Interview:JoJonium Vol. 8-17 (June 2014)

A series of interviews by Hirohiko Araki included in the JoJonium release of Stardust Crusaders, which were published in ten volumes between June 4, 2014, and May 2, 2014.

Volume 8 (Jotaro Kujo)
The idea of making the main character of Part 3 Japanese was something I had thought of doing around the end of Part 1. I had originally planned JoJo to be a trilogy, and thought it would be appropriate to have the final, fated confrontation take place in present-day Japan, but I didn't want it to be a tournament-style affair, like what was popular in Weekly Shonen Jump at the time. That's when I had the idea of having the characters head for a specific destination, like a road movie, taking inspiration from Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days. Years later, a certain TV comedian took a trip across Eurasia along a similar route. Just like with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (Jojo no Kimyou na Bouken) coming out before Bizarre Stories in This World (Yonimo Kimyou na Monogatari), I'll say that for the record, JoJo did it first (laughs).

Clint Eastwood, who I love and respect as an actor, served as the model for Jotaro. Jotaro's trademark pose where he points his finger actually was inspired by Eastwood pointing his .44 Magnum. Even details such as Jotaro's catchphrase being "good grief" take inspiration from parts that Eastwood played, where he'd have lines like "A bank robbery? You have to be kidding me…" That's why Jotaro seems a bit "rougher" compared to other Jump protagonists. Joseph might be a little easier to get into from a Weekly Shonen Jump perspective, but Jotaro actually fits my image of a hero to a tee.

My image of a hero is that of a loner. As opposed to someone who does the right thing looking for compensation or attention from others, my idea of a hero is someone who is an unappreciated symbol of justice. There are times where taking the correct path leads to loneliness. I also think that heroes shouldn't be in the business of making friends. Jotaro goes on his journey while keeping his feelings bottled up inside because he's a "lone hero." He doesn't celebrate in an over-the-top manner when he defeats an enemy. For him, a throwaway "good grief" is plenty.

Jotaro has become big enough to function as a synonym for JoJo as a whole. I've actually based subsequent JoJos on his visual design and differentiated them from there. My original vision for Jotaro was having him journeying through the desert while wearing his school uniform, and with that, fantastical and bizarre things would happen to him during his day-to-day life. On top of that, it's not your everyday uniform. He's got a chain hooked on to his collar, two belts… I played around with his design quite a bit until I got something that conveyed just the right amount of rebellion. Speaking of teenage rebels, you know how guys used to have chains hanging from their pants, connected to their wallets? I drew Jotaro with his chain on his uniform first (laughs)! Let's add that to the record as well.

Q. What is the meaning of Star Platinum's pose?

A. It represents the starting point for Part 3--the work of Mitsuteru Yokoyama. The concept of wearing one's school uniform in the desert has its roots in Yokoyama Sensei's Babel II. If were to draw Part 3 all over again, I would have used Yokoyama Sensei's Tetsujin 28-go as inspiration for the Stands, representing a return to the basics.

Volume 9 (Joseph Joestar)
It wasn't limited to Joseph, but I had a lot of feedback from readers that they wanted older characters to reappear in the series. Personally, I'm not particularly a fan of bringing characters back solely to play on nostalgia. There has to be a real reason for them to reappear. As far as Joseph is concerned, as long as he's alive and able, he would go after a fated foe in order to save his daughter. There was a clear motive to bring him back. Plus, JoJo is a story about the Joestar bloodline, so it made sense to bring back a previous JoJo for Part 3. I didn't hesitate in this instance.

This was fifty years after the battle with the Pillar Men. I had considered having him drop out partway through due to his age, but I figured I'd play it by ear as the serialization chugged along. The first role I gave to Joseph was that of the "navigator." After all, who better than to have a previous JoJo introduce us to the Joestar family, DIO, the Ripple, and Stands, leading us from the Ripple Arc (Parts 1 and 2) into Part 3? However, he is a previous JoJo, so I took care to make him not look like a protagonist. I wanted to make it clear that Jotaro was the main character of Part 3, and I couldn't let the readers get confused either. Thankfully, this part takes place fifty years after the events of Part 2, so I was able to make some drastic changes to his appearance without it feeling out of place (laughs).

