Plot Summary of Part 2

My Personal Thoughts on Part 2 Overall

Part 2 remains a personal favorite throughout my time with Jojo's, and that kind of comes as a shock to me. Over time, my love for it has been overtaken by my love for other parts, but this does not mean it is any less loved.

While still similarly a story about the consequences of Dio's actions, Battle Tendency feels so seperate from it, to me. This might just be that the Pillarmen are so literally stronger than Dio that it's hard to fathom them as a consequence, especially since they were predicted to wake up. It feels more like Dio is a consequence of them.

Regardless, I really enjoy Part 2. Aspects of it still have me crying like a little baby, even almost a whole year later. I think of Caesar and I feel physically ill. I think of the Pillarmen and feel ill. I think of anything and feel ill. Good time.

The villains of Part 2, the Pillarmen, remain my favorite aspect of the story. They are my favorite villains within Jojo's overall. I really love them as a different "take" on vampires, and have a LOT of thoughts surrounding them, which can be read later on in this page. Yay vampires!

My praise of Part 2 is not without criticisms. The choice of choosing to write a story that takes place during WWII is always tricky, and I don't think Part 2 clears the bar.

First, of course, there's Stroheim. He perturbs me for a variety of reasons, most notably being the fact that he is someone Joseph teams up with. His respect for Stroheim notwithstanding, the fact Stroheim is as such treated as a protagonist pisses me off. Don't even get me started on how the fandom absolutely rides his dick for being "funny". The other thing that bothers me about Stroheim is that I can't help but think of all of the experimental technology that later come to make up Stroheim's body, and I feel ill. The kind of people that would have had that sort of experimental tech 'trial run' on them would have been the same people put in camps. I hate it.

Of course, there's also the problem of Caesar, He is, for all intents and purposes, at least a Nazi sympathizer, and this is like... really hard for me to wrap my head around. Being friends with German Nazi's as an Italian in WWII, when Italy can largely be credited for "inventing" fascism is an unsurprising and yet still bad look. I don't really think that it was intended by Araki to make Caesar appear as a Nazi sympathizer, so I try not to read into this angle too much, but it nonetheless sits in the back of my mind.

This, ultimately, becomes my main gripe with Part 2, and is why I can't confidently refer to Part 2 as my favorite. It's impossible for me to ignore the Nazis being treated like protagonists throughout the story.

My Thoughts on the Manga

My Thoughts on the Anime

Themes of Part 2

Pillarmen as an adaptation of vampires

Joseph Joestar