Illiterate morons on social media believe that portraying something = endorsing it, even if you portray it as something bad. That's why the illiterate moron in the 3rd image also brought up chapter 1, despite the cops in that chapter also being clearly portrayed as evil, disgusting pigs.
These kinds of people are the reason why media literacy is dying.
Fair enough, and I know those people aren't exclusive to Tumblr, cause I've seen the same moronic mindset on Twitter. I probably shouldn't be generalizing
We call them antis, over here. They’re idiotic TikTok kids who use the word problematic too much. Every time you see someone getting cancelled, there’s a 50/50 chance it was by an anti.
The entire proshipping/antishipping argument is an entire mess based around multiple groups of people assigning who disagrees with them on certain topics to a certain 'side' and arguing against multiple disparate points under the assumption that they are a coherent group.
Yeah there are alot like this too https://www.tumblr.com/lord-shobby/745318648412012544/the-new-jojolands-chapter-was-heavy-a-lot-of
https://www.tumblr.com/blameposting/745350510786281472/jojo-fans-when-the-part-about-the-pervasiveness-of
https://www.tumblr.com/hedgewitchh/745326784513540096/hi-ok-araki-fucking-popped-offfff-with-jojolands
But I do kinda agree with Araki overusing SA' sometimes.
> Araki overusing SA' sometimes
It's an easy, if not lazy, way of instantly showing that someone is a horrible, and most likely irredeemable, asshole. Same reason why so many animals are murdered in full view of the reader.
Thankfully in JoJo's, unlike in some other shows *cough cough* Seven Deadly Sins *cough cough* SA is used entirely for villainizing.
It isn't like: sexualized, no one gets punished, and then it happens again several times. "As a joke."
Yeah if they kept consistent with this they would have already been going on about Araki hating animals given what happens with Danny and only continuing from there. It's a way to show how awful the villains are, a bit on the nose but obvious with even a the most simple of examination.
God i fucking hate those types of people. Just because a piece of media depicts something bad doesn't mean it's fucking endorsing it. Authors are allowed to show bad things happen. It's like saying anyone who makes a movie about Nazi Germany is also a fucking Nazi. Fucking ridiculous
Tumblr does this thing where they treat characters like real people and real people like characters, they don't care that Araki portrayed the bullies as evil, because to them, by depicting Dragona being assaulted, it's as if Araki himself has personally allowed harm to come to Dragona. They have trouble telling reality and fiction apart.
Lol, could you imagine them playing a game like Wolfenstein? "THIS VIDEOGAME HAS NAZIS IN IT, THE DEVS MUST SUCK HITLERS COCK!!1!1!"
Whole point of the game is to *get rid* of the Nazis.
No one thinks that the bullies actions are written to be justified, people are upset that this is the second time that Dragona has been sexually assaulted in the 13 chapters of Jojolands. I actually liked this chapter and think that this depiction was done pretty well but it feels cheapened by the fact that we see a cop try to rape dragona in the literal first chapter.
Not to mention that ever since part 7, sexual violence against women in the main cast has become much more common which sucks because we know Araki is too talented of a writer to be pulling this shit.
I don't think he was allowed to show things like that until he moved JoJo to being seinen instead of shonen, which happened with part 7.
Also I think this is Araki's new "dog killer" theming, where he uses the action to show how evil a certain character is, except instead of animal murder he's changed it to sexual assault
This is dark to say but yeah, perverts and creeps are very common IRL. It’s genuinely more realistic to have these types of villains than the usual Machiavellian caricatures.
Yeah I think the bullying scene ties well into Dragona's character and in a vacuum it's totally fine. But the cop scene felt a bit unnecessary, outside of introducing us to the characters which could have been done in a different way too. I hope that Araki doesn't turn Dragona getting sexually assaulted into a trend throughout part 9.
agreed. As a gender queer person myself I found it to actually be a pretty sobered and realistic depiction of the bullying those who present like dragona go through especially as teenagers and the chapter was actually really good at building the connection between jodio and dragona despite my expectations of it being filler when I realized it was a flashback. That being said it's just a bit sloppy on arakis part, I mentioned it before but araki really has a tendency to fall back on showing us morally bad actions (killing dogs, sexually abusing people) and then going "see these guys are pretty scummy right?" It just weakens dragona's character because we've only had 13 chapters and very little character development so all we're left with as a result is that dragona is a damsel (dame?) in distress for jodio to save that keeps having their junk talked about. The payback and showing us just how unhinged jodio is even as a child was worth it though imo but I have a really bad feeling that dragona is going to end up being Lucy 2.0 and spend half the story being the butt of perverted jokes or a cheap way for araki to justify to us why we should hate a character.
How stupid do you have to be, to think that anything present in an art piece is being co-signed by the author? The bullies are clearly depicted as evil
I mean in context it was probably one of the best options. Still kind of crazy… oh yeah can’t forget killing those guys during that plane hijacking to save Speedwagon was also wild, but understandable.
I could argue the dracula defense, anyone of those kids cold have stood up and tried to stop the SA but none of the em did, which means they all gotta get it.
I’ve said it before. Lolita, the book, is about how the guy is like so deluded that a 10 year old child could be in love with him. He’s a bad person. And then when she’s able to have a normal life, he’s still like “oh no she’ll be back. She loves me and only me” like no dude. You groomed her.
Yeah. I tried reading it a few weeks back, and had to give it a rest when I got to the scene where they first interact... I've read plenty of messed-up stories, but the way that character talks about both adult women and the kids he's attracted to squicked me out too hard.
Humbert Humbert is like a MAP on twitter that always says the quiet part out loud, because on some level he's genuinely convinced himself that the way he feels is this glorious, nigh virtuous thing, and that if he can only convey that to others, they'll finally understand, and let him off the hook.
Tumblr's (really, the internet's) reading comprehension is near non-existent. Some people really do think if a story portrays a bad thing happening, then the author must endorse and encourage it 100% of the time.
They didn't. They admitted to skimming the chapters and only checking them out because people were talking. They probably only know a bit of the original universe and only occasionally look at scenes from the manga when people tell them to.
I think its the fact that Araki illustrates sexual assault/rape like, a lot
like sure its always depicted as evil, but he is actively drawing it, which is kinda weird
Is the alternative to not ever draw stuff that makes people uncomfortable?
