As many of my subs should know, I was at this year’s Anime Expo.
The JoJo panel at AX had shown episode 1 of Part 5 and English subbed.
I’m sure that many had seen it due to leaks, but they were done in French subtitles so
it’s not the direct experience, but if you’ve read then you probably know what was going
on anyways.
I have a lot to talk about the experience of the JoJo panel and everything that had
happened, but that’s for later.
So, let’s get down into the review.
[Introduction Scene] Before any specific things like pacing I want
to talk about the most obvious thing that was made different, that being the beginning
scene to where it wasn’t from the manga.
So, this could be taken as just some extra promotional stuff which is how I’ve been
seeing this talked about, but I would more so rather think of it as an addition to plot.
While it isn’t directly canon to the manga, it’s not something to where it messes up
anything in the plot.
If anything, it added on to it, especially since we saw more to Leaky Eye Luca and how
he got the information to get into it with Giorno.
There was also this scene where we see a guy pickpocket one of the two girls Giorno was
talking to, and while he pickpockets it back, he takes a little fee for being one of nicer
people in that city.
We also see Giorno go to the ice cream or gelato shop to pick up a chocolate pistachio
cone, and it shows his love for chocolate which we were able to see in Chapter 4 of
Sleeping Slaves.
He gets two cones and you can see him give it to the starving kid near him.
I’m getting into just description territory so I’m going to pin point specific things
here.
There’s the first area of the introduction scene to where we had seen Giorno walking
through the crime infested streets.
People were getting dropped, paying for protection, dealing, all of that.
We see all of that and Giorno walking out of it all to have this shining transition
and I’m sure you can see it as symbolism to where it’s Giorno walking out of that
life into a brighter future, or something around those lines.
After that, we have narration from the narrator instead of Koichi.
And for those that haven’t read, Koichi originally narrated a large amount of the
beginning, but now it’s replaced by the narrator and Koichi flashbacking.
So, to the last area of the new introduction, we have Leaky Eye Luca and him looking for
those that aren’t paying up.
Seeing his shifting behavior before we see it with Giorno gives the audience the idea
of what Giorno is about to come across.
Plus, I like that we get to see more of Luca before the anime starts directly connecting
to the manga because we wouldn’t see that much of him to begin with.
I’ll talk about why in the pacing.
It gives us a good idea of what Luca is about and what type of person he is and what he
believes to be.
[Review of the episode itself] Now here I’m going to be talking about the
episode itself for what it is because while I’ve already read, I’ve never done any
form of review for any manga or episode.
So, it gives me a chance to talk about what I didn’t before.
Now in this episode, I liked it for the same reason I liked the volume and Araki’s other
first volumes.
Araki knows how to begin when it comes to starting off a new series.
Instead of having us wait to be introduced to a lot of things we needed to know already,
it’s condensed down into our introductory volumes, arcs, chapters, and now episodes.
In this one episode, see Giorno and Gold Experience, Italy, the environment of Italy, Koichi and
his reasoning of being in Italy, Jotaro, Luca, and Bruno.
And it’s not just a constant barrage of people we need to know, the direction is being
done throughout Giorno’s day, and this is just experiencing this all.
I also love that the whole “Stand users are drawn to each other” accounts for 3
of the interactions we had seen happen.
Last thing about this is the sound effects not being used as much, meaning both the visual
sound effect and the actual sound effects, and they were instead replaced with music
and atmosphere, and while that’s fine and doable, it could’ve made a few scenes grittier
than they were here.
[Voice Acting] Now for the voice acting, I felt as this was
as perfect as before.
Now while the actors have been changed, the power and everything about their voices had
stayed the same.
Though I will say that I will miss Sasuke Bruno, which was a thing in the games for
a while.
If you don’t know what I mean, the voice of Bruno was the same as Sasuke’s, which
means you can have Sasuke say “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” if you open up the game
getting Bruno.
But so far, I love all of the new voices.
Especially with new Bruno, he gets to this deeper tone in serious moments that we wouldn’t
see originally.
Then when he’s saying Giorno’s full name, he’s doing it with so much power in his
voice.
It’s great.
