So I finally got around to finishing Battle Tendency. I must say, it is a marked improvement over Phantom Blood (not perfect though - I'll get into that later). I'm going to start on what I really liked about Part II over Part I. First things first, Joesph Joestar >>>>>>>>> Jonathan Joestar. Jonathan was kind of a goody two shoes wet noodle with not much personality. Joesph had swag coming out of all his orifices and was as sharp as a razor blade mentally. He consistently was able to out-think and outwit his opponents. His intelligence/cleverness was by far his greatest weapon and I really liked that. He struggled for every win but almost all of them felt well earned (the ACDC fight is an exception - was a bit hard to follow for my tastes so it didn't leave a good impression on me :/).
Second, the villains were much better. Santanna wasn't around long and did really have much of a personality and ACDC didn't really do all that much honestly (I was surprised he died so soon considering his rank was supposed to be second only to Cars) but Wham and Cars were highlights for me. When Joesph tried to pull a "Cell" on
Vegeta Wham I thought the character was just going to be be one of those "honor/pride" types that you often see who get easily duped. The way he turned it around on Joesph and the character development you saw with regards to his fights with Ceaser and the rematch with Joesph really made it clear that we was a legit character. I actually fell sorry for him when he actually died. He wasn't a mustache twirling villain who wanted to "rule the world" so much as a brother to his fellow Pillar Men and frankly, a "True Warrior". Wham was a well written villain IMO.
Cars played the magnificent bastard role well and did a better job of it than Dio did in Phantom Blood. Like holy shit at the air guitar O_O scene. Him being around longer and getting more screen time overall probably helped though. His final fate was so super satisfying for a scumbag like him.
Third, the fights were much better. It helped that Joesph and Caesar were smarter and more inventive fighters than their grandparents with more interesting techniques. The Joesph vs. Wham fight in the Colosseum and the final fight between Joesph and Super Cars were just amazing sequences. Some of the most ridiculous, hot-blooded crazy stuff I've seen in shonen recently. It is kind of a shame that Joesph was the only one to beat all the Pillar Men though. It would have been nice if the glory could have been spread out a bit
Fourth, the supporting cast was better. Phantom Blood had Will A. Zeppelli, R.E.O Speedwagon, Paco, and then the Ripple crew (Straits et al.) who showed up out of nowhere and were around for like 1.5 episodes. Battle Tendency sees Speedwagon return but he's actually somewhat useful because he has money and an organization. Smokey fills in the "Paco Role" and while he doesn't do that much I feel like giving Araki credit just for even having a Black character in his show let alone one who was an actual character with well meaning intentions and not a racist caricature in one way or another (Smokey is a dumb name though).
I prefer Ceaser to his grandfather because while he started as an ass, you really see him and his relationship with Jojo develop. Will A. Zeppeli's death left me feeling cold for a variety of reasons (guy was alive as half a dude for like an entire episode for fucks sake) but Ceaser's death Zeppeli hit me right in the feels ;_;. I know that in some later Part a character named Gyro Zeppeli shows up so I know the Zeppeli line isn't dead (we know Caesar had siblings) but I have no idea how they are related exactly (
DON'T SPOIL PLZ) so it will be interesting to discover the connection some time in the future.
Stroheim worried me at first because I knew he was a Nazi and I wasn't sure how he was going to play out. The megalomainiac, insane coward (my first impression) didn't sit well with me but seeing how he helps out in the Santanna fight as well when he shows up later a few times as a
cyborg (LOLOLOLOLOLOL) really turned his image around. This is a character that could have easily been a joke character or a unconformable (if maybe somewhat accurate) "herp a derp I hate Jews, Blacks and Gays cause I'm a Nazi derp a herp" caricature but he was an active contributor to the anti-Pillar Man effort.
