Old-school fun, here I go! Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures is a left-field choice among the Fall 2012 anime, and shows like these are rarely executed to have a compromise between the preferences of different anime fan generations. You have my word already; Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures is a fun, excellent, and old-school watch. Being a left-field choice, it is definitely unique in all criteria, from production values to the content. You should be an open mind before you get to appreciate this, too.

As far as I know, the friendly neighbourhood bishounen thinks the visuals present in this series are radical. I beg to disagree; radical visuals would mean they couldn’t be classified into a single virtue, save for “radical” itself. In simpler terms, you can’t classify them solely into bishoujo, shoujo, shounen, Western-like, nineties-like, old-school, etc. even if they have some properties of any of the aforementioned classifications. To be more exact; the art here is old-school eighties-style, keeping the spirit well and, perhaps, the best way to mark the twenty-something anniversary of the series. Character designs are truly old-school. The amount of detailing is high, and they’re excellently done. Even from their period, the character designs are still unique from the design queues and design language. I can’t confirm if they work with their purpose on portraying British pre-teens, though. Background and setting art are keep the old-school spirit. Even the CGI effects used emulate, and improve, the visual-styling of the eighties anime. Some onomatopoeia in form of kana characters are flashed in several scenes for an added effect, which was done excellently. Animation is rough and definitely not smooth; but it’s done so to emulate the feel of watching an anime from the eighties. A well-done move out there, David Productions.

Even the audio criteria preserved the old-school feel! Voice acting and background music are very similar to those found in the anime of the seventies, eighties, and nineties. The execution for those aspects are different in this series. Change of BGM is timed exactly according to scene and act, sound effects are in stereo instead of the analogue sound from the old-school anime, so on and so forth. For an added old-school effect, the ending theme song is a rock song and beat performed by the British band Yes.

Totally left-field; the writing and the direction drips with everything seinen. The writing may not be great according to today’s requirements, but it’s done to emulate, or preserve, the old-school feel. The first episode deals with the origins, the history, and life of the Joestars. Jonathan Joestar’s rival, Dio Brando, is also introduced here. The plot present in the first episode may be typical, but the narrative gives it an air of exoticism. Watch this show if you’re interested in the old school experience, with the story, or you like something different from time-to-time.

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