Man, I don’t remember Tusk being that pink. I always thought Tusk was a blue and gray color set and would look more mechanical, but I also thought Stone Free would be green, so what do I know?
You can see a few of Tusk’s different forms in use. Act 4 all the way on the right looks like it’s part of a scene, so it may be Ultra Only, but Act 3 is being used in standard combat. That might mean it’s a power up Ultra or maybe Johnny will be able to upgrade his strength over the course of a match. If you’ve ever played Marvel vs. Capcom 3, think of Frank West’s leveling up skill.
Not too much for Johnathan and Will, though that one picture of Johnathan looks like he’s going to fuck someone up. There was a translation of the last spread floating around somewhere and Johnathan’s best ultra is supposed to be the On Fire Fist. That picture is probably him gearing up for it. Will just gets to be in the bottom, but maybe we’ll get another spread where it’s Johnny and Will up top and Johnathan at the bottom so all the characters have gone in a full circle. Or we could just get another full Famitsu article with all the pictures of everything. That’d be good too.
I must have just never payed attention when Tusk Act 1 was around because I didn’t remember half the details on it like the frosting nozzle it has for a nose.
We also have much easier to see shots of the moves previewed in the V-Jump spread.
The Funny Valentine Final Battle Site in New Jersey. Danger: Bear.
These are some beautifully crafted environments. With the Jersey one, I might forgive the stage hazards if the bears are the stage hazards. Just imaging Josuke launching an Kira backwards into a bear, then bear launches Kira back into one of Josuke’s ultras. Then the bear shapeshifts back into Mikitaka Hazekura and they bro-fist. I think you can see why I might be on board with that.
Nothing like a Valentine’s Day gift from my favorite people; People on the internet I’ve never actually met but have a tenuous connection to because they’re making a thing I’m interested in and wrote about once. The JJBA Dating Sim blog has released a first draft of their potential game setting. I’ll just quote it directly from their post.
Welcome to the Speedwagon Academy for Gifted Youths! You, BANANAS23, are here because you have exhibited impressive talents. As is probably more than obvious, only the most special of students are admitted here. That is to say of course, those with great strength and vigor! With honor and courage the likes of which the world has never seen before!
If something administrative exists in the JoJo Universe, it does have to be owned by Speedwagon. Maybe he started funding high schools in his twilight years to encourage the relationships he never had himself.
Bananas23 replaces the BLANK for character name. Remember that we’re going to be playing ourselves living out our fantasies of wooing a particular JoJo protagonist. Hmm. If the Jotaro track is written particularly well, this game might get popular with Shoko Nakagawa.
And of course, those with a series of amazing abilities. You see, every student here is either a Ripple user, or a Stand user, of course you know what those things are. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t, after all!
Fair enough. I think it’s reasonable to assume that everyone interested in the game will be a JoJo’s fan coming in. That said, I like the idea of introducing someone to JoJo’s via this game. I can see it now: “Hmm, this sim’s interesting enough. I like this guy with the hat. A little stern, but cute enou- Where did that blue, Aztec Tarzan come from? Why is it pummeling me?!”
While all of our students are certainly something to be proud of, we boast full attendance of the Joestar family lineage, certainly some of the best Ripple and Stand users of our time! Lucky for you, they will be your guides as you get acquainted with our academy.
I’ve said before that might knowledge of dating sims is limited almost entirely to an LP of Hatoful Boyfriend. I imagine that this will work in some similar ways such as that there will be a class or extracurricular something or other that will correspond to each character you can date. Something like you’d join the Horseback Riding Club to get closer to Johnny or the Sewing Club to better understand Jolyne. Joining Music Appreciation will be how you get the secret ending where you start dating Hirohiko Araki.
Now then, even you must want to know more about them!
Well, you do have my attention. I have plenty of more questions, and those are mostly about the characters themselves like you say. What are they going to look like, how are their tracks going to progress, things like that. Luckily, we shouldn’t be waiting long on that because they’ve said that character profiles will be coming out soon. Look forward to it.
