Hirohiko Araki

Hirohiko Araki (荒木飛呂彦, Araki Hirohiko) is a mangaka and author of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, on which this wikia project is based.

Biography

Hirohiko Araki was born on June 7 1960 in Sendai, Japan. Araki left school before graduation from Miyagi University of Education.

Araki is best known for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, published in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1987 to 2002, before the series transferred to the seinen magazine Ultra Jump in 2004.

Araki's Buso Poker was a "Selected Work" at the Tezuka Award in 1980.^[1]

In 2012, Araki celebrates his 30th year as a manga artist and the 25th anniversary of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure

The course of the story in JoJo takes the protagonists and the reader through numerous countries and the experience of many cultures. Through various means and at various degrees of factual accuracy and fictionalisation the history and cultures of Britain, the U.S., the Middle East, Japan and Italy in particular are explored and annotated. Many instances of names, styles, concepts or segments of stories originating or expressed in music, film, fashion, television and other comics and manga are readily identifiable in the story and expression of the manga (occasionally Araki makes specific mention of productions in interviews or in the blurbs of JoJo tankōbon). JoJo also spans a range of genres including or as a provisional description: Science Fiction, Paranormal & the Supernatural, Mystery & Thriller, and Action. Recurrent themes include Class; Ethics and Morality; Crime and Punishment; Health, Psychology and Memory; Fortune, Religion and Redemption; physical concepts such as Gravity, Time and Energy and their utilisation; and Family, Evolution and Lineage.

The character Rohan Kishibe may be considered a vehicle for the most autobiographical, opinionated or self-conscious elements of JoJo, while the fictional town of Morioh as visited in Part IV: Diamond is Unbreakable and the ongoing Part VIII: Jojolion may represent Araki's favorite aspects of his hometown of Sendai or Japanese culture, especially in a modern and/or contemporary sense.

Style and Influences

Araki has named Paul Gauguin and his approach and contribution to color theory as key influences.

A consistent element of Araki's drawing and layout is a highly dynamic treatment of the picture plane. In terms of cartooning, a comparison may be drawn between Parts I, II and III and Tetsuo Hara's physiological ideals as exhibited in Hokuto no Ken (Fist of the North Star), itself described by Hara and writer Buronson as emblematic of 1980s popular culture. Part IV exhibits a transition to a more androgynous description of human characters, while Parts V and VI are explicitly comparable to haute couture.

In Part VII: Steel Ball Run, illustrations of the protagonists are powerfully reminiscent of the photographic conventions of fashion magazines and certain celebrity personalities of the 2000s. The layout and depth of field is distinctly cinematic and may be compared to the story's namesake The Cannonball Run (dir. Hal Needman; 1981) and spaghetti western.

Publication

Many of Araki's creations, including JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, have been translated and released in Europe, but so far only JoJo and Baoh have been released in the U.S.; one theory being that Araki's frequent references to Western music, film, and others violate either U.S. or other copyright laws. Publications by Viz Media avoid this problem by replacing certain references within the copy of the manga with thematically comparable alternatives.