This article analyzes episodes 03–07 of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, focusing on direction, with relatively little discussion of plot or the drawing work.
Episode 03 Analysis
Selected staff for episode 03:
Script: Shogo Yasukawa
Storyboard: Yasuhiro Kimura
Episode direction: Yasuhiro Kimura
Chief animation director: Haruka Tanaka
Action directors (action animation supervisors?): Takahito Katayama, Yasutoshi Iwasaki
Animation directors: SHIN HYUNG WOO, Yui Kinoshita,1 Keiya Nakano
1. Direction in a Few Short Shots
Let me start on a negative note: I don’t think this sequence works very well. One frame, both of Giorno’s hands are empty; the next, money appears out of nowhere. It feels very abrupt. I went back specifically to look at the manga’s panels, and I think the staff drew it this way to reproduce that sequence. But the medium is different. In the manga, the panel before the money appears has motion lines showing his hands shaking, and the panel where it appears has lines indicating downward movement. Together with what readers fill in for themselves, these keep the whole process from feeling too abrupt. Animation cannot achieve the same effect by simply copying it.
Unlike the preceding shots, this is something I really like. It uses a manga device—sound-effect lettering—but also makes it work within animation as a medium. Stretching the lettering shows the gas escaping, making the letters part of the image rather than using them statically as in manga.
2. A Very Interesting Wipe Transition
This wipe has two distinctive features: (1) it uses a character present in both shots to make the transition; (2) the shots are displaced in time and space, but the character’s action is continuous.
In the original video, we hear six consecutive footsteps, indicating Giorno’s movement from his position in shot one to his position in shot two. But from the images alone, we can’t tell whether the Giorno we see has actually taken all those steps. This creates a sense of displacement between the audio track and the images. With Giorno’s movement remaining unclear, it also looks as though the camera is rotating around a stationary Giorno in shot two rather than following him forward in shot one. The transition is smooth, yet sound and image still don’t quite line up.
The purpose is probably to build an atmosphere of suspense.
3. The Transitions as Koichi Finds His Passport
This sequence contains three shots: a medium shot of Koichi opening the drawer → a close-up of the passport → a high-angle shot of Koichi holding the passport aloft. That requires two transitions.
Leaving the first two shots aside, there is at least an obvious gap in time between shots two and three: we don’t see him picking up the passport, for instance. The transition uses a trick here: making what draws our eye in one shot look more like what draws it in the next, so the shots connect smoothly.
The transition from shot one to shot two begins with a rapid push-in—or an enlargement of the image. Once the passport reaches the size shown on the left, we cut to shot two.
But the passport in shot two is too large to match its size in shot three. So the transition cuts to an extreme close-up of the passport in shot three, then pulls back while rotating.
Why rotate during the pull-back rather than pull straight back? It is probably to accommodate the passport’s different orientations in the two images. The images below show those orientations.
I also think the rotating pull-back is meant to throw the eye off, keeping the transition smooth while bringing out Koichi’s excitement.
Then again, what if we changed the angle of the whole image in shot three and used a straight pull-back? I was in a hurry to finish writing, so I didn’t rebuild the shot in After Effects. I can’t judge whether that version would still bring out his excitement. But one thing is certain: it would spoil the original composition.
The original shot is canted, with Koichi filling the image diagonally from bottom left to top right. This both increases the proportion of the image he occupies and emphasizes how far he stretches his body. Since the action of taking out the passport has been omitted, this makes the size of his gesture register, reinforcing his happiness. (Ed.: Makes Koichi look tall, too~ mischievous-grin.jpg)
The uncanted shot in the comparison doesn’t have that effect. It would also require more drawing work—a large chunk of background is missing.
To sum up: the three shots connect smoothly by increasing what their images have in common. Most importantly, shot three brings out the character’s feelings while using a held drawing and a special transition to omit the action of taking out the passport, reducing the drawing work.
I may be reading too much into some of this, so don’t take it too readily on trust. Only the staff know for sure.
Episode 04 Analysis
Selected staff for episode 04:
Script: Shogo Yasukawa
Storyboard: Yasuhiro Kimura
Episode direction: Kyohei Suzuki
Chief animation director: Haruka Tanaka
Action animation director: Yasutoshi Iwasaki
Animation directors: Mariko Morito, Wakako Shigemoto, Kenji Yokoyama, Keiya Nakano, Yui Kinoshita1
There really isn’t much to talk about in this episode. I collected several shots, but this is the only bit worth mentioning. (shrug)
1. Solid Gray Frames Inserted into a Transition
I’ve slowed down the playback, so surely nobody can miss the few gray frames in the middle of the GIF. Three frames, to be precise—though taking consecutive screenshots in PotPlayer only gave me one gray frame, while stepping through it frame by frame in Premiere Pro did indeed show three.
The purpose here is fairly obvious: to get to the next shot without drawing the action of catching the arrowhead. Insert three gray frames, add the sound of the Stand catching the arrowhead during those frames, and you have a smooth transition. A similar device is a flash of a blade plus the sound of swords clashing. Now that’s the art of saving money ╮(─▽─)╭.
Why gray rather than another color, by the way? My guess is that gray is the most neutral color and works well with images in all sorts of color schemes, so that’s what they used.