Yeah, that’s the way to do it. Can we agree that we’re coming into ASB with a little “who’d win in a fight” mentality? The moment Mista and Hol Horse were both set to be in the game, I was thinking about who has the better gun stand. But the stand out rivalry is obviously the all out cage match of Cherries vs. Cheese.
The gameplay that we got to see with the main showcase characters, Johnny, Johnathan, Will, and JoJolion Josuke are pretty interesting. I was wrong about what move I thought would be the On Fire Fist, but we knew it would be there. Zoom punch got my attention because it looks like it sticks for a second instead of retracting immediately. If it does, it could be really awesome for anti-air because an opponent could misjudge the time and still jump into it. Will also has it, so I await my match where we sit across the ring just doing that at each other.
Johnny looks like he’s either going to be the character that’s really hard to use because of his very limited movement when not on Slow Dancer but very rewarding if you can handle him or the character that caters to spamming because he’s going to be projectile heavy. That does follow; his power was shooting his fingernails, but I don’t want that to mean he’ll be the back-up-and-shoot-you character.
JoJolion Josuke I think is going to be the trap/counter character with that all based around the soap bubble. I’ve got to give CC2 some credit for what they used for his moves because you see him using a bunch of soap bubbles as a barrier around his body like the shaving scene. He also does that at a distance, but I’m mostly interested in when the screen goes black. That specific bubble will steal the players’ “eyes” by blacking the screen so whoever’s JoJolion Josuke can get a free hit. That’s going to be really hard to use for human player because it blanks the screen, but there may be more to it than what’s in the PV.
Oh, and Kira. He has Sheer Heart Attack, but that’s all they’re telling us. I figured he would also be a counter/trap character because of the way Another One Bites the Dust works and all the bombs, but it’s not in the PV. At this point, I think we can be clear that Kira is DLC only. The way he’s rolled in with the Hayato Memo Book and the specific mention of PSN in the text on the still intro page (edit: and that he’s listed as such on the official character page.) You gotta buy him extra. If you don’t want to mess with getting foreign DLC, you might want to import fast.
I assumed you guys would be interested in knowing what they were saying. It helps me out. I didn’t know what it was JoJolion Josuke was doing during his Grand Heat, but the friction stealing is cool. Okuyasu calling Giorno names makes way more sense than insulting his topknot that he totally has. His classic style “uurrryyy” is also a nice touch.
This is the best game. That Mista one just floored me. The really impressive ones to me, though, are Johnathan, Gyro, and sort of Will and Giorno because those are just normal moves and not part of any ultras. For Johnathan and Gyro, those are what they look like when dodging. This is the best game.
Make sure and check out the full video for even more comparisons.
(Thanks to Goon Kurtofan for posting this and also probably being the one that put it on Polsy)
I was a little scant in my post about Stage 9: ARAKI, and I apologize profusely for that. I was under the impression that you could only play if you had managed to pass into Stage 9 either from playing all the previous Stages or getting ten points in Stage 8: QUIZ. Turns out that isn’t the case:
Attention! In this stage 2 people will win and get the award, namely “The Champion of the JOJO ROYALE” and “The Stage Winner”.
The case is that you are only eligible to win the Steel Ball Run Trophy and autographed JOJOveller Deluxe Edition if you have been playing up until this point. Anyone can still play in Stage 9 and win the 25 Years of JOJO Panel autographed by Araki. Since we can all play, let’s go over the rules.
Like Araki explained in his video, you have you guess the order of the eight JoJo’s protagonists from top left to bottom right of the above image. The idea is to mentally link yourself with Araki’s creative process so you can understand how he would arrange them. You submit your answer to the Google+ page linked here by number. For example: Let’s say I think the order is “Josuke, Johnny, Joseph, Jotaro, Giorno, Jolyne, Johnathan, JoJolion Josuke.” I would submit my answer as 47235618. At the end of the Stage, the order will be revealed and scores will be tallied based on how close a guess was to the correct answer. Again, for example: Let’s say the actual order is “Josuke, Giorno, Joseph, Jotaro, JoJolion Josuke, Johnny, Johnathan, Jolyne” or 45238716. My guess correctly placed 5 of them, so I would get 5 points. You cannot submit invalid guesses, these being guessing less than eight numbers, like 4723561, or having repeated numbers, like 47233561. You can only answer once, but you can revise if you see your original post has an error.
