Anime Revelation! Jojo's Bizarre Adventure

                Way back in 1986, a manga began that would eventually lead to a couple of absolutely amazing video games, and in 2012 a long-awaited anime adaption of the first two parts of the manga. Though there had been adaptations of the third part in 1993 and 2000, they weren’t exactly on my radar, although I may have to check them out as I have seen parts 1 and 2 now and I’d like to know what happens next in detail… Though I suppose for Part 3 I could play the game or even READ THE FRIGGIN’ MANGA WHICH I NEVER THINK OF BECAUSE I’M DUMB!

And the manga for Part 3 even got officially translated!

                Anyway, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure tells its story in parts that start in the 1880’s(Phantom Blood) and go all the way to 2012(Jojolion), given that Parts 7 and 8 are in an alternate timeline, but nonetheless, that’s the storyline’s timespan! Now, since I’m mostly familiar with the new anime, I’m gonna be focusing on Parts 1 and 2 for this Revelation. I may do another later on for the rest of the parts, but for now, let’s get started!

                So Part 1, Phantom Blood, begins with some old prick named Dario Brando looting a stagecoach accident. Now, there’s a dead lady in the coach and a nicely dressed guy, who we find out is George Joestar. George is alive, and sees Dario as the first responder to the accident and asks about his wife and son. The dead lady was his wife, and she’s holding onto Jonathan Joestar, who miraculously survived. Years later, we are introduced to the older Jonathan, who has much fun playing with his dog, Danny. Then the arrival of Dio Brando in a stagecoach as he is being adopted after his father, Dario’s untimely death. Jonathan and Danny go to greet Dio and the first thing Dio does is KICK DANNY IN THE FACE!

Dio Brando. He hates dogs.

                Over the years, Dio tries to ruin Jonathan’s life in order to make him become subservient and cause George to leave his estate to Dio instead. Unfortunately, Jonathan takes things the other way and proves later on, that not only is Dio trying to poison George, but also murdered Dario in the same way! However, the stone mask that Jonathan had been researching fell into Dio’s hands, who had discovered that it had the ability to turn its wearer into a vampire, which he wore in a last ditch effort to get away. He managed to kill George and almost did the same to Jonathan, but Jonathan managed to defeat Dio in the burning Joestar estate. Of course, that didn’t really manage to kill Dio, but for the time, it did the trick. Soon, however, Jonathan was approached by Will A. Zeppeli who aims to teach him the art of the Ripple in order to finally kill Dio, and off they go on a quest to do just that. Along the way, Zeppeli dies and infuses Jonathan with a better mastery over his ripple, and Jonathan eventually gets to Dio and defeats him again, though his head ends up surviving in order to try and steal Jonathan’s body on a boat to America, but Jonathan puts Dio’s head in a bear hug to allow Erina(Jonathan’s new wife) and a surviving child from the ship to escape without harm.

"L-Let go of me, dammit!"

                Now, on to Part 2, Battle Tendency, which follows Joseph Joestar, the world’s most awesome prick. The series starts with Joseph saving a pickpocket named Smokey from a couple of corrupt cops in New York, showing that he can already use the Ripple. He and his grandmother, Erina, find out that Robert E. O. Speedwagon(One of Jonathan’s oldest friends from Phantom Blood, as well as a prominent man in their lives) has been killed by Straights(Also from Jonathan’s group in Phantom Blood). Straights then comes after Joseph in New York, having become a Vampire in the same method as Dio. Joseph manages to kill Straights who informs him about the Pillar Men who are a much bigger threat. In Mexico, some Nazis have the still alive Speedwagon, as well as the first Pillar Man, who they awaken and Stroheim, the Nazi in charge, dubs the Pillar Man: Santana. Santana murders most of the Nazis there, while Joseph shows up to save Speedwagon. Stroheim and Joseph end up having to try and stop Santana, Stroheim having to sacrifice his life to do so while Joseph barely manages to defeat him by exposing him to the sun.

Nazis may be pricks, but Stroheim is awesome.

