Several Joestar fans set their alarms to wake up early to the news coming straight out of Anime Japan this past weekend, with the anime franchise promising to reveal new tidbits about the latest adventure with Jolyne Cujoh and her team. on JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean. Unfortunately, some were in for a very rude awakening when new episodes were announced to arrive later this fall, as fans believed deliveries would drop next month and Netflix now has a serious Stand issue on its hands.
While we’re not aware of the behind-the-scenes work that streaming service Netflix or David Production has put into the series, waiting for what is nearly a year for additional episodes after the first twelve has come as a shock to many, especially with the first dozen being released in a batch in December of last year. Waiting this long to return to the series, which most likely won’t end over the course of its next twelve episodes landing in the fall, is looking to disappoint fans at large. What might have cushioned the blow when it comes to Netflix’s role is releasing all the episodes at once or giving in to fan demands when it comes to the reinstatement of what many call “JoJo Fridays.”
There’s something about releasing episodes of a story on a weekly basis that’s capable of grabbing viewers’ attention, which is something that Disney+, Hulu, and Crunchyroll have definitely taken advantage of in the past. wall vision became one of the biggest series of the COVID pandemic era, leaving audiences hanging every week, thanks to its storytelling and biting cliffhangers. For JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the series is what many will call a “monster of the week” show, typically tending to center around a new Stand user who appears in each episode and presents a dilemma for Joestar to overcome. A weekly show allows fans of the series to digest the events that have just occurred, discuss them within a community, and the series grows stronger as a result of that, as viewers can act as a marketing apparatus for said series while adding additional fans to the speech who might want to “get in on the action.” This seems lost with Netflix’s decision to release Stone Ocean in large chunks, especially considering many fans could have watched/eaten the premiere episodes all at once.
If you’re a JoJo fan, you might think that Jolyne having to wear the skin of a rat after a Stand named Goo Goo Dolls shrunk her down to doll size is the craziest thing you’d see in the series, but it’s one of many, LOTS of instances that can feel watered down digesting a dozen episodes in one sitting. Recreating “JoJo Fridays” as an event would only benefit Netflix and would have certainly helped soften the blow when it comes to the long wait period between batches of episodes. The manga model will typically work well when it comes to Shonen stories, for example published weekly or monthly, keeping fans interested and perhaps more importantly keeping the discussion going.
Now, to be fair, not every anime Netflix releases needs to have a “JoJo Fridays” mentality, like the likes of Baki Hanma, Beastars and Castlevania they have worked well launching complete seasons, but therein lies the problem. Stone Ocean doesn’t necessarily have well-defined endpoints for where these batches may come to an end as far as their stories go, and while the final scene certainly hinted at some more Pucci machinations, Jolyne’s story could have used more than one hook. for hinting at his future. The fact that we had a storm of poison dart frogs falling from the sky and nearly killing Jotaro’s daughter was a fantastic final foray, but it’s one that needed more wrapping up for Jolyne’s introduction to the world of anime.
How would you handle Netflix original anime series going forward? Do you want to see the return of JoJo Fridays in the future? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of Joestars.