Joseph's Stand, Hermit Purple, is more of a supporting ability, allowing visual and aural psychic projection. Even though he was a former protagonist, I didn't give him your typical offensive ability for the reasons I mentioned earlier--I wanted to make his ability fitting for his role as "navigator." A guide needs "lines" that connect him across the world so he can receive information. I was inspired by telephone lines or network cables. If he connects to a camera, it outputs a photograph; if he connects to a TV, it outputs video--the vines from his Stand represent that physical "line" or cable connecting them. Additionally, the form of the vines also has to do with Joseph being a Ripple user.

One of the things I wanted to do from the beginning of JoJo was visually express supernatural abilities. The Stand is a succession of the Ripple, and both are rooted in the same concept, so with Joseph reappearing in Part 3, I wondered how to visualize the Ripple in terms of a Stand. The Ripple is life energy which spreads across the body through breathing methods. The vines are meant to be an explicit visual expression of that--literally wrapping themselves around his body. If Jotaro and the rest of the Stand-using crew went back in time fifty years prior, maybe you could have seen a younger Joseph using Hermit Purple.

Q. Why is Hermit Purple purple?

A. Purple is a classy color. It's easy to make work with older characters. I decided on this after taking into account the Joestars and their associated colors. I figured that purple would work better with Joseph in his sixties as opposed to someone younger (laughs).

Volume 10 (Hol Horse)
Part 3 was structured to be like a road movie, a la Mito Komon. That is, I would have the Joestar party, with Jotaro at the helm, head off on a journey, where along the way at various places, I would pit them against Stand users with differing abilities. Each of these Stand users he would fight would be unique, but I had to consider who I would have appear and in what way would flow. The series was meant to be long running, so I took great care in formulating the of events so as not to lose the reader's interest. This is the case with Hol Horse as well. I designed his predecessors, Strength, Ebony Devil and Yellow Temperance, so that their appearances and abilities didn't overlap. I did the same with planning the fights--whether they'd be one-on-one or team battles. There were a lot of one-on-one battles leading up to this portion, so I thought I'd introduce a team of two Stand users at that point. That's why I had Hol Horse and J. Geil show up--because I was following the guidelines I had set for myself. If I had decided to introduce him at some other point, he might have been a lone-wolf gunslinger who was a little shorter.

I had planned from the beginning to have Kakyoin and Polnareff switch allegiances away from DIO to join the group, but I didn't plan this for Hol Horse. However, I don't think it would have been such a bad idea to have him join the group. Maybe I didn't because I love Westerns and it would have felt like a shame to remove the iconic “outlaw gunman” from the group somewhere along the way. I also liked his “why be number one when you can be number two” philosophy on life, which also carried on to Yoshikage Kira in Part 4. I drew him on a color title page like he was part of the crew, and I had him show up multiple times after his first appearance. However, my conclusion was that he would throw off the balance of the group if he were to join. As far as his character is concerned, both his looks and his personality overlap somewhat with Polnareff, and I felt that it would be difficult to work in his Emperor Stand as an ally.

The Emperor's motif is a gun, and I didn't add very many limitations based on how many could shoot or his firing distance. Unlike Mista from Part 5, who was only limited to six shots, Emperor is a Stand, including the gun itself... I figured as long as the user himself doesn't get tired, he could shoot as many bullets as he wanted, and as I kept going with it, it kind of got out of control. Also, the whole aiming and shooting at an enemy part overlaps with Kakyoin's Emerald Splash. In the end, I made the decision based on his character and ability to have him remain as an enemy. Additionally, I didn't have any more humans join the group after that. We had the cute little dog Iggy instead to assist the Joestar party. From a balance perspective, I was totally fine with that (laughs).

Q. Hol Horse looks a lot like Gyro from Steel Ball Run!

A. They're connected in that they're both tough outlaws. They both have that "spaghetti western" feel to them. Crank that aspect up a little bit more and that's my image of Gyro. At the time this was serialized, I might have also been inspired by another gun slinging outlaw, Buichi Terasawa's Cobra.

