Random innocent guy with barely any connection to the situation, who died for basically being in the wrong spot at the wrong time, and wouldn't have been there if it hadn't been for Caesar.
It used to be called "Tepētzallāntli Mēxihco", I'd say that's a close enough pronunciation for this purpose.
Uh... 2000 years ago? Because 2000 years ago is the last time the Pillar Men were awake and Googling is not giving me any evidence Mexico's region had a remotely recognizable name back then.
... good lord is the anime fucking ridiculous-looking. I'd complain, but it's not like the manga is particularly less ridiculous.
Personally, I can see why Leila misread the scene. We get to see the clacker going straight for Wham's face, and then we don't actually see him dodge it, we cut to him doing weird contortions in general, and the following montage relies on hand-wavey animation to convey that Wham is supposed to be dodging... when, honestly, my gut read of the animation would actually be that Wham is writhing in pain. The manga is much clearer in depicting each individual strike being clearly dodged, where the anime has Joseph doing DBZ-esque 'I'm striking a zillion times a second!' animation to further obscure the issue.
Like, if you already know what's meant to be going on, the whole thing is cool and stylized. But for clearly conveying the intent, it's pretty shit, and I'm surprised at how it's not remotely trying to imitate the manga panels given we've been over the stock criticism of the anime being 'too faithful to the show'. And this is one case where the manga's visuals were extremely clear, unlike so much of the manga, so it's an oddly-timed decision.
Uh... 2000 years ago? Because 2000 years ago is the last time the Pillar Men were awake and Googling is not giving me any evidence Mexico's region had a remotely recognizable name back then.
Wamuu lets JoJo pummel him for a little while. I wonder how much time JoJo's wristwound has still left him at this point, but I also feel like I probably shouldn't bother because this show just does not keep track of temporal stuff. Which is unfortunate in this case, because I always do enjoy it when animators and filmmakers actually put in the effort to have their screentimes match up with in-universe time limits, but...well, like I said, I know its not happening here.
Sure, Wamuu could be using his biomancy to regulate JoJo's blood loss and give him more time during interludes like this. But either way, I wish the show actually acknowledged the time limit in some way, even if its just to explain why it doesn't actually count. Well, moving on.
After letting JoJo land some useless punches and clackerballs against his now hamon-retardant skin, Wamuu uses what he considers to be his strongest ability, something he calls the "divine sandstorm." It involves him spinning his arms around to make another air vortex like the one he used against Caesar, and then supercharging the air currents with alien vampire magic to the point where they can rip through stone walls.
And, despite Speedwagon being right there, and having narrated the previous weird wind attack, this one goes back to the other narrator. His English voice acting is slightly less grating than the Japanese one, but that only removes about 5% of my desire to see Speedwagon reach out across the fourth wall and just choke the son of a bitch already.
Well, regardless, JoJo just barely manages to shield his vitals as Wamuu's divine sandstorm bashes him mercilessly against the tomb walls.
JoJo ends up crumpled on the floor, bleeding from numerous wounds, as Wamuu comments on how lucky this human is that he had blood in his eyes from his hamon-wound or else he'd have been able to hit JoJo with a burst of shrapnel head on and splatter him. Ah well. In the meantime though, while Wamuu wouldn't normally bother acknowledging onlookers, Speedwagon and Caesar have seen him make enough embarrassing mistakes in this battle that he should probably kill them for the sake of his honor.
I swear, Wamuu has the weirdest sense of honor. You can see part of the rhyme and reason behind it, but every time you think you have his code down he blindsides you with some new and bizarre aspect of it. This honestly might make him more dangerous than a purely pragmatic entity; you never know what he's going to consider a deadly insult any more than you know what will get him to show mercy. And even "mercy" has a good chance of meaning "I'll kill you in exactly sixty seconds," with Wamuu. He seems like the most moral of the pillarmen, but with the code he's working from that might actually make him the most dangerous.