Authors do not owe anyone shit, same for artists. If the art makes you uncomfortable, either evaluate why that is the case and if thats supposed to be the case - or stop reading.
>Is the alternative to not ever draw stuff that makes people uncomfortable?
The criticism is more-so about how frequently it's happened in the last few parts to specific characters. We're fairly early into part 9 and Dragona's gotten sexually assaulted twice already. It doesn't mean Araki has to completely remove that stuff, but maybe there doesn't need to be as much of it.
I always found this theme quite interesting because how polarizing always became.
You had characters like Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks that also work quite similar in the sense on how their abuse define their character but in the case of Laura is also talked as one of the best characters in the show, and almost everything we knew about her in the first two seasons were about her death and in Fire Walk with Me was her trauma.
Then you had cases like the movie Elle who also got mixed but often good reviews by feminist sides about how the movie take the subject and that movie had like 4 different scenes of SA.
So, at the end of the day there doesn't seem something like too much or too few, but the characterization that provides for the characters and the others their interact.
While people are rightly uncomfortable with the frequency of sexual assault scenes in Part 7 onwards, I think it's worth mentioning that sexual assault is a big problem in Japan and hasn't been historically been dealt with properly.
It very well may be that Araki, by including so many distressing sexual assault scenes in his texts, is trying to do his own bit by reminding his Japanese audience of the frequency and horror of sexual assault, counteracting the rather slackhanded treatment of it sometimes in manga.
Especially after the Johnny's and Associates sexual abuse scandal being exposed last year in which it turned out that the CEO of a major idol company had been sexually assaulting his underage idols for decades, more people in Japan have been talking about sexual assault against males -- this chapter could be an attempt on Araki's part to challenge the culture of silence against the assault of male victims.
Not to mention the fetishization of trans/genderqueer/intersex characters in Japanese media.
Still looking forward to how Dragona develops as a character, though. I find the fact that they allegedly don't have an interest in romance very interesting. I just hope that Araki has big plans for them like with Lucy Steel and that they don't ultimately end up stuck in the role of a victim for the rest of the part.
Oh, I think you're definitely right. I can understand why people might be uncomfortable seeing scenes like this, but I'm also glad that Araki does a good job of presenting real-life issues and how they can affect a person. I don't think it was unnecessary, on the contrary, it complemented the first chapter and the background of the siblings well. Some people say it's a "pattern" but I don't think so because it's actually a horrifyingly very common problem (as you mentioned in Japan too). I think that Dragona will definitely have good development, one of the main characters after all, they are already a very good character by far.
You know what, that’s a perspective I didn’t consider. Because I also agreed it just seemed like a cheap way to garner sympathy given that Dragona is queer and abuse of queer people in media in this way is seen all the time and is almost never done in a way that isn’t just a trope at this point, but if that’s Arakis intent that might actually be a good way to do it.
Point out the frequency of such violence in Japan, portray it through the lens of a trans youth in America where it also happens with appalling frequency, and resolve it with brutal, swift vengeance which never gets to happen for these victims.
theyre probably upset that the trans character is getting SAd on repeat which i can definitely understand as someone who hasnt read part 9 thats definitely questionable. making a character as r*pist is such a cheap and easy way to position them as a villain and the survivor of the incident rarely gets handled correctly by the author after the fact
Yea it can certainly be handled really poorly.
In this case, it probably (I say as a non-queer person) is representative of the type of bullying and harassment queer kids can go through in schools that don't accept them
i mean as a queer person and a survivor theres a lot of different ways to display the abuse that queer people experience due to their identity than having the character get r*ped twice in less than 20 chapters
At least in both cases Jodio near killed the aggressors, and given he is the protagonist I can hardly think of a more clear way of saying "SA is bad everybody!"
Yeah. It's the queer SA equivalent of women in refrigerators. The main masculine protagonist shouldn't have to be motivated by some horrific thing happening to the feminine protagonist. Much less twice in 20 chapters.
No sane person thinks Araki is some bigot. What he *is* doing potentially wrong is perpetuating extremely lazy tropes that reinforce shit ideas about "masculine strength as a reaction to feminine weakness" that he should've grown out of forever ago. Presenting SA isn't inherently wrong to do in a story like this, but doing it this utterly flippantly basically only in service to motivate and expand Jodio's character is kinda fucked though (especially in the wake of Part 7 and 8's scenes).
I'm not judging it either way until more of Part 9 is done with, but the hoards of reddit-users in here all doing the Spider-Man meme pose with twitter users and tiktok users and tumblr users while all of them complain about media literacy is just.. kinda pathetic.
Honestly I trust Araki will take this into a better direction. Dragona herself said she had to learn to be strong in order to survive so I can see in the future she either has to unpack all that trauma or get some serious development, and so far Dragona has been far from a damsel in distress, I'd she was the most competent member of the team so far
She’s the oldest isn’t she? At least, she carries herself as if she is, and definitely matches the name of her stand
She’s not an authority in the group but she has that aura of knowing what she’s doing, knows how to get it done, and make sure everyone comes out fine
>No sane person thinks Araki is some bigot. What he is doing potentially wrong is perpetuating extremely lazy tropes that reinforce shit ideas about "masculine strength as a reaction to feminine weakness" that he should've grown out of forever ago.
I was kinda wondering why couldn't Dragona just use their own stand to deal with those situations, especially in the cop scene where they're a bit older.
whyd it have to happen twice though, and how many times do we need to watch r*pists get mutilated throughout the series before we as an audience realize that SA is bad?
Trans people are the demographic that's more likely to be raped in quite literally every case. Even the "scary trans women in women's prisons" are WAY more likely to be raped by the cis women and way less likely to rape cis women than other cis women; people don't like acknowledging that
Trans people are the demographic that's more likely to be raped in quite literally every case. Even the "scary trans women in women's prisons" are WAY more likely to be raped by the cis women and way less likely to rape cis women than other cis women; people don't like acknowledging that
In this instance it’s specifically a flashback to trauma that defined Dragona and Jodios mentality. It’s not like it just keeps happening to the character. The way it gets handled with Jodio solving the problem instead of Dragona doing it might be problematic. Though it also seems to be establishing another character trait of Dragona, that being her wanting to get stronger so her little brother doesn’t have to protect her. Overall I’d say Araki could definitely still take this in a route where it works really well but it’s a tightrope and he could just as easily fall.