                Joseph and Speedwagon end up traveling to Italy in order to join up with Caesar A. Zeppeli, the grandson of Will A. Zeppeli, who also happens to be a ripple user. With Caesar, they travel to the resting place of the other three Pillar Men, who end up awakening. You come to learn their AMAZING names Wham, ACDC, and Cars. Wham ends up almost killing Caesar and Joseph, though due to Joseph’s efforts and a massive bluff that with a month of training he could defeat Wham, their lives are spared, though Joseph gets a couple of poisonous rings implanted into his body that would kill him in a month. Joseph and Caesar then end up training under Lisa Lisa, Joseph fighting with ACDC in his final test, and managing to destroy his body. Though once back to Lisa Lisa’s home, ACDC’s brain and nervous system attach to Lisa Lisa’s maid, Suzie Q, and try to stop the group from getting the Red Stone of Aja(What Cars would need to become immune to sunlight) back from where ACDC was sending it. However, Joseph and Caesar manage to kill ACDC without hurting Suzie Q. The group then leaves for the destination of the Red Stone of Aja, only to find the Nazis and a rebuilt Stroheim having it in their possession. Cars attacks them that night, only to be faced in battle by Stroheim.

Told you. Stroheim is the most awesome Nazi ever.

                Stroheim is defeated by Cars, though Joseph manages to stop the Red Stone from falling into Cars’ hands. The group ends up heading for Cars’ and Wham’s hideout during the day, Caesar getting defeated in battle and killed by Wham, he did, however, manage to get the cure for Wham’s poison to Joseph. Joseph and Lisa Lisa end up talking Cars and Wham into a contest with the Red Stone as the prize. Joseph faces Wham in a chariot race, managing to defeat him with his own tactics. Lisa Lisa then is to fight Cars atop ruins, where Lisa Lisa gets easily defeated by Cars’ trickery. Stroheim and Speedwagon then show up to save the night with ultraviolet lights to fight with Cars’ vampire army, allowing Joseph to fight Cars, who plays Lisa Lisa’s legs like a guitar for a time, overly confident in himself as he attaches her to a line by her feet and forces Joseph to try and hold her up while being forced to defend himself. Joseph ends up getting the better of Cars who is left, about to die on the ground, when Stroheim decides to finish the job with an ultraviolet light TANK, though that turns out to be a bad idea as Cars has donned the mask equipped with the Red Stone, which absorbs the light and turns Cars into the ultimate lifeform, able to turn his hand into an evil vampire squirrel and other types of things like that. So, to get the now invincible Cars away from the others once the sun is up, Joseph runs like hell and takes one of the Nazi’s planes, eventually crashing it into Cars, and into a volcano with assistance from Stroheim. While on the volcano, Joseph and Stroheim end up taking a breath far too soon as Cars ends up transforming his body in a way to survive the lava. The volcano then erupts, sending Joseph and Cars toward the sky, Joseph making sure to send Cars into space as he freezes and can’t change trajectory to get back to Earth. Joseph manages to survive thanks to Stroheim patching him up after he falls back to earth and shows up to his own funeral to reveal that he’s married Suzie Q, who forgot to tell people that Joseph was still alive. The story ends with Joseph getting on a plane to Japan in 1989 to see his daughter and grandson.

                Originally, I discovered Jojo through the arcade game by Capcom which was released on the PS1 and Dreamcast, and recently got an HD version on PSN and XBLA. Makes sense that’s how I discovered it, considering it was the only thing Jojo related to come to the states for years. I am VERY excited about the upcoming PS3 game, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: All Star Battle, which has characters spanning all the parts of the manga.

                As for my Revelation! It’s more nonsensical than anything I’ve ever thought of:

“If you just defeated a person with nice legs, be a stylish jerk and play their legs like a guitar!”

"Vweem vweemvweemvweem~"

Video Game Revelation! Super Smash Bros Brawl

REVELATION!

                This tale begins way back on an extremely cold March 8^th night in 2008. Several people were standing in line outside of a Gamestop including myself, in a fairly nice Pokemon Trainer costume, and Chris-chan, in a fairly old Hardee’s jacket.

Unfortunately, this was not our first run-in with CWC, but that is another story.

                The customers were freezing, we had been standing outside for hours, and we were waiting for the opportunity to pick up what had been on our minds for months: Super Smash Bros Brawl! But first there were two events we had to overcome, a costume contest and a midnight launch tournament.

First came the costume contest, which was an absolute joke. Those of us in costumes faced absolute asshattery, there were about 11 of us, and one worker at Gamestop making a joke with a pair of surgical gloves. We got down to the finalists which were me, I believe a Ness, and the Gamestop dope. Of course, the dope won, but meh. It was a silly contest for nothing. The real competition was the tournament, which was also wrought with asshattery. Everyone at the launch had to stand outside in the freezing temperature and await their turn. Once my turn arose I went in, my hands had grown so numb from the cold I couldn’t even feel the controller in my hands, and therefore couldn’t function correctly. I lost, needless to say. At that point, I finally got my hands on the copy I had waited so long for. After dealing with all the Gamestop idiots, I was certainly ready to go home and really play.