Volume 11 (Enya the Hag)
Enya the Hag as a character was born as an answer to the question of who taught DIO about the existence of Stands. I had some of the Stands named after tarot cards, and I also had a vague idea to make a witch-like fortuneteller. I also wanted a scary old woman to be an enemy. After all, I consider horror films to be my teachers and textbooks, and you can't have a horror film without a scary old lady! JoJo has had a strong connection to horror films ever since vampires appeared in Part 1, especially when you look at the enemies. As far as Enya the Hag is concerned, I think I managed to include all the usual tropes you see with scary old ladies in horror films. She hides in waiting for the main characters to show up, she's got a hidden knife, she's ancient, but when it comes down to it, she can be insanely fast (laughs). It's pretty horrifying to run away as fast as you can, but as soon as you turn around, a scary old woman is right there waiting for you!

The same goes for her Stand, Justice. There are several horror films that deal with some sort of unknown virus coming down from space and putting humanity in danger. That was the inspiration for why I had her Stand "infect" the town, and why I had it in the form of "fog." This is a bit off-topic, but I consider Frankenstein's monster, werewolves, and mummies to be the three greatest designs in the world of horror. I think it's absolutely fantastic to imagine how you can start to unwrap one part of a mummy's bandages and it'll just keep going and going. I drew her son J. Geil's Stand, "Hanged Man," based on a mummy, but I worked the essence of a merman into him as well. Both mother and child are truly denizens of the world of horror, through and through.

Looking back on it now, Enya is chock-full of all of my favorite aspects of horror, so I had a fantastic time drawing her, even during the original serialization. I'm still not sure whether she was an appropriate enemy for a shonen manga, though. It's pretty "adventurous" to have an old woman as an antagonist for the main character to face off with, after all. The ratings didn't necessarily go up during that time either (laughs). No matter how much I may like her personally, there's no mistaking that the ability to convey her strength and horror as a character despite the fact that she's an old woman is something unique to JoJo due to the existence of Stand battles. I talked about this in Volume 2 of JoJo Part 2 when I was discussing Lisa Lisa, but when Part 2 was being serialized, I realized that if you worked in supernatural elements the outward physical strength of women and children would no longer matter. Stands use the concept of the Ripple and take it to the next level of visual representation. Despite being "just an old woman," she can use her Stand to disguise an entire town. Both Enya's looks and the concept of her Stand had a strong impact on readers. One last thing--I think having the mental strength to be able to control an entire town's worth of corpses would match up pretty closely with that which would be needed to stop time.

Q. Why is an enemy Stand called "Justice"?

A. I like that it makes you ponder what "justice" really is. "Justice" is a subjective thing, after all. Enya is on the cover for this volume, so I put a lot of detail into this drawing, including the wrinkles on her face. Her eyes look a bit more friendly than usual, but well...she is this volume's "cover girl" (laughs).

Volume 12 (Noriaki Kakyoin)
In my mind, I grouped together the fivesome that is Kakyoin, Jotaro, Joseph, Avdol and Polnareff as the "Joestar party." From the beginning, I wanted to balance the party to where their features, personalities, dress and Stands were all unique and didn't overlap. I wanted their silhouettes to be easily distinguishable when they were standing in the desert, but my editor at the time told me that because none of them have round heads, they all sort of look the same as silhouettes (wry laugh). I considered Kakyoin to be the prim, proper and sensitive one in the group.

Kakyoin is the Japanese main character in Part 3 other than Jotaro, but I didn't really think about his nationality much. His name is much more interesting. I always come up with first and last names together. I took his last name, "Kakyoin," from an area in Sendai, where I'm from. Whenever I went to Sendai Station, I would always pass through there, so it was a very familiar name to me. I gave him the following kanji for his last name: 典明. Kanji can be read in different ways, and while canonically this is read as Noriaki, I had always read it as Tenmei. You can see this in the hotel log where he signs his name (see the last volume). I spent a lot of time considering the sound and the balance of the kanji characters for the main character, Jotaro Kujo, but my editor had a "Noriaki" join the Joestar party instead (wry laugh). I was pretty shocked when I first saw that in the graphic novel release, but I justified it as that maybe his parents named him "Tenmei," but his friends called him by a different reading of the same kanji, "Noriaki"--a relatively common thing to happen with kids.

