So we meet again. Welcome to today's post on the 'Art of Jojo-Dachi' or in other words "Jojo Stances'.
Some time ago I wrote an introduction/recommendation for the Japanese manga 'Jojo's Bizarre Adventure', by Araki Hirohiko. It's a hugely successful and popular title in Japan for it's creativity and uniqueness despite in essence following the typical 'shonen' style of fighting manga. Anyway if you want to read my not very good introduction to it, then here: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Manga Introduction
Another famous thing about this manga are the strange poses that Mr. Araki draws his characters in. Although they're mainly for volume and chapter covers, he also does have them doing weird poses during the story. For example, guess what kind of pose would you take when saying by to your grandfather who's leaving on a boat?
Probably something like this?
In Jojo's Bizarre Adventure it turned out like this.
Haha yeah.....strange. Because of the peculiarities of these poses, passionate fans of the series notice these poses sometimes happening in real life for example:
Although people can do these strange poses by accident in real life, there are groups of people that do it as a hobby. Quite a few people try and do these poses by themselves and post pictures of them on the internet where they can show fellow fans of Jojo. A celebrity that is openly a fan of this series is and often posts her in these poses Nakagawa Shoko. She's a TV personality/ gravure idol/ singer well known for being an 'Otaku'. Here's a video of her talking about Otaku stuff with English subs (not done by me) that I found on youtube and posted here several months ago: Shokotan Otakuology
and etc etc.
There are even 'Jojo-dachi Tutorial Classes' that you can attend somewhere in Japan, where a highly skilled Jojo-Dachi Master (lol) teaches you how to do the various poses. There's a website detailing one that happened in Shibuya back in 2003 along with many pictures. http://kajipon.sakura.ne.jp/jojo3.htm
It's been covered on TV several times, and there's one on youtube that's was aired fairly recently. The comedians Tamura Atsushi of London Boots and Yama-chan from Nankai Cadies visit a Jojo-Dachi class with a girl from SDN48. It's not subbed but you don't really need to know what they're saying anyway so it should be okay.....
Well, thanks for reading this post, hope you found it interesting.
Goodbye!
This is Araki Hirohioko, the manga artist of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure
The goodbye pose = hilarious!
ReplyDeleteI love these poses below:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/685/jojo8b.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/855/oj46b.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/811/jojo24.jpg/
Hahaha!
Araki Hirohioko is very witty.
I don't know if it's true but I read that at the beginning he started to draw these strange poses for his characters to hide his lack of drawing skills and then even after a lot of improvement, he keeps drawing these strange poses like a personal trademark (after all it was an excellent choice seeing the interest of his readers to re-do all poses in real life).
This is because of these weird poses and detailed outfits that a lot readers consider Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure as the extravagant version of Fist of the North Star (haha)
Haha nice pictures, I think they did that pose in the jojo stance class video.
ReplyDeleteThat's some interesting information about his reason behind these poses. It's good that he continued to draw them
By the way, you should do a post about all the music references that Araki Hirohioko put in Jojo manga!
ReplyDeleteI'm only at the beginning of Part 2 Battle Tendency but I've learnt Erina Pendleton was a reference to the Beatles' song Eleanor Rigby, Straights with Dire Straits, etc.
I found all these references very cool and give even more personality to the characters.
Currently I'm playing at Castlevania (never tried before) and did you notice all the similarites between Jojo and Castlevania?
Both talk about a mysterious devil mask, vampire hunting and a generation of characters from the same family fighting against the villain.
Hmm that would be interesting. The Erina pendleton one is not as noticable but some other characters' names are more obviouss, for example 'High Way to Hell' in part 3 (I think).
ReplyDeleteAhh~~ yeah I noticed that it was like Castlevania lol. He must be a big fan of the game
I think the same about him lol
ReplyDeleteAccording to wiki, Castlevania debuted on September 26 1986; Fist of the North Star was published in 1983 and Jojo in 1987.
These two influences Castlevania + Fist of the North Star are predominant in Jojo (at least for the first two arcs)
I can't wait to read the other chapters of Jojo (I'm still reading the second arc but I've started to be addicted to this manga because of your posts now lol! But at least I'm addicted to a good manga hehe)
I see, thanks for the interesting information!
ReplyDeleteHaha well it's good that your addicted to it as long as you're enjoying it. Parts 3~5 are more interesting in my opinion, although from what I've read on the internet, westerners (at least English speaking ones) seem to like Part 2 the most.