You have a whole month to think about it. The deadline for guesses is April 23 8PM, Japanese Standard Time. Turn your psychic tuner to Araki’s frequency or maybe see if you can get Terrence’s phone number. Good luck with your guesses.
Terrence is starting to lose it. I mean his blood because it’s all being punched out of him.
Despite that I named the article after Kira, the commercial is pretty evenly spread amongst the characters that are mentioned. Kira just gets a slightly bigger scene where he blows up Okuyasu. You get to see him launching Sheer Heart Attack instead of it just being in the air. Good enough for me. Maybe we’ll get to see Another One Bites The Dust soon.
I had forgotten about this. Obviously, JOJO Royale winning entries aren’t decided on immediately once a Stage is over even though we move on to the next Stage. I’d always meant to go back and show off the ultimate winners but hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Since we’re nearing the end of the race and seem to be completely past the arts and crafts entries, let’s look at the winners of those Stages.
I’m glad to know I was on about this one. It’s not a hard guess, though, I suppose. It’s a really high quality painting after all. By the way, each of the images will link to the appropriate JOJO Royale Official Stage Page. When I brought up the end of the Stages before, I’d link to the full gallery on the Google+ page and post a few personal stand outs, but the pages now contain both the Stage winner and all of what are probably the actual runner ups. My intuition was on a few of them like the Heaven’s Gate Ena, but there are plenty I never even saw.
Case in point. I never even saw this one while plumbing the galleries for ones I liked. It’s amazing how far the concept of BLOCK was pushed. I didn’t even think you could go for rocks like the above or all the main protagonists made of strips of paper held together with paperclips. It was maybe the best creative showing out of the whole contest.
Not to detract from what people were able to pull off making Ad signs for POP. If you told me that entry was part of JOJOmenon and made by Araki, I might believe you. The way it literally follows the letter of the Stage by having Jolyne POP out of the frame is just incredible. I’m a little disappointed that the flickering DIO TV didn’t make it to the runners up, but there’s an Araki as Rohan sign, so what do I really have to complain about?
We weren’t the only ones at a convention this weekend. Warner Bros. and JoJo team had a booth at this year’s Anime Content’s Expo, or ACE. It’s a open anime trade fair, and because it’s about anime companies and studios showing what they’ve got, they also have some influence over the menu.
This spaghetti al nero, according to the twitter, was something you could buy at the ACE food court for the small price of ¥800. You just need to make sure and wipe your mouth after eating it. And no starting magic food fights.
Oh, also cosplay. Yes, this group of magnificent people also managed to show up in front of a certain statue of Santana. One day, we’ll get a group like this in the States, and they’ll be so mad when I never stop taking pictures of them.
Since the entries were closed back on the 23rd, I though this would be open sooner. I guess they decided to do some tallying before revealing the answer because it came out yesterday.
Stage 9: ARAKI was a month long guessing game. We were given this vague image and had to place each protagonist from left to right. You were scored according to how accurate you were. A guess of “12345678″ gets you 5 points if the correct answer is “31245678.” Just by looking and synching your mind to Araki, you had to know how he would place these characters? Did you figure it out?
Because that devious artist managed to out think me and plan for that I would think the vague outline was the characters and not the stands. The correct answer is Jotaro, Josuke, Giorno, Jolyne, JoJolion Josuke, Johnathan, Johnny, Joseph. My original guess was “47235618,” meaning that I got absolutely nothing from my guess. How did you guys do?
With that, JOJO Royale is closed. The winner of Stage 9, whenever they’re determined, will receive the autographed by Araki25th Anniversary Panel. The winner of the whole competition will receive a replica SBR Trophy and a free, autographed copy of the JoJoveller Deluxe Edition. To those who tried their luck and skill, I hope you had fun. To those who won, congratulations on the prizes you’ve won. If there’s another JoJo competition, I hope us outside Japan get to play again.
