The adventure is gna get sooooooo bizarre in here

Spoilers for the entire thing

also Purple Haze Feedback and maybe Jorge Joestar once I finish that one

not addressing the Rohan spinoffs bc I don't like them (except the Louvre one)

"Chumimi" - Tusk

Thoughts on how Araki writes women

In parts 1-3 Araki basically doesn’t write women. None of the characters in parts 1 and 2 are particularly complex, but I think that the quality and importance of a character in a manga like JoJo’s doesn’t just have to do with their emotional complexity, but on their combat involvement. A lot of the emotional development and almost all of the plot in the series comes through combat. It’s a battle shonen. If a character is not a combatant (or an active ally, like Hayato) they tend to not be that important to the storyline. Erina and Suzi Q are nice, but they are not ever involved in combat and being the focus of lifeless, tertiary romance plotlines does not make up for it. Lisa Lisa is aesthetically cooler than both of them and has a more real role in the story as the mentor, but she spends more time being the stakes in combat than being an actual combatant.

What I mean when I say a character “is stakes” is that they are present for a fight but they don’t actually do any fighting; they’re there to make the fight more tense. Lisa Lisa spends like three seconds fighting Kaars, and then she is stakes: Joseph doesn’t just have to fight Kaars, he has to save Lisa Lisa. Suzi Q is never involved in a fight except when she gets possessed by Esidisi, which makes the fight more difficult and adds the tension of trying to kill Esidisi without hurting Suzi; she's stakes.

Part 3 is the most misogynist part in the whole series; there’s not even a sidelined love interest. All we get is Anne! And what the fuck is her deal! She is the true definition of stakes because there is literally no point to her presence except to have someone in danger nearby while they’re fighting someone. There’s a handful of female minor villains that are far outnumbered by their male counterparts. We’ve got Holy who is the onlyJoestar to somehow not handle having a stand and is the stakes for the whole part, yay. I do really like Enya, though.

Also as a side note I’m genuinely not even gonna address the objectification of women in the series. It is so par for the course in the genre, and the series is so focused on the male form that the sexualization of women feels half-hearted in comparison.

Part 4 really starts to pick up in terms of pure numbers and in quality of the characters, although we still don’t really have ally combatants who are women. Part 4 and Part 8 have the most female characters of any part, I think the ability to write women who aren’t like. Professional adventurers or whatever the fuck opens up the possibilities for him. He for some reason struggles to write women in really action-heavy settings, but he can write mothers and girlfriends and neighbours. That’s a bit of a bummer, but he does indeed excel at writing those women. One of my favourite things about how he often writes women is that he starts with their worst traits and then over time makes them likable. I think sometimes writers try to write Strong Women by starting with their best qualities, and they end up with a character who feels shallow and not real. Araki is very comfortable making his women characters annoying, rude, cruel, etc. While I would say a handful of the women characters in Part 4 are kind of misogynist stereotypes (Yukako and Shinobu), he writes them with enough empathy that they end up feeling like real people. This is potentially the worst point I am trying to make here so I hope that makes sense and isn’t totally stupid.

Part 5 has one whole woman BUT she is the first real girl ALLY COMBATANT!!!!!! (Yukako doesn’t count because the only episode in which she is involved in a fight she is a minor villain and I’m ignoring Lisa Lisa for reasons stated above) I love Trish, Trish is great, she has her own fight, she’s there for the finale, she’s a part of the gang, she’s annoying, she’s cool she slays.

Part 6 is like the only part where there’s a substantial number of women characters who are actually combatants and who aren’t, like somebody’s sister or something, ie. how the male dominated parts function; the minor villains are just some random dude they don’t have to be from the PTA. I wish he would do this more because he knocks it out of the park, the 3 main characters are all rad and the minor villains are cool.

Part 7 has a depressing lack of girls and like I like Lucy and Hot Pants but :| WHAT HAPPENED DUDE did he have to recover from writing so many women in Part 6. Why did he have to write the lesbian rapist. What’s happening here.

Part 8 is like Part 4 but with cooler and better girls. First time a dude JoJo gets a girl JoBro! And she’s rad! Same sort of thing where the women are sisters, neighbours, moms, etc., but way more of the women in Part 8 have stands and are involved in combat in some way, as either villains or allies. Like three whole women are involved in the finale if I remember correctly (Yasuho, Kei and Mitsuba right). This is also, in my opinion, the first believable straight romance in the series. Now that he is capable of writing women who are people and who are important to the story, he is also capable of writing a man and woman who have actual real chemistry.

No substantial thoughts on Part 9 yet, it’s too early.

I don’t know if Dragona counts as a girl but that’s my favourite thing about him (?). There are obviously a lot of issues in how Lucy is written however I like her and think she is cool. Malena is the name of the woman who helps baby Polnareff. Maako is the woman from Part 8 who dates the surfer with no fingers and gets involved in the later parts of the story. I know Etroe (the woman whose corpse F.F. is possessing) is wildly unimportant but I think she's funny. F.F. is arguably not a woman but I'm putting her here anyway.