Research JOJO
This page is where I will be placing research that I find for JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Steel Ball Run.
This will either appear in the form of paragraphs or small simplified notes that I may use to reference within my project video, as well as use to construct questions for my interview.
I may add a few videos to my research if they are relevant to what I'm researching.
More about this on my Idea page:
2nd Year Rationale JoJo FMP
I wrote a 500+ word rationale about what type of FMP project I am aiming to create for my last project whilst looking back over the past few years and explaining why the work I have been doing for the past few years have helped me to this point, as well as it's benefits to help with my FMP.
I then went to further explain the concept of my documentary project and how I plan to achieve this and finishing the rationale with an overall evaluation of how I plan to do this and what I'll be doing to keep up with the work load.
Pitch Presentation
Before I could start my FMP I had to do a PowerPoint presentation to showcase my idea for the FMP.
I quickly created my pitch presentation and showcased it to my tutor to get the green-light to start working on my project.
Below is my presentation split into two parts.
After showing my idea, I got the go ahead to start on my FMP idea.
I am glad that my idea was approved and I can now begin my pre-production and research on the topic.
Auteur Theory: Hirohiko Araki
For this I did a Auteur Theory paper on the author himself Hirohiko Araki as his work did inspire me to create a documentary video on it for my FMP, mainly due to his unique art style and action scenes within his stories as well as the parts plot that I found rather intriguing.
Survey
I did a survey, relating to my documentary project to see what overs within and outside of my class would think of my project idea.
My survey will be covering that of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, with the questions being quite basic to just to see what peoples thoughts of the series are.
I made ten very basic questions which are just to see peoples knowledge and interest of the subject, whilst asking for their overall opinions of the series as well.
Out of the 15 people that have gone and done my survey, only five of them have read/ watched anime and manga, though surprisingly nearly half of the overall participants have heard of JoJo.
I asked if people have read/ watched JoJo before, or if not, if they could find it possibly interesting and I got quite a few good responses, with one surveyee stating "Maybe, I watch anime and have some Dragon Ball and Naruto manga. Could interest me." and another surveyee stating "I like the ideas it presents but have never actually watched it due to the art style" which I do understand as the earlier parts of JoJo's are a bit dated compared to more modern manga/ anime series in terms of art style, it's style is something that takes time to grow on you. I do have more surveyees that answered, but the majority of them are either blanks, N/As, Emoji's, with a one stating "I do not find this content entertaining." without explaining why.
For the next question I showcased a clip of some poses from JoJo that are inspired by music artists, Fashion magazines, statues, historical drawings and asked the surveyees what they thought of the authors use of these poses.
Research on other Interview/ Documentary videos
For my research on my project, I need to find three similar videos that are either interview or documentary styled videos, break down what I like about them and what techniques they use and find a way that I could incorporate that in my own video.
First Video: Gigguk - I Met the Legendary Author of Vinland Saga
Analysis: There is a lot of use of the multiple camera angles as well as using footage of the Anime to either show examples of what the author wishes to show in his work as well as have them play in the background as the author speaks, there is also some narration within the video within the beginning to easily start up the video as well as some their own captured footage of some viking gear and some volumes of the Manga by using some truck and boom/jib panning. there are more points of narration throughout the video that are used to voice the interviewers thoughts on the topic as well as serving as a question to the author as well. throughout the video there are points where some music is used within the background, not constantly but only when needed to, which would be a good technique to replicate for mine.
This video has a lot of techniques and styles to editing that I may wish to use within my very own interview/ Documentary video.
