"Ora ora ora ora ora! This is the (rallying) cry that fans will utter when the first two seasons of the animated JoJo's Bizarre Adventure arrive on Sunday on Netflix. Well, the series was already available on specialized Crunchyroll and DNA platforms, as well as on DVD / Blu-ray at Kazé, but Netflix offers a welcome exposure to a work that is still little known in France, and yet cult in Japan. Indeed, the original manga of Hirohiko Araki was originally published, from 1986, in the Weekly Shônen Jump , the same magazine as Dragon Ball , Saint Seiya or Captain Tsubasa . And especially at the same time, in full golden age of the years 1980-1990. He is one of these essential shônen, with more than 100 million copies sold. Why hasn't France been affected by the JoJo madness? At least not yet.
Come on, let's recap:
- JOJO'S BIZARRE ADVENTURE ARRIVES ON NETFLIX !!!!
- Date: March 1.
- We start with the first two seasons.
- And we add the rest as soon as we have the rights. pic.twitter.com/Ty3xKqPnqx
A late animated adaptation
According to Frederico Anzalone, journalist and author of the book Jojo's Adventure Bizarre: The unclassifiable diamond of the manga (Third Editions), one of the reasons is that the title was not adapted immediately in animation, and therefore did not take advantage of the Club Dorothée effect. A first animated film was born in 1993 in the form of OAV, which only adapted part of the arc 3, Stardust Crusaders , and it was not until 2012 that the David Production studio got down to an adaptation in good and due form, in animated series, of the manga, which has 126 volumes (!) and is still in progress. Ah yes, we forgot to specify that JoJo is a work with length, complexity, richness, originality and strangeness unique in the manga industry.
The pitcher alone is a challenge in itself, but Frederico Anzalone sticks to it: "The story follows a young Lord, Jo nathan Jo estar, in Victorian England, whose life is turned upside down by the arrival in his family by Dio Brando, an orphaned kid, poor and power-hungry. A rivalry sets up between them, and will last from generation to generation, between the heirs Joestar and a Dio who became a vampire thanks to an Aztec mask. Here, to put it simply, because after the third part, it becomes complicated with annexed families, hidden children ... It is a question of following a lineage, a dynasty. "
New kinds of fights, a mix of genres
To what genre exactly does JoJo's Bizarre Adventure belong, to the fighting manga at the DBZ , Naruto or One Piece ? "There is fighting," explains the journalist, "with a martial technique at first, the Wave, a way of breathing to multiply his blows tenfold without reaching the Kaméhaméha of Goku. It's more sober, more strange. But the real revolution takes place in Stardust Crusaders with the appearance of Stands, spectral entities that fight in place of heroes. And we are not necessarily talking about physical force, the originality is that these powers can influence the decor, or take the form of a video game. We are not in a cult of virility but of the intellect. "
Each part of the manga therefore changes heroes, epochs, context and even genre, with, to quote Frederico Anzalone, "Gothic horror Hammer style for the first, Phantom Blood , the trendy pulp Indiana Jones for Battle Tendency , the epic for Stardust Crusaders , the thriller for Diamond Unbreakable , the Italian mafia for Golden Wing , the women's prison for Stone Ocean , the horse race for Steel Ball Run , and the post-earthquake of 2011 for JoJolion. What a mix!
Everything is allowed, nothing is noticed
It is JoJo's tour de force, which has even become his trademark, to play with codes, expectations, sexes, appearances… As the author writes in his book, “in this world, nobody cares about being an effeminate man or a masculinized girl, or about being straight, gay or bi, and even less about the way his body occupies public space, whether sober or unusual. Everything is allowed, nothing is noticed. (…) JoJo , too, aligns and highlights social minorities, such as orphans or single-parent families, and presents willingly multicultural castings, even Métis heroes. In short: everyone is mixing here. "
This freedom is found in a design recognizable among all, with heroes bobybuildés à la Ken the survivor but with the look and postures influenced both by Italian sculpture and female fashion. Without forgetting staging ideas on each page, and every minute of the animated. According to Frederico Anzalone, the TV adaptation, without being either a parody or a rereading, marries a look of fans, does not hesitate to go into emphasis, and becomes more pop, almost meta.
"The brightest shônen of the 1990s"
The majority of French people will be able to discover it on Sunday on Netflix with the first two seasons, which cover the first three arcs, and therefore the iconic Stardust Crusaders, before continuing with seasons 3 and 4 on Crunchyroll , and especially with the manga at Delcourt / Tonkam, almost up to date on the Japanese publication. For Frederico Anzalone, this is the moment or never to plunge into "the most brilliant shônen of the 1990s, unclassifiable, by its eclecticism, its hybridizations and its singularities". A poll conducted by the Cultural Affairs Agency in 2007 ranked it the second best manga of all time, behind Slam Dunk but ahead of Dragon Ball .
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