I didn't really pay much mind to the fact that he was of Japanese nationality, but I did have him act as a foil to Jotaro. I had him be Jotaro's first real opponent in a Stand vs. Stand battle so that I could visually convey the concepts for both short-range and long-range Stand abilities to the reader. I thought making Kakyoin's Hierophant Green able to stretch itself out like a rope as a long-range type would contrast nicely with Star Platinum, making it easy to understand how they differ in action. I had lots of ideas for long-range attacks, but I wanted to keep things from getting too far out of control by having Stands need to "stand" near where the action was happening.

I didn't get too many chances to actually show this, but Kakyoin goes to the same high school as Jotaro. While they're not super close on their journey, they do have a nice friendship, and I wonder what might have happened had they not had Stands in common. They might not have become friends (laughs). I have a feeling that Kakyoin would have been better friends with Josuke from Part 4.

Q. Did you ever consider making him wear something other than a gakuran (Japanese school uniform) to distinguish him from the main character?

A. Kakyoin's well-tailored gakuran gives him the feel of being an honor student. Meanwhile, Jotaro's loose-fitting gakuran fits with him being a delinquent. You can distinguish characters like that even though they might be wearing the same outfit. I think the accessories I gave Jotaro helped distinguish him as well.

Volume 13 (Muhammad Avdol)
Muhammad Avdol...If I had to nail down what role I was giving him as a member of the Joestar party, he would be the "subleader." Not only does he function as the navigator brought in by Joseph, the second JoJo, but given his steadfast determination--which is able to bring such a unique group together--and his unyielding sense of duty, I wanted him to be that member of the group who everyone could rely on. Within the story, he is also able to back up Joseph's story about DIO's revival when he tells it to Jotaro. I wanted to give him some sort of connection to Egypt, where DIO was in hiding, so I gave him his "ethnic" design. When Part 3 was originally being serialized, I, as well as the readership at large, had a strong interest in areas you could label the "birthplaces of civilization," so you could say that Avdol's design was a product of the times.

I put him out of commission for a while when the party was in India. I did that because I never want readers to get bored or complacent with the events taking place, so I wanted to inject a little reality in there with having someone get sacrificed every once in a while. I also was enamored with writing chapters where an ally is lost. But in the end, as you know, I wasn't planning on keeping him gone for long... The thing is, I thought it was kind of lame to have someone who died just come back to life immediately, so I wanted to come up with a good reason, as well as an appropriate setting to reintroduce him. When I'm working on JoJo, I try not to sweat the small things. In the end, I brought him back just before the party got to Egypt, but at the time, I didn't have any specific plans as to when I would bring him back. I just wrote what felt natural to me at the time.

Looking back on it now, I probably should have given Avdol a section where he played more of a primary role in the story, especially given the fact that I took him out of commission for a while. Of course, this is all in hindsight after having finished the story. At the time Part 3 was in serialization, it might have been quite an "adventure" to have the story focus on Avdol (laughs wryly). If we had a character popularity poll at the time, I doubt he would have ranked at the top. All the readership wanted was more battles featuring Jotaro. On top of that, his Stand, Magician's Red, was difficult to draw. The ability to control fire is a pretty common thing in manga, as well as movies, but in the end, they just burn things up and that's about it. If you play it too loose, as an ability, it can break the balance. After writing JoJo, I think "fire" and "poison" are two abilities that I'm okay with putting behind lock and key.

If I were to write a portion of the story centering on Avdol, I think it would have been an origin story featuring his family--in particular, his relationship with his father. It might end up being a bit too mature of a story for Weekly Shonen Jump (laughs).

Q. Did Avdol get younger?!

A. He's actually supposed to be in his late twenties. He's younger than you might expect! He may look as if he's older than that, but if you ask someone who's been in the army their age, it always surprises you how young they are, right? Experience gives men a mature look.

