We talk about author Hirohiko Araki's flaws and success with the Phantom Blood arc of Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. Bringing up his issue with pacing the manga against multiple set pieces and fights spanning multiple environments but also praise his use of writing brave characters that inspire empathy, as well as his ability to use real world science to explain the most bizarre parts of the action. Skip synopsis @ 5: 11
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106: Jojo's Bizarre Adventure vol. 4
Chapters 28 and 37 'Tarkus and the Dark Knight Blufford' Part 3 and 'The Three from a Faraway Land' part 2
By Hirohiko Araki
Translation by Evan Galloway
Lettering by Mark Mcmurray
The Joestar group fight Dio, in response Dio summons the undead Tarkus and Bluford. Bluford fights as if his hair is a third arm, he can also drain blood from each strand of his hair.
Through the power of Hamon, Jojo sloughs off at the undead flesh of Bluford and in turn restores his nervous system. Meaning Bluford feels pain. Bluford restrains his strike and realizes that Jojo is not fighting back, he shows honour and gratitude for being able to feel again, then yields before turning into dust. Tarkus is less sympathetic, he stomps on what remains of Bluford and then blasts the Joestar group a large distance, Zepelli defends himself from the blast by keeping himself horizontal to it, minimizing himself as a target and lessening the surface area of the damage.
Poco, having previously been hypnotized by Dio, returns with the help of two men, however they do not believe Poco and thus torment the young boy. Tarkus appears and kills the two men. The Joestar group close the distance on Tarkus and save Poco, both Jojo and Zepelli use Hamon and static electricity to form a parachute of fallen leaves and parasail to safety. During their journey Zepelli tells Speedwagon of his training with master Tonpetty, but keeps the prophecy that he will die saving Jojo a secret.
They land on the roof a castle which leads Jojo into a trap room with Tarkus, unable to effectively use Hamon. Poco remembers what his sister taught him about bravery and breaks into the room, he opens it up from inside so that Zepelli can fight Tarkus and although Zepelli is fatally wounded by Tarkus, he is able to give the last of his Hamon energy to Jojo, setting Jojo free and passing on the figurative torch to him.
Upon defeating Tarkus in a spectacular fashion they journey towards the town Dio enslaved. They are joined by a new group of men also ready to help finish what Zepelli started. The men are Dire, Straizo, and Zepelli's teacher, Master Tonpetty. Dio awaits them with Poco's sister as his prisoner, she is refusing any temptation of immortality that Dio offers her.
Topics:
· "Bravery begets empathy": Hirohiko Araki has a brilliant technique in that he has characters do brave things for us to feel empathy for them. Both the flashback with Poco and Zepelli set up later events that call for both characters to be brave.
· A criticism of Phantom Blood is how one fight can be prolonged over vast distances in multiple settings. One can suspect that if opinion polls/ratings had dropped in reader surveys that Dio would have appeared in the same castle as the "Two-Headed Dragon room" however we are introduced to new characters, Dire and Straizo before this time. Poco himself is reintroduced during the fight with Tarkus. This has a detrimental effect on the pacing of the manga.
Other references:
· "Turgor pressure" think of the word turgid, which is opposite to flaccid. Something turgid is swollen with water whilst something flaccid just has water sloshing around, there is no build-up of pressure in it. It is often used to describe the build-up of water pressure in the cells of a plant, in this manga it is used to explain the reasoning as to how Bluford can flex and move his hair. This implies that there is a sort of blood plasma in his hair that Bluford has full control over. Until Araki introduced the idea of "stand power" villains in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure gained their powers through their full cellular level control. It is also fair to say that Bluford's hair is not normal and perhaps does resemble that of a plant or a hair cell found in one's ears. In reality; the hair on your head is dead, only the follicles count as a living part of your body and needs blood flow from your skin to be able to generate the keratin that makes your hair strands.
· Minimising surface area for damage is a technique used by Zepelli and is applied in real circumstances. For example, if someone were to be in a gunfight then laying in a prone position will shrink you as a target to your enemy and avoid splash damage from shrapnel, unless the enemy is on higher ground than yourself of course.
An inverse example is if you were to hit the ground in a falling elevator, you would have to spread out the surface damage so as not to break your bones, so laying down in a prone position means your body can better distribute the force of the hit.
· "To love and win is the best thing. To love and lose, the next best." - William Makepeace Thackeray, Thackery himself was a Victorian era English writer, known for social satire. His most well-known book is arguably Vanity Fair, "Mother is the name for God" appears in the 1994 movie The Crow.
· Salween River Tibet, implies Tonpetty is a Tibetan monk and that he is Buddhist.
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