He gives Speedwagon and Caesar a minute to make whatever prayers or rituals their culture demands before he kills them (awww, how sweet of him), but is interrupted when he notices the wounded JoJo trying to creep away (it takes him a while to notice this, which is...sort of disappointing, after the feats of hearing and scent that Santana performed). Caesar thinks that JoJo is trying to creep away and save himself while Wamuu kills himself and Speedwagon. Wamuu comes to the same conclusion, and...chases after JoJo in lieu of killing them, because apparently cowards bother him even more than people who see him get hit in the face.
This guy, I'm telling you.
He dashes up to JoJo, who has just pulled himself into a minecart that was presumably being used by the nazi excavators. Wamuu stands over him on the cart to chide him for leaving his friends to die to save himself, and then JoJo...well, he's just lured Wamuu onto a minecart, we all know what's about to happen.
Wamuu ends up being forced to admire JoJo's ploy; rather than trying to save himself by abandoning his companions to death, he was sacrificing himself to lure Wamuu away and then create more distance using the cart so that they'd have a chance to save themselves. JoJo then attempts to blow Wamuu (and possibly himself) up with a stick of dynamite, but this time the pillarman's senses don't fail him, and he hears the fuse being ignited behind JoJo's back and yanks it out of his hand while using the handbrake to spill them both out of the vehicle.
There's a great snarky back-and-forth there where Wamuu all but turns JoJo's "next you're going to say" trick back around at him. But it relies too much on visual humor for there to be much benefit in me quoting it here, so I'll just say that it got a good laugh out of me.
Anyway, this sequence ends with JoJo on the ground, disarmed and slowly bleeding out, with Wamuu standing over him about to deliver a final blow that will leave nothing to chance this time. And here, Joseph does what might be the most authentically brilliant thing in his entire onscreen run so far.
He reminds Wamuu that he's never received any formal hamon training, and had been just about to start. Pretty good that he managed to damage Wamuu's face and successfully distract him from other targets without even having any real training, right? Too bad we'll never get to see how powerful he could have become in, say, another month once he's been through a hamon combat crash course. But whatever, Wamuu has beaten him now, so he should just go ahead and kill him and get this over with.
JoJo, you brilliant motherfucker.
There are issues with how this sequence is conveyed to the audience. Basically, it goes on too long, and JoJo, Wamuu, and Narrator Fuckass all restate everything at least one too many times and go way too far out of their way to remind us that JoJo is exploiting what he's seen of Wamuu's behavior up to this point. It disrespects the audience's intelligence by acting like we need reminding that Wamuu sees himself as an honorable warrior, and that this episode has established a precedent for him leaving weaker enemies alive so that they can give him a more interesting challenge in the future. It was less than twenty minutes ago that we saw him do this with Caesar, after all.
But however botched, overstated, and drawn-out the storytelling is at this point, it didn't manage to kill my enjoyment of the scene, because what JoJo just did here really was that awesome. His wording in the first few sentences of it, in particular, are brilliant sales pitch material. And, it works. Wamuu closes his armwound and agrees to not kill him in exchange for JoJo's promise to meet him again in one month's time.
Academic Decathlon drops down through a gap in the ceiling overhead and asks Wamuu why JoJo is still alive when he only gave him one minute. Also, he eats the dynamite, which explodes inside of his stomach without hurting him.
He looks explosionpregnant for a moment there.
When Wamuu explains that he's like to give this one another try in a month, Junior Varsity Football reminds him to apply some insurance that JoJo will actually make their little date. Wamuu produces a ring, which he refers to as a "wedding ring of death." And, while holding it up in front of JoJo, he says...this:
Wamuu said:
Say hello to the wedding ring of death. Guess where it goes? Not on your finger.
If it makes you feel any better, my mind went to exactly the same place that yours did at those words. But my mind was wrong; this is a killswitch, not a sex toy.