Volume 14 (Daniel J. D'Arby)
Given the evolution from the Ripple to Stands that came with JoJo entering Part 3, I wanted to include some battles that didn't just boil down to fistfights. I mentioned this in the Hol Horse retrospective, but I wanted to keep the face-offs between the Joestar party and DIO's minions fresh by switching back and forth between one-on-one battles and team battles, and as part of that, I needed to add some variance to the Stand abilities themselves as well. I actually did a "gambling battle" in Cool Shock B.T., but I wanted to try doing it again differently as a Stand battle. D'Arby came from my desire to do that.

I think of gambling as something where you bet your own soul and pride as part of the process. To me, the money and chips you actually use at a real casino are just a representation of your soul. So it felt natural to have D'Arby take the souls from his opponents once they lost. Well, the fact that I can depict it the way I did is all thanks to the concept of Stands (laughs). As far as gambling is concerned, you can only win or lose--there is no in-between. With D'Arby as the sole challenger, I wanted to give him the mental fortitude and strategic cunning to give Jotaro a run for his money, as well as be able to instill some fear.

I had D'Arby face off with the Joestar party in a few different ways. I like coming up with ideas for gambling because you can turn almost anything into a bet. Bets involving animals are particularly interesting to me. It's hard to predict what they're going to do, so it works as a bet. I like situations where it doesn't seem possible to cheat, but maybe they actually are somehow. It's also important for the bet to feel like it fits JoJo. Poker is pretty mainstream, so I assume many of you have played it before, but the key point to winning at it is perfecting the "bluff." It's less of a surefire way to win the battle, and more of a battle of wits between you and your opponent, testing just how much you can fool them along with just how gutsy you are, so I think it was appropriate for the final face-off between Jotaro and D'Arby. I really enjoyed drawing the D'Arby battle, so I introduced his younger brother, Telence, before the final showdown with DIO. I didn't want to give readers yet another poker match, so that time I had them play video games instead. Video games have all kinds of genres, like baseball or racing, so I had plenty of ideas to play around with, just like with the gambling theme.

Looking back on it now, I think introducing the D'Arby brothers and the Oingo Boingo brothers in Part 3 separated JoJo from other manga, because it allowed me to add just that much more variation to the battles. Jotaro and D'Arby's gambling battle led to Josuke and Rohan's dice battle in Part 4, and in JoJolion, which is being serialized right now, Josuke and Jobin's beetle fight. Battles in JoJo can be both fistfights and battles of wits. I think the D'Arby battle might have been the starting point for that.

Q. Who got turned into soul chips?!

A. Polnareff, Joseph, Kakyoin and Avdol. Only drawing two didn't seem like enough, and it wouldn't make sense to draw characters who didn't have anything to do with that part of the story, so I added Kakyoin and Avdol here as a special bonus. Looking at these, you can easily imagine a story where Jotaro saves them all.

Volume 15 (Iggy)
I never want to put restrictions on what I can draw in JoJo. Whether we're talking about something biological or having to do with physics, I like to take all kinds of things and depict them on the page. That's why I have animals show up in the story, as well as join the Joestar party. While I was working on Part 3, I wanted to add in an animal as a pet. Thus, I chose a dog to accompany them on the journey. To me, dogs symbolize loyalty and friendship. All you cat lovers out there might be wondering why I didn't pick a cat, but I feel like a cat would betray them somewhere along the line (laughs wryly). They may be a playmate for you, but they're not your friend. I always end up putting cats on the enemy side, like with how the elder D'Arby used them to cheat which might say something about how I view them.

Unlike with Polnareff and Kakyoin, I didn't originally plan for Iggy to join the Joestar party. I also didn't initially assign him a Stand and tarot card. I feel like The Fool is a perfect fit for Iggy, but at the time, it was the last card I had left to assign besides The World. Furthermore, I was considering having The Fool belong to an enemy instead. Things just kind of ended up working out the way they did, but given how much I love the design for The Fool, it's kind of crazy that it ended up being the last one left for me to assign.