【Command Normals】
（While in body mode）
I have to beat you with everything I have!
（While in stand mode）
Follow the thread!
【Special Moves】
（While in body mode）
What angle is best to hit you from?
It’s like you’re asleep！
String Barrier!
Defending myself with a string requires no power
（While in stand mode）
You’re good as an opponent
Don’t hesitate, punch them
You won’t cut my string again!
Stretching the string！
【Heart Heat Attack】
It’s 1000 balls!
【Great Heat Attack】
Let me leave you incapacitated
【Style】
Mode Change
【Command Normals】
（While in body mode）
It’s useless!
（While in stand mode）
What a disagreeable mood…
（While in requiem mode）
The destination of the arrow’s power!
【Special Moves】
（While in human mode）
I’ve changed it’s nature
Life…arise!
From here on, I should face the road I want!
It’s useless
I’ve made parts of myself!
（While in stand mode）
Useless useless useless useless!
WRYYYYYYYYYYY
Uselesssssss!
（While in requiem mode）
Can you continue to exist?
Your actions will never be reality！
Useless useless useless useless!
Uselesssssss!
【Heart Heat Attack】
The pains are hitting me slowly！
【Great Heat Attack】
Neverending end
【Style】
Mode Change
【Throw】
My body jumped up!
【Command Normal】
（While in grounded mode, any stand）
I have to go that far!!
（Grounded mode and horseback mode Tusk ACT2 and up）
Have some herb tea？
【Special Moves】
（Grounded mode, Tusk ACT1）
I’ll call it ‘Tusk’ from now on！
My nails are spinning!
What is this!?
（Grounded mode, Tusk ACT2, ACT3 and ACT4）
The Golden Rotation with my fingers
I’ll attack with a ‘hole’!
（Grounded mode, Tusk ACT3 and ACT4）
I’m being dragged into the hole！
Where the hell is my upper half!?
（Grounded mode, Tusk ACT4）
Which do you think the sacrifice will really be？
Chumimiiiiiin
（Horseback mode, Tusk ACT1）
I’ll call it Tusk from now on！
My nails are spinning!!
Go well!!
（Horseback mode, Tusk ACT2, ACT3 and ACT4）
The Golden Rotation with my fingers
I’ll attack with a ‘hole’!
Go well!!
（Horseback mode, Tusk ACT3 and ACT4）
I’m being dragged into the hole！
（Horseback mode, Tusk ACT4）(it actually said grounded mode here, but I’m assuming that’s a typo)
Which do you think the sacrifice will really be？
Chumimiiiiiin
【Heart Heat Attack】
（Grounded and Horseback mode Tusk ACT1）
Even if the spin becomes a hole, it doesn’t die!
（Limited to grounded mode Tusk ACT2）
I understand now, where I have to shoot my bullets…
（Limited to horseback mode Tusk ACT3）
The energy of the complete gold rotation!
【Great Heat Attack】
It’s truly, truly been a round-about path
【Style】
Switch to horseback
Man, they made Johnny complicated. That’s not too surprising since he has to be horse and not horse along with having four stands. It just makes Will’s move set look a lot simpler by comparison.
As before, I wonder what moves correspond to what we’ve seen and if there are any moves we haven’t seen yet. From the names, I wonder if Jolyne will have her ability to turn into a mobius strip even if I have no idea what the practicality of that move would be against opponents that can’t turn you inside out. Some of them you can tell obviously like “1000 Balls” or “Neverending End.” I don’t know if the characters are going to have instant kills, but that one has to be an instant kill. I hope they at least make that complicated to do.
If this keeps up, we should have a strategy guide’s worth of move lists pretty soon. As a note, the guy from Hurricane Crew used the Famitsu pictures because he doesn’t have the magazine pages with the move lists for whatever reason. He said he’d replace them so we’ll be able to see the button inputs. At that time, I’ll also replace them.
