r/JoJolion

-it takes place in japan

-its gonna be in around 1930

-the protagonist is gonna be an alternative version of joseph

-the main Villain is a serial killer

-jonny is gonna be a part of the main cast

Please dont spoil me anything

I wanted to share my thoughts and interpretations that have been pouring forth after the xForts video uploaded recently about Jobin Higashikata and what his character means. I left my remarks in that comment section, but I realize that my full thoughts about his character branch out considerably and spark discussion on the potential meaning of different characters, I wanted to express my complete perspective on Jobin, Joshu, and Josuke and the ways they foil each other in a place that is more suited for the coverage of broader topics. If this is all commonly accepted and I'm just being a yap lord, forgive me.

My interpretation of Jobin and Josuke I have is that they're an extremely grounded role reversal of Jonathan and Dio, though Joshu also shares in this dynamic. Josuke, the hero in the story is the foster son, the intruder in their wealthy household trying to pursue his own goals right under their noses, while Jobin is the rightful heir, motivated on his family's behalf, though he plays the role of the prideful remorseless antagonist, (and Joshu embodies Dio's instinctual selfishness). However with Jojolion, the wide variety of motivations, virtues, and egotism of each character recontextualizes and blurs that entire fued, so that the only true evil in both of their lives was just nature and circumstance, and so they all take after the JoJo naming convention as heroes of their own stories.

That's the extent of my comment I left on the video for the purposes of things staying on topic, but the more thought I gave it, the more it seemed to me that if Jobin and Joshu can be viewed as figuratively two halves of one evil Dio analog, then Josuke can be seen as two halves of a heroic Jonathan analog, given how he's not-so-figuratively two halves of one entire Jojo obviously.

To throw a spotlight on Kira, his motivations and disposition are quite similar to Jobin's upon closer inspection. Both are rather reserved and pragmatic individuals, who are more than willing to cheat and meddle with other people in order to protect those they care about, and both have a very strong rapport with their mothers. I think the only difference in their moral integrity is simply in their observance of karma. Well he's acting on his own terms, Kira's actions lead to the disenfranchisement of the rock humans, who while some are less evil than others, are disturbing the natural order of carbon and silicon based life, a disturbance the Earth itself wants correction for. Jobin is practically introduced as a knowing accomplice of the rock humans, and while circumstance ended up leading him to betraying them, I could easily see him continuing to work with them all the way to the top, if it meant the Higashikata family could be made the one exception in joining their pyramid scheme against the whole human race.

If we then extend this interpretation to Josefumi and Joshu, it may seem odd to compare those two directly, but there's a few interesting parallels however intentional they may not be. They both grew up with very non-ideal relationships with their mothers, and they both harbor feelings of having fallen out of favor with their parents. Their stations of birth are ultimately the cause for their worldviews and attitudes that would become so disparate as they each grew into young men (reminds you of a different pair of characters doesn't it?).

Josefumi's damaged sense of personal worth later became an intense desire to be useful to others, to martyr himself even if it was for the sake of functionally, a total stranger. It's not a very romantic example of heroism, but it compliments Kira's determination and assertiveness. His involvement with Kira's plan alone gives the whole affair a greater sense of nobility, and achieving something he may have never had the drive to do on his own. I think even joined as one inside Josuke, their unique value systems can actually be rooted out in certain scenes. Like Josuke's unwillingness to harm the baby in the Blue Hawaii arc, which starkly comes off as a Josefumi decision, or when Josuke rescues Yasuho in the Urban Guerilla fight jeprodizing Mamezuku, like Kira prioritizing the person most familiar to him, whereas Josefumi may not have the individualism to go against Mamezuku after he just outlined the logic of their mission.

As for Joshu, by the time we see him in Ch1 he has clearly taken his self-loathing behavoir down a very different road. His well-off upbringing likely helped him to ignore his inner emptiness throughout his adolescence, but he is a habitually selfish person in everything he does because of it now. Not just selfish, but selfishness without pride. He wants to take more than he wants to have. All men in his world are a path to jolting his ego, and all women are a path to sex, when none of those things are going to bring his soul any nourishment. The Milagro Man isn't just a throwaway idea put aside for Joshu's solo arc to focus on, it's narratively drawing parallels between the nature of the money curse and the mechanics behind why Joshu is exactly the way he is.

However, because his selfishness is merely instinctual with no greater resolve behind it, he's capable of feeling blame and regret as much as anybody. And so in the final arc, after his older brother is killed, his myriad failures hit him like a ton of bricks, and he gains the resolve to do the one selfless thing we've probably ever seen from him. Even if he does have some rather extreme misgivings about it immediately after, as I said his value system runs off of pure instinct, him insisting that Josuke picks out the cake for his father in the final scene makes me think he might have learned a small amount of humility in the end.

To bring it back around, I think the four characters all put on display the different aspects of Jonathan and Dio, displaced by much time and a whole ideological universe. Even though those characters are thought to be absolute examples of pure goodness and pure evil in their story, when you divide those qualities up between different characters exclusively, it's simply not that cut and dry anymore. Everyone has their shot at redemption, everybody has darkness eating away at them, and everybody has potential, for the virtue to be forgiven, and the strength to forgive themselve. I don't intend on reiterating the overall themes of Jojolion here, but the three JoJo's of the part are all deserving of that name, because Araki wanted to tell the most down to earth story of the series with part 8, where the difference between good, bad, and the ugly is simple decided by how you the reader, read into the story.

I would say either norisuke, damo, wou in its human disguise and jobin when he is serious.