This is not just an Ancient Aztec Vampire God. This is an Ancient Aztec Vampire God by the name of AC/DC. Vampires and rock’n roll references sighted side by side, it could only be one series…

In my eternal pursuit of the battle manga kick it was but a matter of time until I turned to the titanic and spectacular mess that is Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. Right now I’m pausing on part 4 (of seven[it's still ongoing]), bemused and amused.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is mesmeric. It’s not just that the style is so massively distinctive, it’s the fact that the series challenges the very nature of the “epic” shonen (where a boy’s tale takes up a grand mantle). Which here does mean one great journey, or a grand impossible mission. Jojo is epic in scale and totally disjointed in practise. It delivers the Epic effect without recourse to a consistently epic plot. Or to anything resembling taste.

Each of the 7 “parts” in JJBA is its own story. These stories don’t just each offer their own settings and casts, they vary in length, narrative focus, and their use of arcs. Not all parts span the same breadth, but as a collective they encompass an absurdly huge realm of time and space – a sort of cumulative grandeur. Excitably clumsy narration throws each new detailed locale at us with comic gusto.

There’s continuity, and there are core features in terms of style and silliness which never go away, but the range of differences is remarkable. Where some series can be seen evolving in a set direction while retaining certain elements, Jojo’s simply restarts periodically and changes the rules of the game (N.B. the game = punching people’s heads open).

So while I found the first part fascinating, occasionally riveting, but ultimately too messy, the second part proceeded to capture me absolutely with its outrageous stunts and tendency to go as far beyond the impossible as imaginable. With the arrival of part 3 I was initially irritated at the new set of change, only to become progressively more involved in the fresh team dynamics. Right now I’ve stalled at the start of part 4, once again frustrated by the restart.

Part 3 is massively long and epitomises the fragmented nature of the beast. In contrast to the one-man-army approach of Blood Phantom, endless enemies sneak up to be disposed of by one or another of our heroic team. In these fights we see the replacement of martial arts prowess with magical ’stands’. These ’stand’ things ultimately reinvigorate the series by compelling everyone to be tactical in order to make best use of their particular ability and negate their opponents’ magic.

Just as planned PUNCH!

Just as planned is the great source of Jojo’s somewhat surprising emergence (in part 2) as a great pop manga. There are different ways for manga heroes to fight: you can top trump your opponent with your power level, you can grittily bear it out, or you can use your head. Jojo uses the human brain in a way that makes Death Note’s schemers look restrained. Our beefcakes pull off the most complex and sophisticated plans in the midst of hectic battle. Rope tricks, mirrors, the laws of magnetism;  traps and countertraps.

Even in the early days of vampire wrestling Jojo was able to win fights through his cleverness. But when Joseph arrived the stakes were raised. As the series gets more ridiculous the just as planned combat sequences take on an escapist euphoria. It’s likely just coincidence, but by the time part 3 hits the impossible musculature has been toned down. Our heroes fighting with magical trickery and not sweat seems to reflect the fact that our admiration for these action men should go beyond the physical. Their victories are mental, even spiritual.

They may come to be combat tricksters, but Jojo and his allies are morally impeccable. Joseph may be dickish, but he always returns to good old-fashioned morality. Caesar and Polnareff may be rash, but there’s inevitably a soppy backstory to explain such faults. The fact is, these men stand so far above us all that it’d be pathetic in the context of a less madcap affair.

Be it in terms of muscle, mind, or morals, there’s no denying that Jojo’s tendency towards its male characters is adoration. Turn not to Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure if you balk at hunky parades, or sneer at manly perfection in its most hilariously extreme forms.

This is most noticeable in the first part – as our chunky hero’s precise height is repeatedly recounted by his fellow characters and an equally stricken narrator. One hundred and ninety-five centimetres is his statistical epithet.

We admire a hero for power; to prove their power they must defeat the powerful. When we find ourselves slavishly admiring power per se than the enemies must somehow contrive be admirable and wrong at the same time. The noble villain is a common idea on the series. The very biggest bad guys are despicable, the lowest minions obnoxious, but somewhere inbetween we find some baddies we can look up to.

This is one of the things that makes me invoke that blasted word Epic. Not in an analytical sense, but because the Jojo show sets up an array of heroic combats which make me think of grand myth – of demi-gods and fated deaths. A monster who is trying to conquer the world, who lives off human blood and attacks an innocent woman in his death throes, is praised for his loyalty and steadfastness. Glorious bullshit.

The fascinating thing is that the series follows through on the cruelty of admirable epic villainy by chucking us a Nazi anti-hero. Stroheim is an ideological bastard, and yet we kind of adore him for his ridiculous bravery. When Jojo resurrects the Homeric icon in the age of mere men, there are inevitable ironies which are never dodged. (After all, JJBA is better at violence than evasion.)

The real strength of this manga is that it knows that Epic Shonen is kinda balls, and still loves it fiercely.

Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure exagerrates everything. Victorian England is a fairy tail fantasy, 1970s Egypt is near-medieval, modern Japan is modelled on pristine American suburbia. Men are men, women are girls, monsters are strangely alluring. It’s the world imagined by a boyish madman, then blown up to titanic proportions. A chaotic and delirious expression that’s frankly exhausting.