Wamuu uses his fleshwarping powers to wrap the ring around JoJo's coronary blood vessels, and explains that in 33 days it will begin emitting a poison that no amount of hamon-healing can let you survive. Any attempt to remove the ring will just cause it to activate prematurely. The antidote is stored in a hollow cavity inside of Wamuu's lip ring; the only way JoJo can survive the next month is if Wamuu either gives it to him, or if he takes it by force. In either case, he's going to need to fight him as they agreed.
Then, just to be a total dick, Women's Volleyball tells JoJo that, while he's unlikely to ever survive the Wamuu battle, if he does he's going to have to fight HIM too. He then attaches another ring to JoJo's trachea (possibly causing some airway constriction in the process? Reducing his hamon potential? Wow, what a prick) and says that his ring uses a completely different poison, and its antidote is - likewise - stored in his own nose ring. Even if JoJo beats Wamuu, he'll now have to beat Aka Deka too if he wants to live. Despite him never having agreed to this with Aka Deka, or even having established any sort of connection, rivalry, or even exchange of words with him.
It took me a second to realize that we were looking at JoJo from the side, and that the two white tubes are his spinal chord and trachea. At first I thought there'd been a mistake and
Esidisi was supposed to have put it around a rib or something.
As JoJo writhes in pain in the wake of his two flesh-warping implantations, High School Sports Pun looks up through the gap in the ceiling at Kars, who is waiting for the others atop a nearby roof, and asks him if he wants in on this too. Kars just kinda shrugs it off, and says that while he understands his underlings' desire for such diversions, he himself would rather stay focused on the mission. So, the pillarmen just fly away, Wamuu reminding JoJo that they're supposed to meet in the Coliseum in 30 days time, and Esidisi laughing sadistically because he's a cunt.
The episode ends with JoJo managing to make light of the situation with a bigamy joke, and then being found and recovered by Caesar and Speedwagon. The former of whom is a lot more respectful of him now.
I liked this episode. There were too many annoyances and awkward storytelling bits throughout for me to love it, but despite the many flaws its strengths really came through. Part of this is down to the pillarmen being such engaging and charismatic antagonists, as I said in the previous review. Part of it is due to Joseph having returned to form, and displayed his usual cunning and nobility to counterbalance his less likeable traits. I also very much enjoyed the ending; the thing with the "wedding rings" had a real fairy tale/mythical saga feel to it, and the pillarmen were imposing and otherworldly enough to make it work.
This episode also gives me quite a bit to talk about on the plotting front, both positive and negative.
On the positive side, the wedding ring plot device will ensure a much more tightly plotted and continuous story for (I suspect) the rest of the season. Araki seems to have a real problem with keeping his story going from one major event to the next. Both Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency have had multiple "false starts" that leave the hero dead in the water until some new contrivance appears out of nowhere to railroad him to the next setpiece. I think I've commented before that it feels like he wrote these stories prematurely, before giving himself time to tie the major events together into a causal chain. I don't know how much of this is really Araki's fault, and how much can be blamed on the insane publishing schedule that mangakas are forced into, but either way its been a persistent flaw in the work. But now, we seem to have solved that problem at least for the rest of Battle Tendency; JoJo now has a very good reason to proactively do anything he can to defeat the pillarmen, he has a time and place where he knows he can find them, and there's enough intervening time (a month) to fit a season's worth of preparations and related adventuring into. This plot device gives Araki the structure that his stories have generally lacked.
I suspect that Araki realized that this was a flaw in his work, and came up with the ring of death specifically to give himself that structure and plot continuity for the next major story arc. He's definitely learning from his mistakes.
On the other hand...the sequence of events within this episode was sort of an overcomplicated mess when you really think about it. In particular, I'm thinking of Wamuu's actions and how they seem to almost negate each other from moment to moment.
1. Wamuu spares Caesar, telling him that he's letting him live so that he can have a more challenging fight with him later.
2. Wamuu does a 180 and decides to kill the helpless Caesar in cold blood because he happened to see him getting hit in the face.
3. Wamuu gives JoJo a more formal version of that same challenge...and appears to completely forget about Caesar and Speedwagon having seen him get hit in the face and therefore require killing.
