JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Review

Araki has been drawing this since 1987 and it changes shape roughly every fifteen to twenty volumes, which is the whole trick. Each part gets a new Joestar, a new setting and a new register, so the vampire pulp of the opening gives way to wartime adventure, then to a road trip across Asia, then to a small town horror story, and the series never has to age gracefully because it simply becomes something else. Critics agree on the two constants.

The art is unmistakable, all fashion plate poses, impossible torsos and sound effects that behave like set dressing, and it has been copied for decades. The Stand system is the other, a fighting engine where victories come from reading an opponent's rules rather than hitting harder, which makes the duels closer to puzzles than to brawls. The faults are real. The first part drags, Araki's anatomy grows less legible as he goes, and supporting casts arrive faster than they get written. Quality swings from part to part, but the imagination never runs low.