JoJo's Magical Adventure

Dio, being such an iconic character, has a surprisingly inconsistent look throughout the series. Consistent though is his blond, pretty hair that flows in the wind every chance it gets (even though it changes in style a lot) and his tendency to wear really flashy clothing. In Part 1, we have a Dio that flaunts his wealth (or more the one of his adoptive family) with fancy, but still rather formal clothes. His revealing looks are only a thing present from part 3 ans onward.

The main outfit from the anime has dark, red colours, contrasting Jonathan’s blue. It is also much more pompous in contrast to Jonathan’s more simple and practical clothing. What I realized only while writing this, is that his red pants have a chaps-like cut out with white pants underneath, which is a bit similar to his iconic yellow chaps from part 3. Probably far from a coincidence.

According to Araki’s profiles, Dio is a bit smaller than Jonathan (185 cm and 90kg). He is mainly drawn the same though. Diana here is a bit less muscular and smaller than Joanna. I gave her long, curly blonde hair that is a bit inspired by Balalaika from Black Lagoon.

I mainly referenced the mentioned anime outfit, once again trying to go for not-historically-accurate-but-still-not-looking-completly-out-of-place. Her special form - not coming from hamon but her vampire powers - has a feather-like collar similar to Dio’s outfit he wears when he first discovers the powers of the stone mask (the one with the top hat). I wanted her to look very regal and I couldn’t resist giving her a little tiara that looks a bit like devil horns. Overall, her vampire form is supposed to mirror Joanna’s, with a cape on the other side, shoulder accessories and arm cuffs.

I wanted Joanna and Diana to contrast with their clothing choices. Joanna wears simple, practical clothes and doesn’t try to get attention with her looks while Dianna wants the spotlight and just hates anything that gives Joanna more attention than her. There is this thing I wanted to do with their chest sizes - Joanna is naturally bigger but she doesn't care or even think about things like that. Which bothers Dianna: She wants to be better at everything - even petty things that don't matter, like this. Which results in her really flaunting Joanna’s body once she makes it hers.

In the Manga, Jonathan and Joseph look so much alike that they are hard to differentiate in some illustrations. This was probably done on purpose, since changing the main character was not a common thing and they wanted to preserve the familiarity. The way Araki draws Joseph has also drastically changed, but even in the new art style, he still looks close to Jonathan.

To differentiate them better, Araki nowadays draws Joseph with an aviator theme. You can tell it’s Joseph because he almost always wears goggles, often with a scarf and a hat.

I mainly referenced the anime with this design.

The anime uses, as it does with Jonathan, the outfit from the final battle for most of the promotional material and illustrations, where he wears a green top, a big, striped scarf and Caesar’s headband. He also has one of these anime hairstyles that always points in the direction he faces. His hair is otherwise just spikey chaos.

I struggled a bit to translate Joseph’s hair, but I think it turned out really cute.

The rest of his normal outfit was pretty simple: a casual shirt, pants, boots and that “JO” belt buckle. I once again wanted something that wouldn’t look completely out of place in the historical setting but I didn’t aim for historical accuracy either. I did bring the aviator theme in – as a fan of Steampunk I will not miss a chance to draw some goggles even though I really can’t figure out how to do it somebody help me.

 We have another hamon user, so another partial transformation like Joanna has.

The big scarf is really iconic for anime Joseph. I had to reference that, but a normal scarf didn’t really look magical enough for me, so I came up with these… cape-like things. They move and flow in a similar way to a scarf but at the same time add a bit sailor uniform feeling magical girl outfits often have. I also brought a star motive into the design – she has the big star on her chest and cute little star shaped earrings. She has hamon gloves like Joanna.

I want her to just have the gloves and earrings at first, only getting the scarf later while training under Lisa Lisa, probably when she and Caesarina are climbing the pillar.

Joseph’s body build is almost the same as Jonathan’s. Araki’s stats say he is the same height, 195 cm, but a bit lighter with 97 kg.

I imagine Josephine being the same height as Joanna, but a little bit less buff. Her chest also isn’t as big, hehe.

Josephine is more of a boyish woman for sure. I just can’t see the way Joseph acts translated onto a girly character. I mean, Joseph does have a pretty boy counterpart that would fit a feminine vibe more, after all…

I came up with this AU with concepts for magical girl forms based on stands, so the first question I asked myself while creating Joanna was “What can I do with the hamon users?”. I wanted the new power introduced in part 3 to be more than just a new way to transform. It needs to be an upgrade. I thought the best idea for this would be partial transformations for hamon users. I call these “hamon forms”. They add some magical accessories to the outfit whenever someone goes into serious battle mode. Jonathan’s look changed a lot over the years. If you put an old manga illustration, a current illustration and the anime next to each other and show them to someone who knows nothing about JJBA, there is a chance they might not even recognise them as the same person. Furthermore, Jonathan doesn’t really have one outfit or accessory he is always seen with, making him easy to confuse with his similar looking grandson Joseph. The most recognizable trait for Jonathan are his muscles – newer illustrations always depict him without sleeves, showing off his strong arms. The anime tried to give him a more unified look. In its promotional and key illustrations, Jonathan is mostly drawn in the blue tank top with the shoulder pads, a very practical battle outfit that also shows off his iconic muscles. Going with the anime’s design and colour palette seems like the best option for this project, since there is just more consistency.

Joanna dresses practical. Her hair is out of her face with a ponytail so it doesn’t bother her. Women in 1880 did not wear anything that would be practical for fighting, so I didn’t go for historical accuracy, but I didn’t want anything completely out of place for the time period either. That’s why I covered her up more. Since hamon users mainly use their fists, the hamon form includes gloves. Her shoulder piece and her cape make her look heroic and noble, a little bit prince-like. And they bring Jonathans shoulder pads back. The hamon form accessories have a glow to them.

The characters in Jojo’s have stated heights and weights that are often not accurate to how they look in the manga. (More on that on later characters, this gets interesting). For Jonathan though, how he’s depicted is pretty accurate to his stated height and weight: He is a beefy giant, 195cm tall and 104kg heavy.

I have the anime-illness of giving all the characters the same body type (and face), but I really tried my best to make Joanna look muscular. She is not as big as canon Jonathan, but still very buff and towering over most other people. She also has pretty large breasts – this was partially for something I’m planning with Dio (maybe more on that when we get to them), but I think it really fits her and balances her buff proportions.