Second video: Gigguk - This video is about JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Analysis: This video goes over many things about the JoJo's series as a whole, with it going over how the series gained popularity from both in japan and in the west, how much influence pop culture had on JoJo and other inspirations like abilities and characters being named after bands, characters personalities being influenced by other popular characters or stars, for example in part 3 the main character of the part Jotaro had some heavy influences from movie star Clint Eastwood in both terms of poses and how the character acts. (Also found an image with JoJo's author Hirohiko Araki taking photos with Clint Eastwood as well with an extract from one of his interviews talking about Jotaro)
Analysis CONT: The video uses a lot of scenes and screenshots from all forms of media that JoJo has been adapted into, with them being the original Manga, the OVA of part three, the animated adaptation by David Productions as well as two modern day JoJo video games all being used whilst he is explaining about the series.
I will probably be doing similar in my documentary video to this as well, and this video may be the one that influences me the most of how I will approach my video.
Third Video: AlexEnterprises - The Genius Of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
Analysis: This one goes over the series as whole much like the second video, but goes into deeper detail of the manga more specifically, with the majority of the video going over each part in short, but very detailed descriptions and what they each offered to series overall, talking about the variety and synergy within each part.
The information I've gathered from all three videos will prove useful for my documentary video, as well as the editing techniques used within them.
Research on the Mangaka: Hirohiko Araki
Originally Steel Ball Run started off as a weekly series from January 19 to October 16 2004 until the series was later moved to Ultra Jump, a monthly magazine, on March 19 2005 which Araki liked the change from weekly to monthly and stated that "writing longer stories suited him better" and he felt "less restricted" when it came to his work.
Araki did his research on America whilst in the production of SBR, though due to how long it would need to take, Araki split his research into three trips, with his first research trip having him go from the west coast to the deserts, the second trip had him go from the Great plains to the Mississippi River to Chicago, with the final trip having him go all the way to New York. He did this in-order to get a better idea of the landscape for SBR and stating that "it would have been impossible to get an understanding for the vast scale without having gone there personally" whilst also stating about the the vast west that "The feeling of distance made him think that if an enemy had approached, the open landscape would have meant that he could not have escaped due to a lack of places to hide, an experience he found useful when drawing the manga".
Hirohiko Araki (no date) Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohiko_Araki (Accessed: March 18, 2023).
I managed to also find photo's of Araki when he was in America, researching for the Steel Ball Run manga.
I was able to find this information on Twitter from a user by the name of xForts, who is a content creator who focuses on content related to JoJo's Bizarre Adventure.
The post entails: "Hirohiko Araki traveling the American southwest in July of 2003. Araki and his editor went on a 10 day roadtrip gathering reference material for "Steel Ball Run". The two visted San Diego, Death Valley, Tucson, and the Grand Canyon."
https://twitter.com/julienforts/status/1561758615178035201?s=20
This information will be possibly useful within my documentary to talk about.
Manga Research
I am further researching on this topic via reading the source material itself, though it may not have an official english release, I have still found a way to read it via reading fan translations of the material which I will be writing down notes into a word document of what I have found whilst reading this part.
The site in question that I will be using to read Steel Ball Run is called MangaDex, a website that holds and uploads translated manga chapters daily, with the site giving readers high quality scans of their favourite series with zero ads. through this I was able to not only read a translated version of Steel Ball Run, but I was able to read it in the official digital coloured version of the manga as well. Note: it can't be viewed on college internet.
I also went to look at other websites about Steel Ball Run and found a website called MyAnimeList, with it having Steel Ball Run as the 2nd highest rated manga on the site with over 239,526 users of the website highly ranking it.
On June 2011, Steel Ball Run had recorded about 7,196,000+ copies sold by the time the manga's 24th volume was released, though it's sales are not as high compared to earlier parts, though there are no sources for what sales part six had achieved, there is some sources that claim that part five: Golden Wind, had sold over 10 Million+ copies as of 2000.
At this time JoJo's Bizarre Adventure as a whole has sold over 120 Million copies, making it the twelfth most sold manga series of all time.
This information will be very useful as it gives a general idea on how popular the part in question was during serialisation.
List of Best-Selling manga: List of best-selling manga (2023) Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_manga (Accessed: May 5, 2023).