Number 3 could have worked if JoJo had, say, specifically bargained for Caesar and Speedwagon's lives when he was arranging his coliseum match with Wamuu. But he didn't. Wamuu just seemed to forget about them, despite how seriously he had been taking these "witnesses to his disgrace" up until then.
There's also the clumsiness of JoJo challenging Wamuu in the first place when the pillarmen first started leaving the tomb after swatting Caesar away. The pillarmen HAD been on their way to just leave without killing JoJo or his remaining companions. When JoJo first challenged Wamuu with his clackerballs, was he actually hoping to kill him? I'm not sure what else he could have been trying to accomplish there, so I assume that he was in fact hoping to kill at least one of the pillarmen. But then, as a consequence of him making that overconfident attempt, Speedwagon and Caesar are now actually in danger again (because they saw Wamuu's humiliation). And then them BEING in danger is totally forgotten about a moment later, when Wamuu inexplicably forgets all about them again.
Looking at it this way, it really feels like the author wrote himself into a corner when he had the pillarmen not care about the humans, and had the thing with JoJo and the clackerballs humiliating Wamuu happen just to put Speedwagon and Caesar back in danger so that JoJo could rescue them and get ringed. JoJo's motivations for attacking Wamuu (when he had previously seemed averse to doing so, due to the obvious power of the pillarmen) and Wamuu's for forgetting about his "shame" really feel like a contrivance. Like Araki realized at the last minute that he forgot to give himself a structure for the coming narrative as I noted above, and quickly interjected this new sequence of events after he had originally intended the pillarmen to just leave.
So, pretty clumsy plotting. But it was still a very entertaining watch, and the ending bodes well for the episodes to come. I wouldn't call this one of the best Battle Tendency episodes thus far, but it was at least decent all things considered, and certainly worlds better than the one before it.
As far as Jojo creeping away goes, I kind of got the sense that Whammu was still going, "Is this guy serious?" With the couple of times he paused so Jojo could freeze and continue playing dead. He noticed, but he was being polite about it. "What the- does he actually think that'll work? I just- let me threaten his buddies with death, maybe that'll give him a chance to stand and fight and stop acting like a coward, he was fun to fight, I don't want him dying a disgraceful death."
Okay, so now that we finished the introduction to Aztec Gods of Fitness, time for some actual comments.
First, Santana and how he was differentiated from the Rome trio. The biggest part is how Santana is the one that has no idea Hamon is a thing (which means it either never was a thing in Americas or he never went far from home). So why would he have more immunity than Wamu, who faced Hamon users? I think Straio's magic scarf was a clever bit of foreshadowing for it, since Santana's big thing is that he absorbs organic matter and gains its properties (in case of humans/vampires its just their knowledge and skills), so he probably absorbed some of those bugs. And when Hamon prevents him from just absorbing parts of Joseph, his first though is that those primitive little monkeys have finally evolved into something resembling civilised company (immediately undermined by him checking on other human, I had the entire joke about how his entire research into this was on the sample size of one, but he did absorb that one mook, so he had more info). Meanwhile, Roman Pillarmen came more as "Humans are insignificant, yes, but every once in a while they can be amusing".
Mark tripping over his death flags got a laugh out of me.
So yeah, I liked how they were different by just knowing that one little detail. And Pillarmen mocking shonen-like disposition of Sendogi also got a smile out.
The best thing about setting up Joseph vs Wamu round 2 is how its framed as Joseph clearly outsmarting himself. Shows that he didn't fully get a read at how Wamu thinks about battle. Also, I like to imagine Esidisi decided to throw his own participation in because, since he is above Wamu in hierarchy and he also likes to fight, it might have been sort of "If you can get through Wamu you will actually fun to play with".
Between them three, Wamu is the serious fighty guy looking for a challenge, Esidisi is an asshole one, while Kars is right now focused on spoilers .