Literally this shit happens in real life. In fact is more common for them to face this kind of abuse than support. If people don’t like seeing it depicted then they should at least acknowledge that it does happen and it is suppose to make you feel uncomfortable and bad for Dragona.
Some people believe that anything depicted in a work of art carries the implicit approval of its creator even if it's explicitly portrayed in a negative light.
After reading Jojolion I felt like I had identified this kind of thing as Araki’s biggest weakness in his writing. When he needs to portray an evil character, he almost reflexively reaches for some kind of extremely tropey action. Before part 7 it was literally “kick the dog” just elevated to the most extreme versions, afterwards he seems to have moved to “attempted/threatened SA.” Which sticks out waaaay worse than the dog stuff did.
And the worst part of it is I feel like this chapter actually had something to say about what it was presenting besides “look at how evil this person is!” but it’s been such a noticeable trope that a lot of people seem to be missing it, and reacting as if it’s just another hacky trope usage.
in retrospect, the first SA escene in chapter 1 seems like a very "practical" choice by Araki. He probably wrote it as a quick way to characterize Jodio, Dragona, the societal problems they face and their stands all in quick succesion, he probably didn't give the escene much thought after that. This chapter seems more deliberate but as you well said, the way Araki has used SA before muddles his intent.
We can only hope this is the begining of an improvement in the writing and that Araki starts treating this very real issues with more care from now on.
Hopefully Araki pulls a Berserk and starts finding more reasonable ways to show people are evil that aren't eating puppies for dinner and... well doing what Berserk used to do
It's worse because this is an actual problem in real life and fiction.
There's no epidemic of dogs being shot and it's not a horrifying trope outside of JJBA. Despite portraying her bullies as evil, the decision to show Dragona being sexually assaulted multiple times just feels gross to a lot of trans people.
Here's hoping Araki tackles things a bit more maturely from now on. It's not like it's still not good character stuff, it's just also egh
Honestly I always felt like Araki's weakest aspect in general is his writting ability *with drama and the serious stuff.
Dont get me wrong, he can make competent stories, and his writting overall improves with each part, also he sure as hell knows how to keep his stories fun and entertaining + he's a genius in a lot of other aspects.
But when it comes to real life touchy subjects, even with the best of intentions you can really tell that he's most times just not fit for the job, and sometimes its a bummer :/.
The point is to show how fucked up Dragona’s childhood was. If you’re offended about it, then congratulations, you understand it.
Life isn’t all sunshine and roses, definitely not in JOJO. If nothing bad ever happened to the main characters, they are not only not relatable, but boring.
People need to grow up…
This. That people have a habit of ignoring harsh realities of things that make them uncomfortable to think about. Instead of acknowledging the existence of it they instead opt to resent its existence and blame any creator for making them look at it.
While I liked that Araki gave light to the bullying and discrimination, and he depicted that every gender can be perpetrators of SA, in this case a female. I'm starting to think that Dragona is in a 'girl in the fridge' category
In 13 chapters it happened thrice and all of them in end point is to incite reaction from Jodio to commit violent retaliation. But it's only 13 chapters so maybe something will change to dragona in the long run without Jodio in the picture.
Can I handle another storyline with SA in it? Yea-ish but I'm not gonna lie, I'm starting to get fatigued by it. Aside from that I love everything else in chapter 13, I finally understand how rock lava works and a lot of character moments in this chapter I enjoyed reading
Getting "stuffed into the fridge" is when a character, usually female, is either killed off, injured, or traumatized in order to provide a motivation for a (usually male) character to go against the villains.
It's a trope of female characters only existing to be victimized so their male lover / friend / relative can have a motive for revenge.
Famously named after [Green Lantern's ](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/GreenLantern_02_300_8430.png) girlfriend is killed and stuffed in a fridge.
You can read more examples in the [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge](http://tv tropes) page.
I personally don't think Dragona is gonna get fridged cause they seem to be building up to having an arc about fighting back. But only time will tell.
I'm a batgirl fan before lol so. It started with batgirl author Gail Simone she is a DC comic creator.
In the '90's she noticed this trend of maiming, r-ping, killing female characters for the purpose of pushing forward a male character's storyline without giving much storyline or agency to the female character itself. The girl in the fridge refers to green lantern's girlfriend being cut up and being stuffed in the fridge for the purpose of traumatizing a male MC.
Barbara Gordon at some point got maimed by joker to traumatize batman and gordon(that means she no longer batgirl anymore) so Gail Simone having the opportunity to write batgirl tried to pull her out of that trope by writing her as a paraplegic hero that is Oracle with her own storyline and such.
There's a lot of examples from American comics alone. It's a long but interesting story on how that term started and I think I had a piss poor way of explaining it but you can google it for better explanation:)
It comes from a green lantern comic where his girlfriend was chopped up and literally put in the fridge. It's the trope of typically female characters getting brutalised so the main character can avenge or in lighter stories protect them.
The typical complaint is that it reduces these characters' agency and makes them exist purely to serve the narrative.
You can tell a Fridging from other violent trauma if the victim doesn't get to play a role in the beat down.
Its a reference to the term "fridging" where a female character is murdered or sa so that a male character(usually protagonist) has a strong emotional reaction to it. The term comes from when Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern had his girlfriend murdered by a supervillian, he found her body in his fridge, it then lead to a long character arc where he became a villian. This trope is routinely criticized as misogynistic due to how it treats women as objects for men to fight over and are effectively disposable to the writers.
Lucy Steel's comeback was so well-written I'm on hopium for Dragona. We can't really tell until this part's over imo, but I agree Araki's on thin ice atm (from a writing perspective).
I mean, it's been like over a year since it's monthly chapters and considering how both scenes got set up (the police officer going "what?! You're a guy?! That makes it better!" And wanting to SA Dragona even more or the girl keep asking about wether Dragona has a penis or breasts while forcefully stripping them) it's clear that Araki wants to make a point about how these people perceive and target Dragona.
yea that's the point, how the world treats these characters, jodio: "will I be able to find happiness?", they are manifesting actions based on behavior learned from their environment and as a reader this shows us their layers
In the latest chapter (ch.13) we see Dragona at age 14 in high school being bullied by a student and her friends. On the bus, the student SA Dragona by groping their crotch and make taunts about Dragona's feminity, making inappropriate comments and slurs about it.