For real. That this didn’t happen in Part 2 shocks me.
I would say this is maybe what would happen if the guys who made Cromartie were tasked to make a JoJo manga. The absurdity is at least on that level, and its humor is so charming while it catches you off guard. The gags are almost perfect to that style of humor both visually and idea wise. It’s easier to picture if you imagine that Freddie riding Mechazawa is catching Joseph instead of Stroheim. He’s not helping. He’s just sort of there.
Not all of the jokes are perfect. The ones using the Part 5 characters don’t make sense to me because it’s a Japanese culture joke I’m not privy to. Something about Nagoya and Sendai citizens making certain sounds? I’m sure the joke works, it’s just not something I understand. The jokes at Part 5′s expense, however…
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Throw in a dick and bondage joke or two and you’re good to go. So go give it a look. It’s up on Batoto if you follow the link at the top and the one I’ll put at the bottom in the “Where this stuff came from” line. It’s a fun time. Also, keep in mind that this came from the Golden Blood event. Next time that comes around, you might consider getting something from it.
Polnareff vs DIO Polnareff: “Now, I can feel it… this “white” in myself. This injured body that gives rise to courage. I am on the side of the light!” DIO: “Your only choice is to die, Polnareff”
Polnareff vs Giorno Giorno: “Hey, Polnareff is here. Polnareff?” Polnareff: “Who is this? I don’t know ya…”
Jolyne and Jotaro Jolyne: “You’re so… young!! What’s this about?” Jotaro: “I don’t even know you…”
Giorno and DIO Giorno: “I’ve been waiting for this moment” DIO: “You feel close to me somehow”
Josuke to Jotaro: “You seem somewhat similar to me”
Special Victory Quotes
Jolyne beats Jotaro
“I wonder if I’m being paranoid…”
Giorno beats Polnareff
“It really was Polnareff”
Okuyasu beats Josuke
“Great, practice is over! Now let’s head over to the cafe and visit Tonio!”
Giorno beats DIO
“This power I received from you, I’ll use it to dream”
DIO beats Jonathan Jonathan: “No way! DIO’s… alive…” DIO: “Your body is my future”
Oh, did I say the meat was in the special interactions? I meant it’s in the special taunt everyone has for Josuke’s hair. The way it works is apparently like a counter. Josuke sets you up to insult him by saying, “What did you say about my hair,” and then the taunt takes place setting him into a super mode. They haven’t all been released, and you’ve already seen Dio call it “cowshit,” but there are some new ones including the ultimate line from Johnny.
Polnareff:
“You should really cut that hair” (in JP Polnareff style Engrish)
Josuke:
“Your hair style doesn’t even compare to mine”
Johnny: (in total deadpan) “That hairstyle’s good… really good… it’s super cool…”
As you can see at the top, some Tumblrs have already taken to the inevitable fanart answer. Johnny’s line is the best. I have no idea what anyone else is going to say, but short of Johnathan being really enthused by how great the hair is and Josuke taking it to be sarcasm, I don’t think anyone’s topping that one.
There’s a different spread of content this time. The first issue had around two or three jokes per part with a little extra like the Joseph Finisher Rhyme-Off. This issue actually has a full on Part 2 story about Caeser’s and Joseph’s training days where Joseph climbed out of the Hell Climb pit only to be pushed back in every day. There’s also a lot more Part 4 gags.
The only downside is that the issue cuts down in other areas. There’s only the one Part 5 joke and no Part 6 material at all other than a splash page of Jolyne. There’s also no new cross story interactions like the quiz show in the first one, but the jokes are still good and the art is still pretty nice. If you liked the first, you’ll like the second. And you can trust me on that.
So I was doing a little digging on Naver, and I stumbled across a graphic like this. I had no idea what it was, so I looked into it. You remember the announcement picture that there was going to be a new character announced officially on the 19th? I didn’t look into then, but I found out that that graphic came from the BandaiNamco site for the Official “All Star Battle League.”