3. Wamuu gives JoJo a more formal version of that same challenge...and appears to completely forget about Caesar and Speedwagon having seen him get hit in the face and therefore require killing.
Number 3 could have worked if JoJo had, say, specifically bargained for Caesar and Speedwagon's lives when he was arranging his coliseum match with Wamuu. But he didn't. Wamuu just seemed to forget about them, despite how seriously he had been taking these "witnesses to his disgrace" up until then.
I think what happened was that from Wamuu's perspective Jojo was sacrificing himself so that his friends would survive, so Wamuu was willing to respect that sacrifice, even though it is a little humiliating for him to do so.
Mostly because, again from Wamuu's perspective, it really doesn't matter and if they become a problem Wamuu could kill them at any point anyway.
He gives Speedwagon and Caesar a minute to make whatever prayers or rituals their culture demands before he kills them (awww, how sweet of him), but is interrupted when he notices the wounded JoJo trying to creep away (it takes him a while to notice this, which is...sort of disappointing, after the feats of hearing and scent that Santana performed). Caesar thinks that JoJo is trying to creep away and save himself while Wamuu kills himself and Speedwagon. Wamuu comes to the same conclusion, and...chases after JoJo in lieu of killing them, because apparently cowards bother him even more than people who see him get hit in the face.
This guy, I'm telling you.
He dashes up to JoJo, who has just pulled himself into a minecart that was presumably being used by the nazi excavators. Wamuu stands over him on the cart to chide him for leaving his friends to die to save himself, and then JoJo...well, he's just lured Wamuu onto a minecart, we all know what's about to happen.
I feel like mentioning that, if I recall right, in the manga the Narrator has an interesting spiel at this point about 'is JoJo running away' that leads into him talking about 'no! If he was running away, he would no longer have the right to be the protagonist'. Which was interesting to me from a story design/cultural connotations perspective.
After letting JoJo land some useless punches and clackerballs against his now hamon-retardant skin, Wamuu uses what he considers to be his strongest ability, something he calls the "divine sandstorm." It involves him spinning his arms around to make another air vortex like the one he used against Caesar, and then supercharging the air currents with alien vampire magic to the point where they can rip through stone walls.
It's supposed to outright be producing a vacuum in between his arms. Which is... somehow... supposed to be the basis of it being really super-duper lethal.
I don't really know what that's about. Japanese media is really fond of 'vacuum blades' and whatnot that are vorpal weapons for no obvious reason, and I don't know if it's just, like, one manga did it one time and it got popular, or if there's some linguistic component to it where in Japanese 'vacuum' sounds like something lethal, or what.
He gives Speedwagon and Caesar a minute to make whatever prayers or rituals their culture demands before he kills them (awww, how sweet of him), but is interrupted when he notices the wounded JoJo trying to creep away (it takes him a while to notice this, which is...sort of disappointing, after the feats of hearing and scent that Santana performed). Caesar thinks that JoJo is trying to creep away and save himself while Wamuu kills himself and Speedwagon.
In the manga it's pretty clear Wham is noticing it just fine, and it's just each time he turns back to check on Joseph Joseph collapses again and Wham finds himself going 'must be my imagination'. It's not until Joseph makes the final break for the mine cart that Wham goes 'no, I'm not imagining this'. It's also pretty clear that Wham is reacting to Speedwagon and/or Caesar themselves reacting to Joseph's movement. The whole thing is actually moderately comedic in a Looney Tunes way that puts me in mind of the cactus bit.
Also, like Terrabrand brought up, the narrator is basically saying 'what's this? Has Joseph ceased to be deserving of the title of Hero Of the Story? Oh wait no he's not a gutless coward it's a trick, he's still fine as Hero Of The Story' over this whole sequence.
Wamuu ends up being forced to admire JoJo's ploy; rather than trying to save himself by abandoning his companions to death, he was sacrificing himself to lure Wamuu away and then create more distance using the cart so that they'd have a chance to save themselves. JoJo then attempts to blow Wamuu (and possibly himself) up with a stick of dynamite, but this time the pillarman's senses don't fail him, and he hears the fuse being ignited behind JoJo's back and yanks it out of his hand while using the handbrake to spill them both out of the vehicle.