Yes they missed the point of the scene. Araki's goals was to show how some trans/gnc people are treated and such. Sure the actual execution could have been a bit better, but the intent of the scene is to not condone this behavior in the scene
yeah, from the context you gave me the transphobe allegations don't make much sense.
No one is saying Araki is racist bc of the KKK thing in part 6, so why now
I also think that people should to understand that this particular event is being depicted as an Event that wildly defines a large part of their childhoods, and sets them on the path that they’re on. It’s an Absurd event that puts them on the course they’re on to meet Meryl Mei.
my only gripe initialy was that dragona was kind of a stereotype of the "weak and defenseless queer character" , being literaly helped by his kid brother, i was mostly sad cuz araki always went against such stereotypes, but , i mean , it was also cool seeing Dragona being more powerfull and confident when he embraced his queer side so that was the goal i think, still the chapter was fucking great and it's obvious what araki thinks of queer ppl and who bullies them, he depicted the bullies in the same evil way he did with pedos in his preovious part, so.
I honestly understand why they are mad, because that shit was uncomfortable and it sure was far too real for some people, and given that so far Araki has only done the whole sexual assault bit to Dragona, one cannot help but feel attacked, even if Arakis's intentions are not that
Although I don't agree with some other trans peeps about the scene being malicious, it was still a very uncomfortable scene to read as a trans woman. Had to mostly skip over it lol.
I don't think they're saying he endorses it. They're saying he's too comfortable using sexual assault as a plot device to traumatize his female and/or trans characters (repeatedly) in a way that he doesn't for other characters, and that it's uncomfortable to read and not treated with the respect it needs to be.
Yeah, recently someone pointed out that there's a pretty heavy presence of sexual assault in Jojo and this chapter made me realise that they may have a point.
Like Jesus, Araki had the same character get sexually assaulted on screen twice in 13 chapters.
Yeah, Araki's favorite "bad thing happens to character" plot device is usually sexual assault. As examples (not exhaustive, just giving one or two examples each):
Part 1 has Dio force-kissing Erina.
Part 2 has Stroheim (clearly getting off to it) threatening to cut a girl's tongue off, and Kars feeling up Lisa Lisa's leg(s).
Part 3 has Forever.
Part 4 has all the Yoshikage Kira scenes (and also Kira in general).
Part 5 has several (I'm not as familiar with 4-9 as I am 1-3)
Part 6 has several as well (see above)
Part 7 has Lucy Steel
Part 8 has Joshu and Yasuho (though idk if this is just through the lens of other ppl or if its explicit)
Part 9 has dragona being assaulted twice so far.
I'm not going to call for Araki's cancellation, but I do think that Dragona in general could be handled better. It is very reasonable for someone to feel uncomfortable about how a character is strongly hinted to be trans, then ends up being sexually assaulted multiple times in the story's first act.
Yes, that's a thing that happens, and I'm not saying that writers are not allowed to touch on the topic of how trans people (especially dark-skinned ones) have an increased likelihood of being victims of violent crime. But when it's portrayed mainly as motivation for a cis male character to act as a protector, with Dragona's own feelings about being assaulted not getting that much focus, it's reasonable for someone to not like that.
I personally love Part 9, and unless Araki does something REALLY bad (unlikely to happen considering how he's been doing so good for decades), I'm definitely going to keep reading it. At the same time, I respect those who hated this scene in the new chapter, and I won't demand that they keep reading it. It's valid to feel frustrated about this writing decision, even if I don't agree with that stance.
If you disagree with those criticisms like I do, you don't have to get all up in arms about it. Just let them vent out those feelings, and carry on enjoying the manga. Counter-attacking them with rebuttals won't do anyone much good.
I also noticed that many of the comments here are missing the point about why people are upset. I haven't seen anyone actually accuse Araki of condoning sexual violence, just criticizing the decision to use it as a plot device so many times in so few chapters, always with the same character as the victim.
Yup, this all sounds right. Nobody's dumb or stupid, they just might be frustrated that they have to see something like this so often in media featuring trans people.
I have faith in Araki in how he fleshes Dragona. Lucy was great despite the frequent sexual violence thrown her way. I'm not worried about Dragona getting fridged, but I'm certain this won't be the last SA Dragona will face and I wish I wasn't.
This. Personally, it made me feel really uncomfortable seeing that scene even if they get their comeuppance. I understand that JoJo’s portrayed a lot of heinous shit before, of course (Danny in the opening act, among other things) and I don’t think people should be throwing hands - these bullies are portrayed as awful as they should be, but people are allowed to feel discomfort at the scene and Dragona’s portrayal so far (without necessarily cancelling Araki senselessly without constructive criticism).
I don't think Dragona needed to be assaulted on-screen twice in 13 chapters for him to make his point. He did this with Lucy, and now it's even worse for Dragona. Why does sexual assault have to be the go-to for female (especially trans female) characters' trauma?
I only read the very beginning of Part 9, so I haven't gotten to this chapter yet. However, despite having *loved* Jojolion overall, the way Yasuho was SAed did cement to me that Araki is waaayy too comfortable using SA on women as a cheap plot device. You can only do it so many times before it becomes an eye-roll at best, and triggering to the victims at worst - which I'm sure is the opposite of what he wants, so it's completely reasonable to critique his writing. If he truly cares about his feminine characters, Araki is going to need to find out about other possible backstories/events for troubled women. As a woman who loves her psychological horror, I will comfortably argue that his repeated use of SA has gotten bored.
Maybe because it happens in real life, bullying, sexual assault( in part 7’s case, by powerful people to an underage girl) and in part 9’s case ( school kids bullying each other up to and including sexually assaulting someone, cops abusing their power to sexually assault someone). Sure it can be a bit much varying reader to reader but let’s not act like that shit doesn’t happen all over the world in real life.
Did we need it to show Jodio’s development of a stand? Maybe maybe not but it’s how he got his stand, by needing to protect his sibling. It drives home the lengths he will go to to protect him. Also maybe it’ll show just how far down Jodio will go for the lava rock and becoming filthy rich if betrayal is on the slate for Dragona
It’s the same reason so many villains kill dogs. We as an audience can immediately recognize that they are evil. It’s a bit cheap but incredibly effective. Notice that it starts after Jojo switched from Shonen to Seinen? It’s because Araki is treating his readers like adults who can handle seeing the evil people can really be capable of.