When I design Stands, I often take inspiration from artifacts such as clothing, masks, and dolls from indigenous peoples. Once I fuse that aspect with something biological or mechanical, it makes a really unique design. Originally, I imagined Stands as being something inorganic powered by life force, so it makes sense that a lot of their designs are fusions between living beings and machines. The Fool's design starts out with a dog, and then adds on a Native American mask and the tires of a car. I think The Fool really represents my ideal design for a Stand.

I really enjoy looking at animal encyclopedias and reference books, but Iggy was actually the first animal I'd put into a main role in a manga. It was the first time I'd ever made one battle as well, so I used Yoshihiro Takahashi Sensei's Ginga: Nagareboshi Gin as a reference. The more I drew Iggy, the more I found myself becoming a dog lover. I actually thought about getting a Boston terrier, the breed that Iggy is, but I gave up on it, since given my job, it would be hard to take care of a dog. But if I were to ever get one, I think I'd really enjoy playing Frisbee with it. I guess I wouldn't get a Chihuahua or a toy poodle then, since they don't seem like they'd enjoy playing with me that (laughs).

Q. Tires make up the lower half of The Fool. What inspired that?

A. Formula One race cars. Shonen Jump was actually sponsoring a formula One team back when this was being serialized. I'd see them in the magazine a lot. It's not as if The Fool is a super speedy Stand, but it was relevant at the time, so I worked it in.

Volume 17 (DIO)
DIO—the archenemy of the Joestar family. Given that I was bringing back a character who had been at the bottom of the sea for a century, naturally he would have changed during the time he was down there—his malice ever growing. I wanted to make DIO feel like a final boss, and given that readers were really looking forward to his reintroduction, in order not to let them down, I not only put a lot of thought into his appearance, but his mind-set and thought process as well—in particular, how DIO would view his relationship to the Joestar family and the destiny they shared as an evolution from what it was in Part 1.

What is the destiny that DIO has to face? It's not to face off with Jotaro, the descendant of Jonathan. It's something invisible to the eye that lies behind their bloodline. It's what gives the Joestars their allies, the Ripple, Stands, and their uncanny luck... that's what I define as the Joestars' "destiny," and instead, what DIO is destined to do is to quash that and surpass it. As such, he doesn't view Jotaro himself as his archenemy—rather, DIO only views him as an obstacle to overcome in order to fulfill his destiny after his hundred-year slumber. In the end, DIO wasn't able to achieve his goal, but it's fun to imagine what things would have been like if he had been able to defeat Jotaro. I'm sure he would have beaten down anyone who he thought had the potential to challenge his position at the top of the food chain. Even after defeating Jotaro, perhaps someone else would inherit his will. After all, DIO had already experienced that once before. However, DIO is more of the reactionary type, so he probably would have continued to take root in Egypt and wait for his prey to come to him.

I had been working with DIO's character since Part 1, so I would often try and put myself in his shoes and imagine myself as a vampire. Those who put on the stone mask have to take the lives of others in order to keep on living. During the part where DIO is chasing after Joseph and Kakyoin, I wrote a scene where he takes a moment to marvel at the sight of cars. One would have to be an immortal vampire to experience something like that, so I actually found myself feeling a bit envious of him. If you slept long enough, for example, you could see a country instantly change from a monarchy into a democratic society—experiences that the average person could never have. As long as you had humans to feed on and you remained in good health, I think it would be pretty fun. Do vampires even get sick to begin with? (laughs)''

Speaking of DIO, I'll never forget how my editor suddenly ended up in the hospital right when DIO and Jotaro were in the midst of their final battle. I remember panicking because Part 3 was rapidly approaching its end, and it's not like I could stop and wait for him! He would always give me really good specific feedback on things like Stand designs. "This one is too similar to something you've already done, so try and differentiate their silhouettes a bit more." It was tough working without him. What's that? Did he give feedback on the design for DIO's The World? Hmm... I'm not sure about that one (laughs wryly).

Q. You already drew DIO naked for Part 1. Why did you do it again?

A. It makes him seem more like a Greek or Roman god. In Parts 1 through 3, besides DIO, there are other examples of me drawing characters like this, such as the Pillar Men. However I stopped doing it as much after I changed the setting to be a bit closer to home for Part 4 onward.