Episode 05: Find Polpo’s Fortune!
Script: Yasuko Kobayashi
Storyboard: Naokatsu Tsuda (chief director)
Episode direction: Takahiro Kamei
Animation directors: Masaki Takasaka, Mayu Fujimoto, SHIN HYUNG WOO, Shunichi Ishimoto
Chief animation director: Shunichi Ishimoto
1. An Analysis of Two Shots
Using Color Contrast to Make a Character Stand Out
Here, Giorno in the foreground is bluish and dark, Bucciarati in the middle is yellower and brighter, and the people in the background are blurred, grayish, and dim. This makes Bucciarati stand out. Other anime use color to emphasize important characters in a similar way. An extreme example is Durarara!!, where only the important characters have color and all the passersby are uniformly gray, as shown below.
This is a pretty ordinary observation, really, but I’m including it as another example of how JoJo uses color.
Camera Movement at an Angle
Here, not only is the camera itself set at a slant, but the camera movement also follows a slightly slanted path, bringing out how shocked and a little shaken Bucciarati is at this moment.
Episode 06: Moody Blues’s Counterattack2
Selected staff:
Script: Kazuyuki Fudeyasu
Storyboard: Hideya Takahashi
Episode direction: Yoshiko Mikami
Animation directors: Kenji Yokoyama, Natsue Chibayama, Mariko Morito, Keiya Nakano, Wakako Shigemoto
Chief animation director: Haruka Tanaka
1. Moody Blues’s Entrance
First, a few features of the Stand Moody Blues: it is purple, with a surface that looks like glass or a leather jacket, and light flowing across it. Its ability can reproduce sounds.
Several techniques are used in this entrance animation to make an impression and emphasize those features.
First come those powerful image trails. They give the entrance impact, and they look really cool.
Then there is the extensive use of streaks of light. These work with the Stand’s own colors, and also act like speed lines at the cuts. The light in the upper-left image, for example, runs horizontally, while in the close-ups of the Stand—upper right and lower left—it runs vertically, matching the upward movement from hand → eyes → forehead. Finally, the horizontal, spindle-shaped streak of light at lower right conveys the effect of an unstable radio signal.
The music also seems to work with this treatment. It sounds like a radio being tuned, with the tuning completed just as the final upper-body shot of the Stand appears.
2. Direction in a Few Sequences
Here, the fly splits the frame around Bucciarati’s close-up in two, emphasizing how Zucchero makes Bucciarati shut up.
During Zucchero and Bucciarati’s conversation, in stretches without extended dialogue or background music, the calls of black-tailed gulls fill out the sound. They heighten the tension and perhaps also convey Zucchero’s mocking mood.
Episode 07: Sex Pistols Appears, Part 1
Selected staff:
Script: Kazuyuki Fudeyasu
Storyboard: Kyohei Suzuki
Episode direction: Kyohei Suzuki
Animation directors: Mariko Morito, Jiro Mashima, Sayaka Anezaki, Ryo Kobayashi, Natsue Chibayama
Chief animation directors: Haruka Tanaka, Shunichi Ishimoto
1. The Direction as Zucchero Is Burned by Sunlight
The gang dance in this episode is fantastic. But even more than the dancing and music, I love the direction in this sequence of Zucchero being burned by sunlight. As direction goes, it’s the MVP of these episodes.
Here, the sunlight is dispersed into colored light for two reasons. First, this better conveys the concentration of light seen in the lower-left and lower-right images. Second, it draws us into a non-naturalistic mode, preparing us for what follows. The non-naturalistic treatment in the upper-right image is one example.
Next come three abstract shots conveying Zucchero’s condition. The last two are uncomfortable to look at for long, so I won’t post them as GIFs.
The rapidly changing images in all three shots match the rapid-fire vocal passage in the music. Unlike the dance sequence, which uses eight drawings per second—animation on threes—these shots use twelve drawings per second, or animation on twos.3
Of course, the main thing is still the imagery. Just when I needed the knowledge, I really felt how little I knew. I’ve never studied art, so I can’t accurately identify the styles of these three shots, the techniques used, or whether there are similar paintings out there. I can only say a little about my own understanding of them.
In the first shot, above, liquid flows upward in the background, with droplets falling and spreading out. The character’s deformation isn’t particularly severe, and there are no drastic changes of scale either. Zucchero is still doing fairly well at this point.
In the second shot, above, the background consists of straight yellow lines meeting at right angles, moving closer and farther away. These are probably meant to match the straight shafts of sunlight coming in from all sides. Zucchero’s eye has also begun to smoke. There is one drastic change of scale, and when the image enlarges, we can see him sweating heavily.
In the third shot, above, details such as Zucchero’s eyelids, eyebrows, and the zipper across his mouth have been left out, making him look almost like a skull. At the same time, both the background and the character change color violently, accompanied by drastic changes in the character’s scale. You get the sense that, by now, he feels he is about to die.
I don’t know whether these wonderfully inventive shots were designed by a key animator or by Kyohei Suzuki, who handled both the storyboard and episode direction. Either way, I admire the designer’s astonishing imagination.
Editor’s note: Shot-by-shot analysis really is hard work.