In the manga, what happens is that Wham predicts that Joseph was intending to hit the brakes on the cart and does it himself to illustrate the futility of the ploy, and then once they've both been launched out of the cart we get Wham knowing the dynamite was coming. Wham's dialogue actually implies that he spotted the dynamite in the cart and figured that Joseph was intending to use it, rather than his superhuman senses letting him know about the dynamite behind Joseph's back.
I'm a bit puzzled by the anime changing this.
I also couldn't offer an explanation for why Wham would know about TNT given it was invented less than a century ago from the perspective of the story's current point in history. This is a bit of a recurring issue with the Pillar Men, that they know stuff they really shouldn't know given their backstory. It works out okay if you're willing to take the story as it comes, but it can be bothersome if you're applying critical thinking.
If it makes you feel any better, my mind went to exactly the same place that yours did at those words. But my mind was wrong; this is a killswitch, not a sex toy.
3. Wamuu gives JoJo a more formal version of that same challenge...and appears to completely forget about Caesar and Speedwagon having seen him get hit in the face and therefore require killing.
Eeeeeh. His boss is going 'guys, seriously, we've got business to attend to'. I can buy that Wham would've gone back to kill them if only Kars hadn't made his statement about their urgent business. It would've been nice of the story to explicitly say so, but it's really not an actual problem.
Looking at it this way, it really feels like the author wrote himself into a corner when he had the pillarmen not care about the humans, and had the thing with JoJo and the clackerballs humiliating Wamuu happen just to put Speedwagon and Caesar back in danger so that JoJo could rescue them and get ringed.
I do think this is, if not entirely accurate, at least touching on the basic issue. Joseph and Caesar getting into a fight with Wham feels to me like the story wanted to establish a bit better that these Pillar Men aren't just Santana*3 and so arranged a fight without thinking too hard about what purpose the fight would serve in the progression of the narrative. It's an enjoyable sequence on a lot of levels, but looking back on it once it's over it kinda feels like the only plot 'advancement' was putting Joseph on the clock to actually defeat the Pillar Men.
------------------------------------
One thing I would like to point out about the Pillar Men is that they're a lot less problematic of villains than vampires were. The explosive growth of vampire populations made it tricky for Part 1 to do stuff with its villains; Dio couldn't escape to fight another day, because if a JoJo's vampire doesn't have constant pressure exerted on it you'll end up with entire towns vanishing overnight and it's just not narratively sustainable. The Pillar Men are actually more dangerous as combatants, but Santana could have escaped earlier without the plot having to contort itself awkwardly to justify this not being an automatic apocalypse, unlike Vampire Dio.
Indeed, in Part 1 Johnathan actually does have his own training montage, but honestly it's kinda weird that him and Zeppeli taking two weeks off doesn't result in Dio spreading his influence further than he does. Part 2 requires less suspension of disbelief to have Joseph do the same thing for twice as long, precisely because of the difference in how it handles its villains.
It's one of the more subtle but better examples of how Part 2 has learned from Part 1, I feel.
In the manga it's pretty clear Wham is noticing it just fine, and it's just each time he turns back to check on Joseph Joseph collapses again and Wham finds himself going 'must be my imagination'. It's not until Joseph makes the final break for the mine cart that Wham goes 'no, I'm not imagining this'. It's also pretty clear that Wham is reacting to Speedwagon and/or Caesar themselves reacting to Joseph's movement. The whole thing is actually moderately comedic in a Looney Tunes way that puts me in mind of the cactus bit.
I don't really know what that's about. Japanese media is really fond of 'vacuum blades' and whatnot that are vorpal weapons for no obvious reason, and I don't know if it's just, like, one manga did it one time and it got popular, or if there's some linguistic component to it where in Japanese 'vacuum' sounds like something lethal, or what.