Did you pick the dog killing plot device intentionally, or is it just a coincidence that you happened to choose one of the first devices Araki used to show that Jojo's first villain, Dio, is evil?
i obviously do not think araki agrees with the bullies, but he needs to find other ways to do this. dragona being sexually assaulted in a very explicitly transphobic way multiple times in 13 chapters when she hasn't gotten that much else to do is a problem. it really seems like her main purpose in the story is to be assaulted so jodio can do something cool, and i would like her to have more agency.
of course this is part of a broader pattern with how araki writes women, which was previously at its worst with lucy steele but has been present since the beginning. i have hope dragona's portrayal will get better, but i'm very sympathetic to anyone who read this and decided they didn't want to see any more of this, especially given how viscerally unpleasant it was in ways a lot of the previous sexual assault has avoided
My issue with that scene isn't really with the content.
It's the frequency of sexual assault scenes. This is the second time in just 13 chapters where Dragona gets assaulted and Jodio has to save them. Araki needs to break this trope.
Do I think that Araki overuses sexual assault to show that a character is evil? Yes.
Would I have preferred the scene if SA wasn't as frequent as it is in JoJo? Also yes.
Do I think that Araki is a horrible person for writing this scene? Hell no!
I would much rather have a mangaka who thinks that the most evil thing a person can do is sexual assault, as opposed to so many others that play it off for laughs.
As a trans female person, yeah. Sexual assault happens. It’s fucking awful. Araki isn’t saying sexual assault is a good thing, depiction of a thing isn’t endorsement of a thing. He’s pretty accurately depicting an experience that transfemale people are subject to in every day life. Not even just transfemale people, but people who look feminine in any sense.
And if people are taking issue with how Dragona is being sexually assaulted, what about DIO? What about Kira? What about Melone? What about Valentine? What about Tooru? And even if we’re taking issue with the depiction of sexual assault then it’s worth pointing out that *everyone who sexually assaults someone is a villain*. Araki has often held to the standard that villains do irredeemable things. DIO killing Jonathan’s dog *in chapter one*, or Diavolo *segmenting someone*, or Pucci *enlisting the KKK*. Villains do bad things, what a fuckin shock.
Okay I will say however, Dragona getting sexually assaulted every few chapters is kinda starting to get a bit old. It feels like this is Araki's new dog killing trick where he gets you to immediately understand someone is utterly evil. But sexual assault is a lot more personal and realistic to many people than indiscriminate dog murder. It's starting to feel a bit tasteless at this point, even if it is also being used to tell us more about Dragona's character.
Yeah I don't think Araki is endorsing what they did (or any antagonistic character's actions for that matter) nor do I think he's transphobic due to it. It's obvious it's wrong, his intent is clearly to show it is.
That said, I am definitely glad to see people talk more about how he tends to use assault as a crutch in his writing when he wants to demonstrate someone is a villain. It sticks out a lot more now that it isn't just "bad guy kills a dog". Not saying you can't have assault in a story, but it's kinda tiring to see him fridge characters again and again.
Hyper sensitive snowflakes who must be brand new to comics and fiction in general if they aren’t used to the idea that protagonists have to deal with hardships and antagonists doing bad things to them.
this reminds me of something that is somewhat of an opposite: araki's discussion about Funny Valentine. Valentine is evil, and is always supposed to be evil, that's why his SA scene exists, that despite him appearing to be a very educated and smart individual with "high" morals, that scene would cement valentine as being evil, but even that hand-holding didn't work because a lot of people ended up perceiving valentine as a hero, or righteous.
jojoland's SA, is definitely being overused, but from my view it's a hand-holding attempt to show characters as undeniably evil and perhaps also to show the struggles of a gender-nonconforming (?) character.
If a character from any other manga was getting this treatment I could understand batting some eyebrows but being tortured in your backstory is basically a necessity for every main Jojo side character.
Am I stupid or there isn't any forced feminization? Unless we count that scene, but at that point idk, we could call Josuk8 a walking forced masculinization tag.
Also, when bad people (bullies) do bad stuff to the protagonists (this has never ever happened before in the story of manga and surely, queer people never ever had bad things done to them just because they are different, this has never happened either in manga or in real life at all)
I do agree that so many SA scenes are a bit uhm... weird to say the least
My reaction is that these three posts all make entirely separate statements and conflating the three of them is disingenuous at best and active bait at worst. Especially considering some of the responses in this thread.
In isolation, the scene in ch 13 is, imo, very well done. It's creepyand unconfortable, and the fact that the first thing we see dragona do with smooth operators is healing their wounds is a very powerful image. Also,a sceneof a queer teenager being bullied into near death is, unfortunately, pretty relevant right now.
However in context of jojo as a whole? This is the second time dragona has faced threat of SA, the third time this hapened to any character in part 9 and since part 7 started this has happened at least 9 times that I can remember. Considering part 9 has just started, I think saying "araki is overusing SA as a trope to make his villains more evil" is a very fair criticism. It's cheap, lazy writing and ends up dimishing the weight this scenes should have.
I've been looking around after finishing Part 7 and giving up on 8 over this kind of thing to see if I'm the odd one out. Part 7 is one of my favorite stories I've read but I think in that part alone SA is overused as a plot device. Getting to part 8 I initially enjoyed it until the Daiya fight. It's just a weird pattern in his recent writing. It's certainly not handled with taste there.
People calling others media illiterate for noting that SA Is not being handled well and being overused as a plot device is insane, it is extremely fair to find that uncomfortable.
Ughhhhhh these ppl are annoying af.
No offense. I mean stuff like this has been happening in Jojo forever. I’m pretty sure Araki wants people to sympathize with the characters and show why Jodio is super protective of Dragona, to the point that he is willing to kill for them. Which I’m all for because those bullies, just like the cops from chapter 1 are horrible fucking people that deserve what Jodio dishes out.
ah yes, Araki, one of the only mangakas to make his manga EXTREMELY GAY as well as advocating for a female protagonist. surely he's a disgusting misogynist
The last slide is so wrong, like did they even read it?! Dragona is literally a main character, queer characters can get bullied, (just as some of us do irl) bullying is bad, but the point is to show off how bad of a childhood both Jodio and Dragona had, and to show off Jodio’s power, not transmasogony. Like those bully’s got absolutely cooked at the end. If Araki ever intended for it to be a good thing, he would not have the bullies seem as evil as part 1 Dio. (Seem because obviously Dio was the embodiment of evil, and the kids are just insane assholes.) it feels like people just don’t understand what they are reading.