All in all, this was the beginning of when I stopped using Gamestop for stuff.

Flash forward some time later, and me and my group of friends have gotten quite a bit of playtime with the full game. The extensive amount of content in the Adventure Mode, Subspace Emissary, served for hours of gameplay, both alone and co-operatively, using it to unlock a full selection of characters for the other modes and in such an interesting way. The storyline was well executed even without any characters actually speaking. The Classic Mode was a wonderful throwback to the original game, as it should be, and the All-Star Mode was delightfully challenging. Of course, I haven’t even mentioned the extra challenges offered by the Home-Run Contest, Multi-Man Brawl, and the Boss Battles modes. Why, it takes forever to unlock absolutely every Trophy, CD, and sticker due to the various challenges required.

Was there ever a more beautiful sight to behold?

Of course, the game being a Smash Bros game, 99% of the playability is from the actual Brawl mode with other people. We spent days… Weeks! MONTHS brawling with the available characters. We had a group that could play most any character in the game and the raw gameplay kept us occupied completely for so very long! It seemed like the magic would last forever! Unfortunately… the game became a bit stale after a while and started to go the way of Melee…

However! Flash forward to 2010 when I was experimenting with modifying my Wii in order to play some homebrew applications. And this is when I discovered Brawl Minus, a modification of Brawl that put every character on a super human, and quite broken, power level. The new gameplay was exciting, of course, but with the advent of modifying Brawl, I learned that I could replace character costume slots with new textures, new costumes, and even entire other characters! This led me to start compiling a set of new characters instead of colored costume variations, which led to me gathering new stages that had been created, which in turn led to me gathering new music to accompany the stages. Eventually, I grew tired of the Brawl Minus Physics and switched back to the original physics.

As time went on, I kept compiling more and more until the game was so aesthetically different that it had become a completely different version of Smash Bros… So I decided it needed a name… it went quite some time without a name of its own, but finally, as of January 2013 I decided to call it Funfetti Brawl due to it being vanilla Brawl physics with a pile of flashy and seemingly random stuff thrown in. At Magfest 2013, I showed off Funfetti Brawl to the people that would truly love it and it went over spectacularly, never before had these people seen a fight involving Mario, Etna, Mega Man, and the mighty Billy Mays!

This is just a preview of Funfetti Brawl, if you want it, there’s instructions on the Youtube description and links for how to get some needed supplies below.

Now, you may be asking yourselves, “Why is he telling us all this!? Where’s the revelation!? Is he insane!?” Well, I’m not sane in the least and I wanted you to know the full story. As for the revelation, that would be this:

“For a video game to truly have a never-ending lifespan, it must have a method of absolute customizability. Therefore, limits are the angel of death for a video game.”

Brawl Shopping Link and Possible Supplies for getting Funfetti Brawl of your own:

     Okay, so I decided to start this blog to document whenever things I experience give me a sort of "revelation" that I can use in other activities. You may be aware that I've stolen this concept from the Yakuza series, but screw you, it's a damned good way of doing things. Besides, I like Yakuza.

     Anyway, for my first Revelation I have a rather dumb one, but I think it's a good lesson. Anyway, I've recently taken up modding Left 4 Dead 2 as it was cheap on Steam. I started by getting together a team of S.T.A.R.S. from Resident Evil, playing Barry myself, of course, and as things went on I added a few more things just to make myself laugh. Such as Storm Troopers instead of Zombies that pop from around corners and with the voice of the late great Macho Man Randy Savage scream "SNAP INTO A SLIM JIM!"

"DIG IT!"

     And as what I was now dubbing "Left 4 Barry: S.T.A.R.S. VS The World" was coming together, I realized that I was now growing a fear of the Quad City DJ's. Why? Well, whenever the theme from Space Jam starts playing it means you're probably going to be murdered by this sight:

     That's right. When it's time for Space Jam, RUN. Because Donkey Kong is about to hit you with a frikkin' barrel and then he's going to run up and violate your corpse... Which brings me to my revelation!

"When you hear the theme song to Space Jam, it's usually a good idea not to stick around. Maybe you won't be murdered by a gorilla, but you'll at least be forced to see either Charles Barkley's face or Michael Jordan talking to Bugs Bunny."