This isn't a drill or a late April Fool's joke - the next season of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has officially been confirmed!
The JOESTAR: The Inherited Soul celebration in Japan featured a panel consisting of each voice actor that played the respective main protagonist in each part of the anime. One animated clip during the event showed each JoJo so far, only to end with a surprise reveal of none other than Stone Ocean's Jolyne Cujoh before her VA, Ai Fairouz (Hibiki in How Heavy Are the Dumbbells You Lift?) joined the conversation.
If you've never read Stone Ocean, just imagine Orange is the New Black but much more violent and flamboyant. Jolyne - a Billie Eilish lookalike named after a Dolly Parton song, is the estranged and rebellious teenaged daughter of Stardust Crusaders' Jotaro Kujo. Jotaro visits his daughter in a Florida prison after she gets framed for murder and helps awaken her stand to prepare her for a conspiracy that goes back to the Joestar family's long-dead nemesis, Dio. In typical JoJo fashion, don't expect the plot to stay in one place for too long.
At the time of the manga's original publication it didn't go over too well with Japanese shonen audiences due to its foreign setting with frequent references to American history and culture, as well a lack of male and "girly girl" heroes compared to other parts in the franchise. Now that attitudes have changed and the series is reaching a much wider audience, these problems can now be seen as positives by different viewers. E.g. American audiences can relate to the relatively contemporary US setting and fans of badass women are more likely to enjoy the hardcore PowerPuff Girls-esque dynamic of Jolyne, FF and my personal favorite Latina waifu Hermes.
FF stands for Foo Fighters. It makes sense in context; she's actually a stand that's a colony of plankton using a corpse as a skin suit. Typical JoJo stuff.
It's hard to talk about Stone Ocean without giving away too much since the second half is by far the best. The first has a bunch of kinda lame stand fights in a row (looking at Yo-Yo Ma and Dragon's Dream in particular) and sags at times but after the plot picks up it gets about as bizarre as it could get and then some, featuring arguably the strongest main villain in the entire series. Here's hoping the anime rectifies those problems and fills in certain plot holes. Seeing as it's only just been announced it'll probably be a while before we hear of a release date, but until then you've got plenty of time to read the manga and see what the hype is all about.
Are you guys looking forward to the Stone Ocean anime? Have you read the manga before? What are you most excited to see? For me it's Hermes' stand Kiss vs Limp Bizkit and the Underworld arc; drop yours below!