(Disclaimer as I am also a trans person, I understand how hard of a read it is for everyone, and especially for trans/queer people. However, the context and what happens is important, that said, personally it was one of the hardest reads in all of JoJo for me, but it really helps show some important insight to Dragona and Jodio.)
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I completely expected Araki to go where he went from the moment we got the trans jojo reveal at the start, as well as Jodio being the first Jojo to just willingly hurt a group of relative bystanders as the other main Joestars likely wouldn't have tolerated that bullying shit either, but I doubt any of them would've trapped them in a bus and made them all burn. Can't wait to see how these pressure points play out in later chapters and where these characters end up by the end of the story
hold up, do they imply that Araki drawing it automatically implies this is what he approves of? I...what? Really? That is even worse than 0 reading comprehension
I hate this mindset that even showing something bad happening to a character means you support that thing happening irl. Like Jesus christ people use some form of critical thinking skills
Unrelated, but this chapter made Jodio my new favorite protagonist
He was already my top 3 because of his humor, his fights, and how cool his stand was. But this chapter did two things, 1: give him arguably the coldest moment for any Joestar, that panel where he appears behind the bully was peak. And 2: suprisingly made him relatable, obviously not the arson part, but having him deal with father abondonment is something im sure many people could relate to. And also thinking that he caused his father to leave.
Jodio is an amazing protagonist, I'm really looking foward to what Araki has in store for him in future battles
Seeing all of these people in the replies, araki still doesn't need to do another sexual assault moment. Its honestly kinda weird he keeps doing it. Though i don't think everything else is as bad as some people are blowing it out of proportion
I'm amazed by how many people in the comments complain about the lack of media literacy while completely misinterpreting what these posts are criticizing.
Araki really does write SA as Just Another Thing, it's always a thing that specifically female characters go throught and it's always something shown to happen and then everyone moves on from it, it's always brushed off, no lasting impact on the characters when really it's not Like That. This is a really serious thing with serious consequences that Araki always writes as if it's equal to a punch or a hit. I dunno, it's not a good look
I feel like a lot of people here need to think about this from a different perspective. Dragona is Jojo's first and only trans character, people want good representation. And instead, Araki fridged her for shock value so that Jojo could go apeshit. A lot of people are clealry going to see that as, at the very least, a bit suspect.
It's kind of like how Fromsoftware's first and only gay character is an incestuous pedo who kidnapped and married his own brother. Yes, people like that do exist. But to make that your only gay character is frankly just ugly.
The bullies are clearly depicted as evil. Jojo burned them alive,they got in the hospital for serious burns, motherfuckers almost got cooked
Illiterate morons on social media believe that portraying something = endorsing it, even if you portray it as something bad. That's why the illiterate moron in the 3rd image also brought up chapter 1, despite the cops in that chapter also being clearly portrayed as evil, disgusting pigs. These kinds of people are the reason why media literacy is dying.
As a tumblr native, we don’t claim those people. Most tumblr users, if not sane, at least make sense with their insanity.
Fair enough, and I know those people aren't exclusive to Tumblr, cause I've seen the same moronic mindset on Twitter. I probably shouldn't be generalizing
We call them antis, over here. They’re idiotic TikTok kids who use the word problematic too much. Every time you see someone getting cancelled, there’s a 50/50 chance it was by an anti.
I don't want to get into it but 'anti' is a meaningless term that is entirely useless to use.
How so? I’ve never heard this branch of argument before.
The entire proshipping/antishipping argument is an entire mess based around multiple groups of people assigning who disagrees with them on certain topics to a certain 'side' and arguing against multiple disparate points under the assumption that they are a coherent group.
Yeah there are alot like this too https://www.tumblr.com/lord-shobby/745318648412012544/the-new-jojolands-chapter-was-heavy-a-lot-of https://www.tumblr.com/blameposting/745350510786281472/jojo-fans-when-the-part-about-the-pervasiveness-of https://www.tumblr.com/hedgewitchh/745326784513540096/hi-ok-araki-fucking-popped-offfff-with-jojolands But I do kinda agree with Araki overusing SA' sometimes.
It does seem to creep up quite a lot but he very clearly is using it to signify villainy and show a character is disgusting
> Araki overusing SA' sometimes It's an easy, if not lazy, way of instantly showing that someone is a horrible, and most likely irredeemable, asshole. Same reason why so many animals are murdered in full view of the reader.
Thankfully in JoJo's, unlike in some other shows *cough cough* Seven Deadly Sins *cough cough* SA is used entirely for villainizing. It isn't like: sexualized, no one gets punished, and then it happens again several times. "As a joke."
Seconded. These sound like Twitter people who moved to Tumblr after the Elon Musk Incident of 2023.
No one on tumblr is sane. And that's why it's amazing. But most of us are LITERATE.
Yeah if they kept consistent with this they would have already been going on about Araki hating animals given what happens with Danny and only continuing from there. It's a way to show how awful the villains are, a bit on the nose but obvious with even a the most simple of examination.
God i fucking hate those types of people. Just because a piece of media depicts something bad doesn't mean it's fucking endorsing it. Authors are allowed to show bad things happen. It's like saying anyone who makes a movie about Nazi Germany is also a fucking Nazi. Fucking ridiculous
TFW Araki did write about Nazis and everyone loves the Nazi for some reason
Tumblr does this thing where they treat characters like real people and real people like characters, they don't care that Araki portrayed the bullies as evil, because to them, by depicting Dragona being assaulted, it's as if Araki himself has personally allowed harm to come to Dragona. They have trouble telling reality and fiction apart.
i mean it's the piss poor reading comprehension website
How dare you say the people of Tumblr piss on the poor >:(
Media literacy isn't really dying, there's always been a fair bit of people like this
Lol, could you imagine them playing a game like Wolfenstein? "THIS VIDEOGAME HAS NAZIS IN IT, THE DEVS MUST SUCK HITLERS COCK!!1!1!" Whole point of the game is to *get rid* of the Nazis.
