Forum - View topicThe Lost JoJo's Movie
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JohnathanEnder
 Posts: 88 |
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I remember when this movie came out and reading all of the negative reviews by Japanese fans online. The one I remember the most (and think about more often than more important things): a fan complaining that the movie "turns DIO into just A DRACULA..."
Outstanding. 
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2666 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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"Shonen" isn't a genre, but rather a demographic; the genre would be "shonen action" (or "shonen battle", a later stated in the article). Just thought that would be worth pointing out, as well as clarifying that Berserk has never been a shonen manga, as it's always run in a "seinen" magazine for "young adult" audiences. Beyond those nitpicks, & kind of downplaying Fist of the North Star's emotional core so as to put JoJo on a higher pedestal (again, though, another nitpick), this is a solid explanation of the Phantom Blood film, and I'll join in on the "I know it probably sucks, but I'd still love to see this one day" bandwagon. The only thing missing is that APPP actually did do some early pre-production work on a Battle Tendency movie as well, which was only found out a couple of years ago when early sketches were shared online, but obviously got canned after Phantom Blood's failure. |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 18442 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Concerning the point about the influences on Fist of the North Star, I have to wonder if Golgo 13 couldn't also be considered to have had an impact. The macho nature of Fist, "man of few words" and stoicism aspects of Kenshiro, and Kenshiro's indomitability all bear at least some resemblance to Duke Togo, and Golgo did precede Fist by several years. Could Fist be a variation on Golgo aimed at shonen (instead of seinen) audiences?
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Zeino
Posts: 1098 |
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Most likely the Phantom Blood film is just a mediocre low-budget and rushed adaption and nothing terrible in a truly memorable way. It's only real mystic is that it hasn't ever been released to a wider viewing public, otherwise it would be remembered as often as the Baoh OVA.
The only real legacy, it left behind that was worth it's existence was an awesome villain song for Dio by SOUL'd OUT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MztTCT2PLC0 |
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GVman
 Posts: 730 |
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No, no, and no. Fist of the North Star is much more than that, as anyone who's read more than the first five chapters can attest. This:
...is a gross mischaracterization of the series as a whole, especially the remark about the supporting cast. If anything, the villains and Kenshiro's encounters with them are what form the emotional core of the series as it progresses. I don't think a series that an editor for Dragon Ball characterized as being "too preachy" can be characterized this way. A series, where the primary antagonist its remembered for (Raoh), who was inspired by the writer's trip to post-Khmer Rouge Cambodia, should not be characterized this way. EDIT: I removed my last statement as I felt I was being a bit of an asshole there. I apologize if anyone saw that. |
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Zhou-BR
Posts: 1461 |
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It's kind of amazing how much power the anime industry gives to manga authors, to the point that they can nix the home video releases of adaptations of their work. D.Gray-man Hallow is another recent example of that, although in that case some countries at least got to watch the whole show streamed before the BD release got cancelled.
I'd like to check this Phantom Blood movie out, even if it's terrible, simply because Junichi Hayama is one of my favorite animators/character designers, and I'm curious to see what his directing style is like. |
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Kicksville
 Posts: 1247 |
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I remember seeing the trailer for this over and over at screenings of Super Techno Art's DVD releases of the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure OVAs (or at least I assume it's on the DVDs). I think this was 2004. There were also trailers for another APPP anime, Shadow (Kage), which they were going to release and ultimately didn't, I assume because it turned out to be more pornographic than they probably thought...
The other legacy of this you can still access is the Phantom Blood PS2 game from late 2006, although that is more directly based on the manga. It has some pretty impressive graphics for the time that do a good job at attempting to represent the hard drawn manga style in 3D, although I haven't played it yet. |
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Red Mango
Posts: 6 |
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APPP seems to have had major issues localizing pretty much anything. JoJo took a lot of delays to even find a distributor, and a dub for the show 'Sci-Fi Harry' was meant to be released in 2004, but nobody knows if it was recorded at all, let alone released. JoJo also had many delays in coming dvd in North America, seemingly due to APPP's desire to self-publish the DVDs more or less, which no interference. They eventually did manage to get it out there, but it took a few years to get all the volumes out. The dub was recorded with local San Francisco talent in the composer's studio. (The composer, Marco d'Ambrosio, lives in California. He was hired due to his connections with Skywalker Sound and the people from there who worked on the sound mix for the OVAs/movie) and the behind the scenes give off a charming, not exactly shoestring budget vibe? But definitely not entirely polished and sleek. Even in Japan they may have had distributor issues it seems, as the 2000 OVA had a different distributor (The Klock Worx) then than 1993 OVA (Pony Canyon) and Klock Worx purged all mention of JoJo from their site in December of 2007. Their dubbing company shuttered after the 2008 Qu'ran controversy, and they've never helmed a project since. They still exist, but they do subcontractor work only iirc. As for the movie, I think it should be seen one day. Araki hating it ended up being a 2chan rumour with no sources, and it's got several scenes from the manga that the anime did not. I hope it's seen again someday. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2666 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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I'd chalk that up more as Tetsuo Hara & Buronson being more influenced by the gekiga movement of the 60s & 70s, which Golgo 13 was very much a part of. While gekiga was originally meant to create a alternative to "manga" by being strictly for older audiences, "manga" creators wound up bringing elements of gekiga into manga, and by the 80s the movement was dead & effectively absorbed into manga, in general. Was Fist one of the earliest "manga" to inject "gekiga" elements? No, not at all, but it's definitely one of the most well known. In fact, Buronson's first hit manga in Shonen Jump, Doberman Deka, ran during the second half of the 70s & was definitely influenced by gekiga, since it was originally a serious-minded, hard boiled cop drama, before eventually lightening its tone for the younger Jump demographic. And the artist for Doberman, Shinji Hiramatsu, would follow that manga up with Black Angels in 1981, two years before Fist's debut, which was essentially a literal gekiga manga in Shonen Jump, complete with darker & more violent storytelling.