In Japanese folklore there's a recurring motif of a wind that can cut people, usually taking the form of a demon hiding in a dust devil or something. It has a lot of regional names and variations, but the most famous one is the "Kamaitachi," a weasel-like demon that rides in dust devils and cuts people with claws that are like scythes that are too fast to be seen and who cause wounds that don't bleed at first.
So the idea of a deadly wind that cuts like a razor-sharp blade is something that has been in the popular imagination of Japan for centuries. It's a literary trope that's easy to borrow from for fantastical action stories, so it's a natural fit for shounen.
Let's be real here. Joseph would end up "forgetting" his wallet, make Kars pay for their drinks, mess up both their names on "accident", and then steal both while using his best technique right out the back door.
In Japanese folklore there's a recurring motif of a wind that can cut people, usually taking the form of a demon hiding in a dust devil or something. It has a lot of regional names and variations, but the most famous one is the "Kamaitachi," a weasel-like demon that rides in dust devils and cuts people with claws that are like scythes that are too fast to be seen and who cause wounds that don't bleed at first.
So the idea of a deadly wind that cuts like a razor-sharp blade is something that has been in the popular imagination of Japan for centuries. It's a literary trope that's easy to borrow from for fantastical action stories, so it's a natural fit for shounen.
If anyone's curious about what exactly the manga narrator says about Joseph's fittingness to be the protagonist, I dug up my copy and it says "Jojo will only lose his right to be the hero of this story once he's lost the will to fight!" right as Joseph's tricked Wamuu into joining his magic minecart ride and figuring out his next move. Before that, when Joseph's making his way to the minecart, the manga narration first rhetorically asks why Joseph's running away ("Does he have a plan?" more or less) before revealing that no, he's just being pathetic. "However -- Jojo does not lose his right to be the hero of this story!" And then Wamuu falls for the ruse and we get the narrator saying Joseph can still be the protagonist. I dunno what all this says either about Japanese popular fiction in general or about Araki in particular, but I think the story having moments of self-awareness like this is pretty neat.
If anyone's curious about what exactly the manga narrator says about Joseph's fittingness to be the protagonist, I dug up my copy and it says "Jojo will only lose his right to be the hero of this story once he's lost the will to fight!" right as Joseph's tricked Wamuu into joining his magic minecart ride and figuring out his next move. Before that, when Joseph's making his way to the minecart, the manga narration first rhetorically asks why Joseph's running away ("Does he have a plan?" more or less) before revealing that no, he's just being pathetic. "However -- Jojo does not lose his right to be the hero of this story!" And then Wamuu falls for the ruse and we get the narrator saying Joseph can still be the protagonist. I dunno what all this says either about Japanese popular fiction in general or about Araki in particular, but I think the story having moments of self-awareness like this is pretty neat.
Remember how Phantom Blood had some subtle nods to trends and tropes of storytelling that were contemporary to the setting? Battle Tendency takes place at the beginning of the Golden Age of Comic Books (which in the manga we even see Joseph reading), so I suspect that the narration deliberately dipped into the "narrator breaks the 4th wall to ask rhetorical questions at the reader about what's going on" thing that was a staple of classic superhero comics.
Remember how Phantom Blood had some subtle nods to trends and tropes of storytelling that were contemporary to the setting? Battle Tendency takes place at the beginning of the Golden Age of Comic Books (which in the manga we even see Joseph reading), so I suspect that the narration deliberately dipped into the "narrator breaks the 4th wall to ask rhetorical questions at the reader about what's going on" thing that was a staple of classic superhero comics.
I would not be surprised. Araki's clearly updated his pseudoscience from Victorian phrenology to diesel age biology stuff, if Speedwagon's talk of amino acids and such at the very beginning is any indication. Only makes sense to update his melodrama tactics.
Hopefully I'm not violating the spoiler policy by mentioning this, but you hit the nail on the head with the uneven plotting being the result of the soul crushing grind of weekly manga publishing.
.