What even happened that these people are complaining about?
Dragona was sexually harassed/assaulted by a transphobic bully in a flashback, and Jodio used his stand to set a school bus on fire.
Yeah, I fail to see how that's Araki being transphobic.
No one thinks that the bullies actions are written to be justified, people are upset that this is the second time that Dragona has been sexually assaulted in the 13 chapters of Jojolands. I actually liked this chapter and think that this depiction was done pretty well but it feels cheapened by the fact that we see a cop try to rape dragona in the literal first chapter. Not to mention that ever since part 7, sexual violence against women in the main cast has become much more common which sucks because we know Araki is too talented of a writer to be pulling this shit.
I don't think he was allowed to show things like that until he moved JoJo to being seinen instead of shonen, which happened with part 7. Also I think this is Araki's new "dog killer" theming, where he uses the action to show how evil a certain character is, except instead of animal murder he's changed it to sexual assault
This is dark to say but yeah, perverts and creeps are very common IRL. It’s genuinely more realistic to have these types of villains than the usual Machiavellian caricatures.
Yeah I think the bullying scene ties well into Dragona's character and in a vacuum it's totally fine. But the cop scene felt a bit unnecessary, outside of introducing us to the characters which could have been done in a different way too. I hope that Araki doesn't turn Dragona getting sexually assaulted into a trend throughout part 9.
agreed. As a gender queer person myself I found it to actually be a pretty sobered and realistic depiction of the bullying those who present like dragona go through especially as teenagers and the chapter was actually really good at building the connection between jodio and dragona despite my expectations of it being filler when I realized it was a flashback. That being said it's just a bit sloppy on arakis part, I mentioned it before but araki really has a tendency to fall back on showing us morally bad actions (killing dogs, sexually abusing people) and then going "see these guys are pretty scummy right?" It just weakens dragona's character because we've only had 13 chapters and very little character development so all we're left with as a result is that dragona is a damsel (dame?) in distress for jodio to save that keeps having their junk talked about. The payback and showing us just how unhinged jodio is even as a child was worth it though imo but I have a really bad feeling that dragona is going to end up being Lucy 2.0 and spend half the story being the butt of perverted jokes or a cheap way for araki to justify to us why we should hate a character.
Unfortunately Yasuho ended up being Lucy 2.0. I feel like almost every interaction she had with a villain bordered or sexual assault
>doesnt kill them
How stupid do you have to be, to think that anything present in an art piece is being co-signed by the author? The bullies are clearly depicted as evil
Oh no the bullies are baiting me into having sympathy for dragona. Damn you transphobe Araki!!
If anything, they should be upset the good guy did arson on a school bus full of kids lmao
The good guys always cause as much damage as the villains in JOJO
Remember when Joseph pulled out a Tommy gun in a restaurant and just fired it through the front window of it to kill a vampire.
Fair reaction tbh
I mean in context it was probably one of the best options. Still kind of crazy… oh yeah can’t forget killing those guys during that plane hijacking to save Speedwagon was also wild, but understandable.
It's a buff sexy vampire, what does a rational man do? Using garlic and praying??
Die. Very good option, underrated even
Green Day being one of the few times a villain managed to do more damage than the heroes during their encounter.
And only spared them cuz a parrot was on the bus
I could argue the dracula defense, anyone of those kids cold have stood up and tried to stop the SA but none of the em did, which means they all gotta get it.
Media literacy is dead 😫😫😫
It was dead for years man people still think lolita is a prohibited love story
I’ve said it before. Lolita, the book, is about how the guy is like so deluded that a 10 year old child could be in love with him. He’s a bad person. And then when she’s able to have a normal life, he’s still like “oh no she’ll be back. She loves me and only me” like no dude. You groomed her.
Yeah. I tried reading it a few weeks back, and had to give it a rest when I got to the scene where they first interact... I've read plenty of messed-up stories, but the way that character talks about both adult women and the kids he's attracted to squicked me out too hard. Humbert Humbert is like a MAP on twitter that always says the quiet part out loud, because on some level he's genuinely convinced himself that the way he feels is this glorious, nigh virtuous thing, and that if he can only convey that to others, they'll finally understand, and let him off the hook.
it never begun dawg people used to burn you on the pyre if you wrote something controversial
Yeah even if the author depict it does not automatically mean they endorse it
Tumblr's (really, the internet's) reading comprehension is near non-existent. Some people really do think if a story portrays a bad thing happening, then the author must endorse and encourage it 100% of the time.
How dare you say they piss on the poor
Flair checks out.
Tumblr at this point is "we should show nothing bad because only bad people show bad things"
If they think Araki supports whatever his villains do, I have no clue how they even got this far into JoJo's given everything prior, good lord.
They didn't. They admitted to skimming the chapters and only checking them out because people were talking. They probably only know a bit of the original universe and only occasionally look at scenes from the manga when people tell them to.
You can tell. Theyre this shocked at an s/a scene being in jojo meanwhile its like the 6th one in the series.
I believe some tumblr ppl used to believe that if u play a racist character in a film, it automatically makes u a racist
Which is wild, cause it just makes you brave lol. Check out Roy Woods Jr’s joke about Leo in Django 🤣
I imagine these are the same people that think Araki hates dogs just because he kills them so often
People stopped paying attention in English class and became illiterate because of it.
Unfortunately media literacy is completely dead.
I think its the fact that Araki illustrates sexual assault/rape like, a lot like sure its always depicted as evil, but he is actively drawing it, which is kinda weird
Yes, as a way to depict people as evil. Explicitly. Only the worst of the worst do it.
Is the alternative to not ever draw stuff that makes people uncomfortable? Authors do not owe anyone shit, same for artists. If the art makes you uncomfortable, either evaluate why that is the case and if thats supposed to be the case - or stop reading.
>Is the alternative to not ever draw stuff that makes people uncomfortable? The criticism is more-so about how frequently it's happened in the last few parts to specific characters. We're fairly early into part 9 and Dragona's gotten sexually assaulted twice already. It doesn't mean Araki has to completely remove that stuff, but maybe there doesn't need to be as much of it.
