Ask John: Will the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure TV Series Reach America?

Question:
How likely do you think it is that the current Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure TV series will be brought to the States for home video release? Will it be another case where due to how big the franchise is in Japan and how relatively unknown it is here that no one will be willing to pay the assuredly high licensing fees? It’s also extremely campy and over-the-top (part of its appeal in my opinion), but this may detract some anime fans looking for a more “hardcore” series.

Answer:
Few other manga and anime series have such a controversial and storied history as Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. First adapted into a six-episode OVA series in 1993 then a sequel seven-episode OVA series in 2000, Super Techno Arts released all thirteen of those OVAs on American DVD but had to make alterations to the translation to avoid risk of legal objections to celebrity and rock band name references in the original dialogue. Furthermore, in 2008 the Fatwa Committee of Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt protested the fact that the sixth episode of the second OVA series included a brief scene of villain Dio reading the Qur’an, leading to the complete Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure anime adaptation being pulled from American distribution. (The anime production staff simply intended Dio to read a book in Arabic and had no clue that the random writing they inserted into the anime actually came from the Qur’an.) Viz Media began publishing Hirohiko Araki’s original manga in English in 2005 but skipped the first eleven volumes of the Japanese manga in order to begin with the third story arc. The English langauge manga publication was also put on hiatus for a year due to concerns over battle scenes in the manga that Muslim readers found offensive. The manga’s first story arc was adapted into an anime feature film in 2007, but the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood received only limited Japanese screenings and, reportedly because series creator Hirohiko Araki was dissatisfied with the film, the movie has never had subsequent public screenings or been released on Japanese home video.

So far, at least, the current anime television series adaptation has not encountered any setbacks or controversy, but the show presently remains a Japanese exclusive. Today, when practically every current TV anime streams internationally, Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure is not streaming for international viewers. The possibility or probability of the current TV series reaching America is particularly difficult to predict. On one hand, the franchise does have a precedent for American release and, these days, is moderately well known among American anime fans. Given the series’ highly stylized design and emphasis on ridiculously exaggerated action, akin to the popular Sengoku Basara franchise that has been successfully released in America, the current Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure television series would be a natural fit for the typical acquisition tendencies of domestic distributors including Sentai Filmworks, FUNimation, or possibly Media Blasters. The series may also be a desirable acquisition simply for the high profile name recognition of its title. However, in the nearly five years since domestic distribution of the original Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures OVAs ceased, no domestic licensor has picked up the OVAs for re-release even in censored form. And the fact that the current TV series is one of the few current shows that isn’t streaming may also suggest that its Japanese producers don’t want the franchise circulated internationally anymore, especially after the trouble that its previous international distribution has caused.

Honestly, I’d like to make a prediction one way or the other that the show will eventually reach American home video, but I can’t. The seeming probability of the Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure TV series coming officially to America seems so near to 50/50 in my mind that I can’t make a yes or no guess.