Although ‘Stone Ocean’ It was one of the most anticipated series of 2021 and that many of us believed that the next batch of episodes of part 6 of ‘JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure’ would be close, Netflix has poured a bucket of cold water on us by revealing that the anime will not continue until autumn.
On the other hand, we know that the production of an anime is not a small thing and there are many artists involved to solve the problems on different fronts. The problems that can occur when translating a character from the pages of a manga to an anime are the biggest headache for a character designer, and the one responsible for ‘Stone Ocean’ He has talked about how he managed to solve some of them.
The difficulties of drawing the Joestar family
Masanori Shino is the lead character designer on ‘Stone Ocean’ and has recently talked about his work on the series, which is not easy at all taking into account Hirohiko Araki’s convoluted designs in the original manga.
“To be honest, ‘Stone Ocean’ is the only part of the JoJo series that I’ve purchased physical volumes of. I feel very attached to these characters and had a great time drawing them…I was well aware of how many of the original details could retain when designing them,” Shino said. “But anime is made by a very large number of animators, so sometimes it’s necessary to leave out some details in consideration of the schedule. However, if certain details are left out, it’s not ‘JoJo’ anymore. That’s why I wanted to incorporate as many original details as possible. It was very annoying [se ríe]”.
The character that gave the designer the most headaches was the protagonist, jolyne cujohas I wanted to explore all the changes he goes through as the story unfolds.
“The character that develops the most in ‘Stone Ocean’ is Jolyne. Her appearance transformation from start to finish makes her look like a different person, so it took me a long time to decide what appearance I should base my design on and what traits to include. As the story progresses, Jolyne becomes tougher and more beautiful, and I wanted to portray her correctly.”
Despite all the intricate designs in the manga, it seems that the Joestars were the most difficult to close. Even though he is not one of the main characters, Shino also spent a lot of time on the character design of Jotaro Kujōwhich is very different from ‘Stardust Crusaders’ and ‘Diamond is Unbreakable’.
“Jotaro’s design is based solely on the style of Part 6. His character becomes more and more slender when he appears after Parts 3 and 4,” explained the character designer. “Opinions on which Jotaro is better may differ, but I personally prefer his physique in Part 6. When I designed Jotaro, I ended up making him a bit younger… until director Kenichi Suzuki reminded me that he’s more or less supposed to be He’s a father, so I gave him a slightly more mature look.”