I feel as though the Jojo I have begun to love is back. Firstly, Jonathan is as serious as he’s ever been and Speedwagon made me tear up this chapter. Jonathan is hurt and has more weight than ever on his back, he is his mentors hope. Anyone who gets in his way is now getting demolished, he had no qualms tearing out that zombies tongue. I do feel he has developed quite a bit through the journey! he may be a relatively simplistic character but he started as a young, clumsy, but determined kid and as life went on he roughed out the edges and became reliable but kept his sense of naivety and pride and empathy and duty. He became a walking tank but he did feel guilty over killing a zombie. Now he’s learned hamon, lost his father and his mentor, and taken on a huge responsibility, as Speedwagon described him, his face has changed. He’s tearing through anyone who comes their way instantly and like I’ve said before he feels a lot like Kenshiro now. But he’s not alone, Speedwagon is broken up too. He had gained Zeppeli’s respect, he got to see what a great man he was, he just warmed his arm up with his abs, and then he had to watch the death of him unable to help at all. Beyond that, you have to remember what a huge heart this guy has for the people he respects, in a moment he had decided to go along with Jonathan and help him get through all of this. So, for Speedwagon to take on Zeppeli’s hat after he passed was beautiful to me. The things that the dead pass on don’t only go to Jonathan, Speedwagon is carrying Zeppeli along with him physically as well. :)
More than having these character moments, we had an interesting direction for the arc to go. Dire attacks and I had first rolled my eyes. When he said “zombies have surrounded the city” instead of “we have” he set himself up to be a vampire I had thought. But that was subverted in the best way ever. He is Zeppeli’s disciple and he wanted to see how far Jonathan has come. He's not alone either, Tonpeti the original master and Straights another disciple of Zeppeli are here. They were sadly too late to save Zeppeli but as Tonpeti put it, it was his destiny and there was no changing it. The gang has gone down a member but quickly grew as well. Also, to step back for a moment, I love the call back of having Jonathan headbutt Dire rather than try to escape! That is a call back to one of the first defining traits of Jonathan, his gentleman code to never back down. I think that characters that are this badass can be overdone but by setting up Jonathan to be like this even when he was a young kid getting beat up for taking out his handkerchief this feels a lot more personal and cool.
Going along with that, outside of Dio tricking a woman into grotesquely ripping her baby's face off(wdf Araki ewww), I feel something similar with him. He's looking more like a true vampire king the more we see him, and now that he is not so small scale he feels like a very generic and cheesy villain. He has this plan of world domination, he's creating an army of zombies, he's having women eat their babies to show off how evil he is, he is letting the heroes fight his zombies and leaving them so that they can survive when he could have easily won. This is all classic generic bad guy world domination stuff. But, by showing us from the very beginning, from the smallest of scale where Dio came from, he somehow feels real, he's somehow feels like a person. We've seen him at his most maniacal and at his lowest, we know where he came from, we understand his feelings, we understand why he is this much of an asshole. There’s even a sense of tragedy to it that only people who grew up with him, kinda like us, would get. And that may be enough!!
P.S. It’s cool that Jonathan had a change of clothes at hand, it would have been chilly otherwise. |