as a whole, Battle Tendency's battles are some of the most enjoyable in all of anime, and that makes this worth a watch in and of itself.
8/10
Whilst its numerous flaws hold it back somewhat, Battle Tendency's absolutely fantastic battles make it stand out.
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