Lisa Lisa was a standout. Strong, smart, no nonsense, beautiful - the character had it all. I felt the training episodes were a bit awkwardly paced and edited but I thought she was the right mix of stern and fair and really served as a good mentor character - she played the role better than Will A. Zeppelli ever did. The bit where she breaks down at Caesar's death was ;_; but then she picks herself back up and fights & bluffs like a BOSS. I kind of got annoyed at the near constant "but you're a woman", "I don't like fighting women", etc. lines that were thrown about at her- it got tiresome after a while. Also, while I certainly never expected her to beat Cars (main hero always has to beat the main villain and all that), she got fucking jobbed in that fight. Like I know if plays into Cars magnificent bastard role but she got robbed of a good fight and then spent like 4 episodes in a pool of her own blood. A bit disappointing I must say :/
Aside from some of the small issues I already noted, the main thing that irked me was how some things would happen with no explanation or contrary to sense (I know what the show is called, hear me out). When Straits tells Jojo about the Pillar Men, he talks as if the Pillar Men had spoken to him but its clear that couldn't have been the case since they were all still sealed. Weird no? Am I really supposed to believe the Stroheim survived BLOWING HIMSELF UP with a grenade back in Mexico? Like I can accept him coming back as a cyborg but only if it would have made sense for him to survive the Mexico incident (it didn't). How did the Germans seemed to always be in the know about everything? "Oh we had secret spies all about", etc. BULLSHIT. Don't tell me, show me. At least show me some damn Germans snooping around or some shit. I'm still trying to figure out how Mario Zepelli, the other ripple masters, the Germans all knew almost everything about the Pillar Men yet somehow neither Will A. Zepelli nor the ripple masters from Part I seemed to know shit about them (especially if the mystic vs. Pillar Man fight had gone on for centuries as the Pillar Men seem to suggest when they encounter Jojo et al. for the first time). How did ACDC know about Lisa Lisa's isle or that the Red Stone was there? How did the Germans and Speedwagon AND Smokey know about the Colosseum to provide Jojo backup? How did Stroheim go from being attacked by a mutant squirrel to on a plane nobody say him board in a matter of minutes to help Jojo beat Super Cars? How did Jojo jump off a cliff and fly off in a plane in the like one minute of time he should have had before Super Cars catches him? All these little add up (I'm sure I'm forgetting a bunch of inconsistencies too) and becoming kind of annoying to think about. I can't tell if all this was as poorly/awkward explained in the manga or it was just another instance where the anime team had to pack a lot of material in a relatively small number of episodes so stuff had to be cut :/
I felt we could have used a bit more info on the Pillar Men themselves and their background. I would have wished the bit that came in the last episode came much sooner. So they are a primate offshoot that somehow have all these crazy superpowers but, like vampires, can't deal with sunlight. The show seems to imply that normal Pillar Men have elongated lifespans but that the Stone Masks Cars made are the reason the remaining Pillar Men are nigh immortal but the masks weren't "perfected" so they still had their weakness to the Sun. The Red Stone, and only the Red Stone (could Cars really not figure out another power source in all those years?), could perfect the masks and allow the Pillar Men to evolve high enough to overcome the solar weakness right? So did normal Pillar Men also eat vampires & humans and have those absorption powers? How did the masks fall into the hands of humans? Do Pillar Men gain additional subsistence from vampires that would make them want to actively turn humans into vampires? How did the four remaining Pillar Men even end up in those stone pillars? Honestly, I feel like if the Germans weren't even messing with the pillars to begin with, none of the Pillar Men would have even been able to awaken anyway
How did Santanna and the other three get separated by such great distances (and no continental drift is not an answer we are dealing with too small a time scale for that to be relevant)? Honestly, I feel like I could go on and on. I felt like there were tons of little details that needed to be elaborated upon but never were
From my long write-up, I think its clear I enjoyed Battle Tendency very much. It had what I felt was some wonky writing in some parts and some of the episodes in the middle of the arc dragged for my tastes but it started strong and the end was explosively awesome. I'm looking forward to Part III in the spring
