I get it now. I finally understand why all my friends and everyone online has been hyping up JoJo Part 4 for the longest time, and it’s one hundred percent apparent that this is, in fact, Araki’s favourite child. The style is still the same with all the characters, including the children, being inexplicably ripped and chiseled like a friggin Michelagelo statue, but the world is painted differently. Instead of a recognizable real-world location, we find ourselves in the fictional small town of Morioh, a place where the sky is yellow. And instead of all-powerful demigods, the main antagonist is a man who only wishes to live a peaceful life. Unfortunately, he achieves that life by being a serial killer.
Despite carrying on the revised magic system from Part 3, this part feels very different from the previous one, and I think it’s because Part 4 is more funny. Granted, it still has more of those classic hammy over-the-top moments that give JoJo its signature charm, but this one feels more like it’s intentionally trying to be funny. Coupling that with more narrative freedom (since we’re not spending the whole season on a glorified road trip) easily makes this the most fun season of JoJo up to this point.
I really liked all three OPs this time around (Crazy Noisy Bizarre Town, Great Days, and Chase, in that order). I like that they’ve mostly forgoed using 3D models of the characters in the OPs, which makes it feel less like it’s trying to compensate for something. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure was rapidly rising in popularity in the west at the time of Part 4’s release. It had its own identity, and it didn’t have to be extra to stand out; all it had to do was be itself.
Even though this is my favourite JoJo part so far, I have one big gripe about this part, and it’s similar to the previous part as well: there’s too much filler. You could easily cut out five or six episodes from Part 4, and it would change very little. That being said, the filler episodes in here are far better than in Part 3, but my problem isn’t with the quality of the episodes, it’s about the pacing. The main plot with Kira only starts just over halfway into the season. The first twenty episodes are spent showing us the town of Morioh and the people (read: Stand users) who live there. There’s a lot of back and forth about an item that gives people Stand abilities, and some of it is vital to the main characters and the plot down the road. But do you really need to spend twenty episodes doing that?
And it only gets slightly better when Kira is introduced. He is definitely my favourite villain so far for how he’s not someone with a god-sized ego and universe-encompassing ambitions. To be fair, he does have a big ego, but he’s scary for how mundane he is. But even having a better villain can’t help the pacing issues, because we spend far too long fighting new Stand users who do little to move the plot forward at best, and bring the story to a screeching halt at worst. I think I might have to get used to the pacing in JoJo being a bit slow, considering they’ll eventually have to adapt the far longer Part 7, Steel Ball Run and the excruciatingly slow Part 8, JoJolion.
All that being said, it’s no question that this is the best JoJo so far! I’m really looking forward to seeing Giorno and his gang get into trouble in Part 5, and I’m really looking forward to hearing Giorno’s Theme in context, finally.
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