JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken: Adventure

I would never recommend this OVA to anyone as a replacement for the manga or the 2014 anime adaptation, but as it's own thing and a companion piece to the original story that offers different takes on some things it works surprisingly well.

The character designs are at least interesting, the animation is extremely fluid (vastly outshining SC anime) and the music is great at illustrating the tone. Sadly the weird self depricating humor that the series is known for is almost completely gone. The whole thing takes itself really seriously and that works as a detriment to some of the most riddiculous moments (like Joseph ... smashing the camera with his stand in order to produce a nude photo of the family's arch enemy whose head is posessing his grandfather). Sadly the voice acting and sound design fall flat, but I don't know if it is caused by the performances or the fact that I got used to the over the top voice acting kown from the modern adaptation of Stardust Crusaders. Overall I wouldn't recommend this OVA to anyone not fammiliar with the original but it's a cool thing that it was made.

The 90s JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA can be a bit confusing because Studio A.P.P.P. adapted Stardust Crusaders in two series: the later portion of Stardust Crusaders was released first in 1993, followed by the earlier part as a prequel in 2000. Also, this OVA trims a lot of the story and is not as faithful to the manga compared to the newer 2014 David Production anime. The 1993 OVA also marked Satoshi Kon’s directorial debut, who probably contributed to the drastically darker tone carried over to both series, which unfortunately sacrifices a lot of humour from the manga. Marco D’Ambrosio composed the soundtrack for both ... series of this Stardust Crusaders adaptation, which has a retro MIDI synthesized vibe. I wouldn’t recommend this over the newer David Production adaptation, but rather something you should check out afterward.

I have recently watched the Part 3 Anime by David Productions and read the Manga and I have to say, this adaptation is not up to par.

The tone of the original story is missing and by making the story overly serious, it loses a lot of its charm and makes it like any other generic shounen. The animation cuts out many of the parts where action is supposed to be happening to focus on the uninteresting reactions. I didnt mind how they restructured the story to condense it down but they didnt take advantage of condensing it in any way. For a story that was ... adapted so well years later, this one just misses the mark.