[Animation] For the animation, I think it goes without
saying that the anime progressively does better by each part, so it’s expected that Part
5 would now be the best animated part, but to see why and how is amazing.
It’s not the animation during the effects or the most dramatic moments, but when there’s
the most minimal stuff going on.
These days, there are a lot of shows that have still animations unless it’s an extremely
important area of the episode like the climax, but with this first episode, you see characters
keep moving like how people would.
The body language and continuous moving keeps the viewers eyes on the show instead of looking
away when there’s still animation exposition going on.
Continuous moving in animation is what made a lot of what we know now extremely popular,
Bugs Bunny and a lot of early animation being a huge example.
The only time I had seen someone not move was when Giorno was being threatened by Luca
to where any sudden movements would’ve probably got him attacked, and when Giorno was sitting
down with Bruno, and those are moments where he’s supposed to be still, so it made sense,
but even with him being still, the rest of the world kept moving.
Luca wouldn’t keep still, and Bruno was moving all around Giorno.
I’m loving the direction of this.
[Music] Now for the music…
I’m going to be one of the first people to buy the whole OST once it comes out as
a cd.
I know that I’m going to love this off the music used between Giorno and Bruno.
I had always wanted more choirs being used in the JoJo music because of how well it’s
done with anime, and that one interaction had answered me.
The music being used when Bruno was staring deeply into Giorno, you could just feel the
immense energy that it gave off.
Then there was Luca’s introduction music when he was looking for his money and you
can hear all the strings gliding through the track.
Though to generalize how well this was all done, all the tracks that were played in this
had sounded like an Italian orchestra telling the story of episode 1.
[Differences from Manga and Anime] Now for the differences between manga and
anime.
So, for all that had happened, it met eye to eye pretty easily, but I think the two
things I want to make light of the most is the sound effects not being used as much,
and the taste of a liar being a lot more different than the manga and what we expected.
While the panels combined weren’t as big and as important as holding Luca’s eye,
the panels here show how much focus is meant to go to it.
Bruno calling Giorno was done with more power and tense atmosphere than the lick itself,
regardless of the matter it was well.
The only other thing was the sound effect inclusion, and it’s all in the air if we
see more or less in the future.
Also, one enormous thing that was done was the change in the facial gestures Giorno was
doing.
In the manga, we see Giorno’s cold front as soon as possible, but it also had mixed
in with his elegance and smugness with Koichi.
Throughout this whole episode you can see the wide array of emotions Giorno’s carries
with all these different situations.
With the interaction between Luca and Giorno, you can see Giorno’s words match even better
his face because his whole thing was about getting Luca to not hurt the frog that wasn’t
involved in the situation between the both of them.
You could see him as being as genuine as possible and if you didn’t read it could look like
Giorno didn’t know what was going to happen if Luca was to do it, even though the frog
was a product of Gold Experience which means he was very much aware.
I’m guessing that we’re going to see Giorno’s front develop as he goes on into the part
instead of already having it as well as it is.
So far, I’m liking the creative direction they’re going with this and I can’t wait
for more.
[Pacing] Now for the pacing, this one episode had gone
through 4 chapters of the manga.
By doing this and dividing by how much manga we have, we have nearly 39 episodes.
But, if they add more of those anime only scenes to the adaptation, then we could potentially
have more.
I’m not sure how they’re going to go about Part 5, but I guess we’ll just have to see.
If it’s 4 chapters an episode and it’s done as well as this, I’m sure it will all
be great.
[Final Thoughts] It was an all around good introductory episode.
I loved it all.
Also, stylistically I’m loving Pink Giorno.
I want to say I’m surprised, but seeing the color changes in parts 1,2, and 3, not
surprised.
It also gives my Giorno and Gold Experience figure some canonicity since I’ve had these
alternate colors for forever.
I unknowingly
called it, but then my other video was kinda going against that, but then I also said I’d
be down for Pink Giorno.
You get the point.
No ratings, because I feel like people would just confused at that point so no point.
So, I’ll be finishing it off here.
Thank you all for watching, I have a lot of videos to make off my experiences at Anime
Expo so be sure to keep an eye on the sub box.
Thank you all for 50k, cheers to more!
I’ll see you all in the next one, until then, peace out and God Speed.