JoJo's Bizarre Adventure/Trivia


 * JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It is Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Everything in this series is just mindblowingly bizarre. From the cyborg Nazi guy who looks like Guile (It's the other way around, Guile was based on him), to the timestopping vampire who is also a Casanova, to the vampires who eat other vampires, to the Psychic Powers that can have the most ridiculously specific abilities, to the ridiculous hairstyles and the fabulous clothing. And there's a 16-year-old who has a 30-year-old nephew because his father was in his seventies when he was conceived. No series can top this one when it comes to sheer WTFness.
 * Let's not even get into where Giorno fits into the Joestar family...
 * By sheer nature of his never having been human, no villain can top Cars for WTFness (except perhaps an out-of-it Pucci in one particular chapter). Of course this also applies to just about any other series as well. The stuff he could do, simply unreal!
 * But the most bizarre thing is the mangaka himself: he hasn't aged a day in over 20 years (either that, or he's aging backwards). Recent photographs show him looking younger than he did when he started on Phantom Blood...back in 1986.
 * Araki has a big thing for Classic Rock. The sheer number of references in his work is baffling. Even the series name is a Shout-Out to The Beatles song "Get Back". This was a nightmare regarding translation, since most of the names were copyrighted, so they had to rename a lot.
 * And as it went on, a little pop group here, a little rapper there, in addition to more contemporary bands.
 * Tying in somewhat to the first bit of trivia, was the very first scene depicted. The story actually started before Jonathan's time, back at least two millennia in some South American civilization, which eventually died out for one reason or another. And the first character shown was a maiden to be sacrificed. Eesh.
 * Sadly despite being the eighth longest-running manga in existence, JoJo wasn't properly adapted into an anime series until 2012, even though there was an OVA series based on Part III and a feature film adaptation of Part I, and even then, the Part III series was yanked from U.S. shelves over some controversy regarding The Qur'an, and the film was poorly received (even by the author) and was never released on DVD or any other format. Luckily, while it has been a long time coming, the currently ongoing anime has proven to be such a smashing success that it revived Jojo's popularity in the West, to the point that not only is the first season (covering Parts 1 and 2) dubbed, but soon the second and third seasons (covering Part 3) as well as the fourth season (covering Part 4) will follow (Part 3 having been previously simulcast on Crunchyroll, and Part 4 also being confirmed as a simulcast when it begins airing in April 2016).


 * Cross-Dressing Voices: Giorno in the video game adaptation.
 * Fan Translation: The Stardust Crusaders RPG for the Super Famicom has one by the Aeon Genesis group. Several exist for the manga itself, as well.
 * Humble Beginnings: The series began as an unremarkable story about half-brothers fighting over their inheritance. It wasn't until Stardust Crusaders that it would become as successful as it is, even though the manga always had highs and lows. Currently, JoJolion sells half a million of each volume, and the anime is one of the most financially successful around.
 * Keep Circulating the Tapes: A film adaptation of Phantom Blood came out in theaters in 2007. It hasn't seen any sort of home release. However, an incomplete cut (that is, there is no voice acting, and occasionally full animation is replaced by storyboard stills) of the first 16 minutes has appeared on the internet.
 * Name's the Same: Zucchero shares his first name (Mario) with the father of Caesar Zeppeli/son of Will Zeppeli featured in Part 2.
 * No Export for You: No longer relevant since 2014, although the U.S. didn't get anything before or after Part 3 for the longest time. We've since gotten every single season of the anime (including the upcoming season, which covers Part 4), with Parts 1 and 2 being dubbed. On top of this, we've also received manga releases of Parts 1 and 2, as well as both "modern" JJBA Games (being All Star Battle and Eyes of Heaven). This trope has officially retired!
 * The Other Darrin: A lot of examples to list across many of adaptations at once, especially via the old OVA's and video games released before both the official anime and All-Star Battle solidified several of the voices; even after All-Star Battle, voices in respective anime adaptations of certain arcs still change around voice actors, even extending to Eyes of Heaven (such as the VA's chosen for the Part 3 characters).
 * Science Marches On: In Part 6, Rykiel's so-called sky rods were eventually revealed to be normal insects flying at such high speeds the camera captured them on film as longish "rods" (hence the name) with multiple wings. Not that Araki would let a minor detail like this affect the nature of Sky High's minions...