My Rating: 3 stars
I’ve never been a huge manga reader, but my nephew enjoys it, so I
decided to check out some of the series he’s been into lately. One of those series is JoJo’s Bizarre
Adventure, which was originally published in Japan as part of the Shonen
Jump magazine series from 1987 through the early 2000s. There are 8 parts to the series (which
apparently continues to be an ongoing series still popular in Japan), though
only the first 4 parts have been released in English here in the United States.
The story revolves around members of the
Joestar family, each of whom possesses some type of supernatural ability in the
form of a “Stand” that they use to battle a variety of enemies, leading up to
defeat of a main villain at the end of each part.
When I was browsing Edelweiss earlier this month, I noticed that
part 4 -- which is being released in February 2020 by Viz Media (the manga
series’ English-language distributor in North America) -- was already available
for request, so I figured this would be a good chance to both check out the
series and have some quality reading time with my nephew. Of course, my nephew was excited at the
opportunity to finally read the manga version, even though he already knew the
entire story due to watching all the video adaptations of the manga that have
apparently been out for quite some time already. This knowledge would actually come in handy,
as we soon discovered that the version being published was chapters 57 to 75 of
part 4, which is only around 20 chapters out of a total 174 chapters that part
4 is comprised of – so basically, we started reading this somewhere in the
middle of one part of the series (volume 4 of part 4 to be exact). Without any prior context or knowledge of the
series, it probably was not a good idea to start smack dab in the middle like
we did, as I ended up completely lost for the first 10 chapters or so – it got
a little better halfway through, but much of that was because my nephew explained
the story to me as we read and also gave me the background context to each of
the characters (when I said earlier that he knew the entire story, I definitely
wasn’t exaggerating, lol).
We did end up getting through the entire volume and my nephew loved
it of course, but I wasn’t as keen on it, mostly because this is the type of manga
series where the story continues on from one volume to the next, so unless you start
at the very beginning (or you’re already familiar with the story like my nephew
was), it’s really hard not to muddle through.
I also thought it was way too long -- nearly 400 pages! – though to be
fair, as mentioned earlier, I don’t read a lot of manga, so perhaps that is
normal length nowadays. I’m also not a
fan of the genre (supernatural fantasy), which I’m pretty sure is the main
reason why I found it so difficult to follow the story. In any case -- with all that said, I decided
to rate this 3 stars, as the issue was with me rather than the book itself,
plus my nephew did enjoy it even if I didn’t, so I figured this is the fairest
way to go. As for future volumes, I
haven’t decided whether I will request the next one when it comes out – it depends
on whether my nephew will still be into the series or not by that time, since his
interests change constantly from one month to the next. If he’s still into it, then definitely, I
will continue to request and read future volumes with him, though I will be
sure to read up on the backstory and the characters first so the experience can
be less arduous the next time around!
Received ARC from Viz Media via Edelweiss.
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