It turns out that the event the character announcement is going to piggyback off of is wide scale CPU 1-on-1 tournament held on UStream the channel for which I can’t find so it may not exist just yet. That graphic comes from that you can go to this page and pick a character you intend to cheer for when they’re in match. What you do is pick the character you want from the grid, then you’ll get a hash tag for that character, for example: Kira’s is #jojoasbl_kira, you can use to post a tweet for to show your support. You’re only allowed one vote per day per account.
So it is a massive popularity contest that is not going in the direction I expected at all. That graphic up there is a screengrab from today’s voting set. Johnny Joestar is leading the pack by almost 100 supporters over Johnathan at 2nd place. The totals are added to the previous day, so Johnny came up to 1337 to to take the lead as he and Johnathan were tied yesterday at 534.
Here’s the whole list of characters and their totals for today the 11th:
1. Johnny Joestar 1337
2. Johnathan Joestar 1280
3. DIO 1237
—————————
4. Bruno Buccelatti 1222
5. Josuke Higashikata 1159
6. Caeser A. Zeppeli 983
7. Noriaki Kakyoin 948
8. Jotaro Kujo 917
9. Rohan Kishibe 910
10. Joseph Joestar 862
11. Yoshikage Kira 767
12. Jolyne Kujo 741
13. Diavolo 709
14. Giorno Giovana 645
15. Gyro Zeppeli 612
16. Narancia Ghirga 546
17. Koichi Hirose 518
18. Okuyasu Nijimura 507
19. Guido Mista 501
20. Jean P. Polnareff391
21. Cars 311
22. Wham 222
23. Hol Horse 221
24. JoJolion Josuke 209
25. Mohammad Abdul 198
26. Hermes Costello 193
27. Akira Otoshi 183
28. ACDC 163
29. Will A. Zeppeli 152
The participants that I’ve seen have all been Japanese, so this may be a good indicator of character popularity in that group. I had no idea Johnny was so popular, and Bruno is in a position to overtake DIO of all people. I’m surprised, and it’s important to know because at the end of the vote when the event starts, the top three characters will be seeded so as to be exempt from preliminary matches.
Important in that you’ll know which characters people wanted to see with the best chance to be #1. Now that you know, will you throw your hat in someone’s corner and cheer? Supporting your favorite is only a # away.
The Johnny one seems a bit appropriate to toddler clothing with starting to walk, and I like the somewhat melodramatic tone given to a toddler with Bruno’s clothing, but I have a soft spot for the JoJolion Josuke clothing because I love the idea of a two-year old walking around having an existential crisis. Who are you indeed, young one? Will your desire for a shorter nap time bring you true happiness, or are you trading greater health in the future for a meager temporary indulgence? Only time will tell.
It’s the story of Johnny Joestar and his two hats reclaiming the Sacred Corpse in a quest to save his wife.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
And the tragedy that ultimately befell him.
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Also, despite her yet unseen ability to lick her own elbow…
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.
Things are about to get very uncomfortable for her.
And also the audience, because that is not the end image, and the end image gets a touch more racy once you see what happens.
Also of note is Johnny’s American retainers or whoever it is those people at his death are that came to Japan with him have Funny Valentine’s distinct hair curl. There may end up being a connection.
You can check out the whole raw set, posted generously at the JJBA forums, in this Image Barn gallery. You’ll probably be able to grasp the substance of Johnny’s story just from what’s going on even if you can’t read it, so if you’re not ready, please proceed cautiously.
The new ASB commercial in full HD with the explanation of the rules is here now for you to be able to read in English. The video calls itself “2/2,” though I don’t know what the “1/2″ would be, and I can’t find it on the same channel. All the same, you can now hear the rules of ASB League straight from the hosts’ mouths and know what all the characters had to say during their brief intro. I particularly like Johnny’s, being so courteous and grateful to a person he’s going to beat the shit out of, and Hol Horse’s, pontificating on the importance of being cordial to all women equally.
Edit:
Also, this trailer has resulted in maybe my favorite ASB image so far.
Image may be NSFW.