From what I understand, "Voodoo Kingdom" (which is an awesome song) wasn't a "villain song", but rather was simply the song that played during the credits scroll at the end of the film. Sure, it's apparently written from Dio's perspective (so I guess you could call it a "character song"), but I'd still consider this more of an ED theme, especially since I too have never heard anything about a literal musical number happening in this movie. |
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Hotblack_desiato
Posts: 3 |
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If you're going to abbreviate it and not do the JJBA thing, it's JoJo, not JoJo's. "JoJo's" on its own sounds like someone talking about "animes"--there's no hard rule from on high, true, but it just sounds crap.
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YareYareDaZe
Posts: 5 |
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I actually saw that movie in Japan. I wrote a long post this afternoon and it got deleted. Woohoo.....
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YareYareDaZe
Posts: 5 |
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I was actually able to find it in my cache :
Hello all. I created an account to help people understand what this movie was. Now until I read that article I had completely forgot that movie (with good reasons). This was the very first anime movie I saw in Japan back then (and it would take years before I wanted to see another one...)Now my memory is a bit fuzzy so I'll try to reminisce as best as I can. Now for some context, I'm a ol' school anime fan. I started to watch anime at an anime club in the 90's and got hooked right away. The ova of JoJo of that time are still in my favorite anime and I was able to read the manga translated in French several years ago. I still think that the first arc is one of the worst (I haven't read Jojo since the beginning of steel ball run when it was release way back in Japan). Now being a fan of anime and Jojo, when I saw that movie was to be released, I was really thrilled to see it. I went to see it at that small theater on the first week end (and the second to last If I remember correctly) of the showing. I had learned of its existence through the ps2 game of the same name I think. Being the summer and Japan, it was really hot and humid out there, I was quite happy to be in the theater where there would be AC. I was a bit surprised that there weren't that many people in the theater but as it was a Saturday (or Sunday) afternoon, it was quite understandable for me. Finding a good seat was quite easy, so I awaited the movie to start, still full of excitement. An important point to make is that my level of Japanese wasn't great (basic conversation level I'd say) but since I enjoyed the action in general in Jojo, I didn't foresee it as a huge problem (how naive I was) . I was not someone who was hard to please when it come to entertainment back then. In fact at that time I had considered walking away from two movies at that point in my life, THAT movie became the third one. And no I didn't walk away, I simply had spent to much money to see it at that point (2000 yen + train fare to go to Shinjuku), that I refused to budge from my seat. I recall thinking after it was over "DAMN that was a long long 2h30 movie" (Yeah it was only 90 ish minutes....) The name of the movie should have been, imho, Jojo Bizzare Adventure : The """Dio"""" movie and his lackey. Joseph had barely any screen time except for being bullied by Dio. The action that I came to watch (since I read the manga, surely I would understand the story easily or so I though....) was bland as hell and short (the only part that could have been longer). The quality of the animation was severely lacking and just added to the general "ugh" feeling. As the movie had changed MANY things in the story (as pointed out in the article), I often felt that I was watching a Chinese rip off of Jojo. There is one scene that do stand out of the rest, and I'm kind of doubting my memory here but the comment before about that Dio villain song seems to support that it did exist...the Dio musical show.... That was for me probably for me the biggest WTF moment. Think of any Disney movie where the villain sing, now imagine Dio in his dark castle with his lackey singing and there you go! I remember now actually laughing out loud at that point. As laughing in a movie theater is something only children does, from my limited experience seeing movies in Japan, that just made my experience seems more awkward. I totally understand why the mangaka would want this stain on his legacy to be erased and forgotten by all. It's not "the Room" of anime or any kind of "it's so bad it becomes good", it's just plain bad all around. I thought at that time that those in charge of this abomination HAD never read any of the source material and to think that there was a guy who worked on the ova in its staff just make it worse for me. And so I walked away from the theater, half dazed (I had a hard time not dazing off near the end...), fully disappointed and emotionally drained back in that terrible terrible Japanese heat. I swore to myself never to see another anime movie in theater and wait for reviews before spending my time and money. I ended up seeing that cg Resident Evil/Biohazard movie several years later with Chris as the protagonist (since I was /am such a sucker for Resident Evil 4). TLDR : Terrible movie, pointlessly long, bad quality all around, you missed nothing ! |
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earthisthering
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Dio did not read from the Qu'ran in the manga. That was only in the OVA: c.f. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2008/05/23/national/anime-stokes-ire-of-muslims/ The manga was edited to replace mosques with more generic buildings, which may be what you were thinking of.
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Red Mango
Posts: 6 |
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Yup. it was gibberish in the manga iirc, and APPP tried scanning an arabic book to be more authentic. Sadly they didn't double-check *what* they had scanned, or didn't know why it would be improper to use... |
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FlamingFirewire
 Posts: 468 |
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Thanks for the big explanation of your experience with this movie! Nice to see some thoughts from someone who had seen it at the time - especially since no one can watch it anymore. |
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