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The first arc of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure comes to an end in the same high quality way that the first two episodes introduced the story. From here on out, things will get even more bizarre.

Azeriraz

It's often forgotten that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is a shonen series, through fault of our own. The manga dates back to the late 1980's when the content of shonen manga was wildly different. Even if you think about Hunter x Hunter, one of the darker shonen series out there, it isn't hard to make this mistake. Nonetheless you can definitely tell there are some shonen elements in this story that have been passed down to all other Jump series.

The episode was split nicely into two halves: the death of George Joestar and the fight between Dio and JoJo. George Joestar's death was the classic shonen death of honour, entrusting the future to this sun, that has been clearly continued in the manga of Weekly Shonen Jump. A sad moment it was but some humour was present courtesy of Speedwagon, almost as if mocking the moment for what it is usually made out to be which I've always associated with JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. The funny thing is, the length of George Joestar's death gave it a feel of importance yet the conclusion was a little humorous.

Post-mortem was then followed by immortal, with our classic bad guy Dio coming back to life as a vampire. Dio's half of the episode was just fun to watch - a little brainless - and the developments didn't really incite any feelings of OMG (or similar), just pure fun. David Production continues to impress me with relatively little work on the animation side. It's not impressive animation - as demonstrated by the fight scene itself - but it continues to make sense, and the use of colours really brings the anime to life during all of this.

As someone who has read the manga, I can't really comment on the expected or unexpected in the series but I can say that the pace set is very comforting and what's more, it's classic. I was actually at a loss as to how to describe the first arc's end and then I read a post at Mecha Guignol, which perfectly summarised it: thus far, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure has a been a classic horror-style series. Makes sense right Those moments when the antagonist thinks his plans have been foiled, Dio being the most evil man in the truest form and all that blood and gore which just makes you laugh. If that wasn't enough, the fact that Dio isn't dead and will remain the main bad guy of the firs saga should convince you of that.

Now that the stage has been set for the rivalry, it's time to see some more bizarre shenanigans in this series.

ShonenBeats' review will be added shortly.