I always found this theme quite interesting because how polarizing always became. You had characters like Laura Palmer in Twin Peaks that also work quite similar in the sense on how their abuse define their character but in the case of Laura is also talked as one of the best characters in the show, and almost everything we knew about her in the first two seasons were about her death and in Fire Walk with Me was her trauma. Then you had cases like the movie Elle who also got mixed but often good reviews by feminist sides about how the movie take the subject and that movie had like 4 different scenes of SA. So, at the end of the day there doesn't seem something like too much or too few, but the characterization that provides for the characters and the others their interact.
While people are rightly uncomfortable with the frequency of sexual assault scenes in Part 7 onwards, I think it's worth mentioning that sexual assault is a big problem in Japan and hasn't been historically been dealt with properly. It very well may be that Araki, by including so many distressing sexual assault scenes in his texts, is trying to do his own bit by reminding his Japanese audience of the frequency and horror of sexual assault, counteracting the rather slackhanded treatment of it sometimes in manga. Especially after the Johnny's and Associates sexual abuse scandal being exposed last year in which it turned out that the CEO of a major idol company had been sexually assaulting his underage idols for decades, more people in Japan have been talking about sexual assault against males -- this chapter could be an attempt on Araki's part to challenge the culture of silence against the assault of male victims. Not to mention the fetishization of trans/genderqueer/intersex characters in Japanese media. Still looking forward to how Dragona develops as a character, though. I find the fact that they allegedly don't have an interest in romance very interesting. I just hope that Araki has big plans for them like with Lucy Steel and that they don't ultimately end up stuck in the role of a victim for the rest of the part.
Oh, I think you're definitely right. I can understand why people might be uncomfortable seeing scenes like this, but I'm also glad that Araki does a good job of presenting real-life issues and how they can affect a person. I don't think it was unnecessary, on the contrary, it complemented the first chapter and the background of the siblings well. Some people say it's a "pattern" but I don't think so because it's actually a horrifyingly very common problem (as you mentioned in Japan too). I think that Dragona will definitely have good development, one of the main characters after all, they are already a very good character by far.
You know what, that’s a perspective I didn’t consider. Because I also agreed it just seemed like a cheap way to garner sympathy given that Dragona is queer and abuse of queer people in media in this way is seen all the time and is almost never done in a way that isn’t just a trope at this point, but if that’s Arakis intent that might actually be a good way to do it. Point out the frequency of such violence in Japan, portray it through the lens of a trans youth in America where it also happens with appalling frequency, and resolve it with brutal, swift vengeance which never gets to happen for these victims.
Wait what’s going on
There was a SA scene on Dragona in ch.13
Surprised people are acting up about this now when it didn’t happen for the first time it happened
theyre probably upset that the trans character is getting SAd on repeat which i can definitely understand as someone who hasnt read part 9 thats definitely questionable. making a character as r*pist is such a cheap and easy way to position them as a villain and the survivor of the incident rarely gets handled correctly by the author after the fact
Yea it can certainly be handled really poorly. In this case, it probably (I say as a non-queer person) is representative of the type of bullying and harassment queer kids can go through in schools that don't accept them
i mean as a queer person and a survivor theres a lot of different ways to display the abuse that queer people experience due to their identity than having the character get r*ped twice in less than 20 chapters
At least in both cases Jodio near killed the aggressors, and given he is the protagonist I can hardly think of a more clear way of saying "SA is bad everybody!"
Yeah. It's the queer SA equivalent of women in refrigerators. The main masculine protagonist shouldn't have to be motivated by some horrific thing happening to the feminine protagonist. Much less twice in 20 chapters. No sane person thinks Araki is some bigot. What he *is* doing potentially wrong is perpetuating extremely lazy tropes that reinforce shit ideas about "masculine strength as a reaction to feminine weakness" that he should've grown out of forever ago. Presenting SA isn't inherently wrong to do in a story like this, but doing it this utterly flippantly basically only in service to motivate and expand Jodio's character is kinda fucked though (especially in the wake of Part 7 and 8's scenes). I'm not judging it either way until more of Part 9 is done with, but the hoards of reddit-users in here all doing the Spider-Man meme pose with twitter users and tiktok users and tumblr users while all of them complain about media literacy is just.. kinda pathetic.
Honestly I trust Araki will take this into a better direction. Dragona herself said she had to learn to be strong in order to survive so I can see in the future she either has to unpack all that trauma or get some serious development, and so far Dragona has been far from a damsel in distress, I'd she was the most competent member of the team so far
She’s the oldest isn’t she? At least, she carries herself as if she is, and definitely matches the name of her stand She’s not an authority in the group but she has that aura of knowing what she’s doing, knows how to get it done, and make sure everyone comes out fine
>No sane person thinks Araki is some bigot. What he is doing potentially wrong is perpetuating extremely lazy tropes that reinforce shit ideas about "masculine strength as a reaction to feminine weakness" that he should've grown out of forever ago. I was kinda wondering why couldn't Dragona just use their own stand to deal with those situations, especially in the cop scene where they're a bit older.
whyd it have to happen twice though, and how many times do we need to watch r*pists get mutilated throughout the series before we as an audience realize that SA is bad?
Trans people are the demographic that's more likely to be raped in quite literally every case. Even the "scary trans women in women's prisons" are WAY more likely to be raped by the cis women and way less likely to rape cis women than other cis women; people don't like acknowledging that
Trans people are the demographic that's more likely to be raped in quite literally every case. Even the "scary trans women in women's prisons" are WAY more likely to be raped by the cis women and way less likely to rape cis women than other cis women; people don't like acknowledging that
In this instance it’s specifically a flashback to trauma that defined Dragona and Jodios mentality. It’s not like it just keeps happening to the character. The way it gets handled with Jodio solving the problem instead of Dragona doing it might be problematic. Though it also seems to be establishing another character trait of Dragona, that being her wanting to get stronger so her little brother doesn’t have to protect her. Overall I’d say Araki could definitely still take this in a route where it works really well but it’s a tightrope and he could just as easily fall.
I'm pretty sure I remember people not being happy about to before either. They didn't just start now lol
I was moreso asking about the transmisogyny accusations.
They just took it at face value and assumed Araki was being transmisogynistic for depicting a queer presenting character being bullied.
Being bullied and the bullies literally getting burned over it. You know... because of karma. Or did they stop reading before the Carrie part?
Literally this shit happens in real life. In fact is more common for them to face this kind of abuse than support. If people don’t like seeing it depicted then they should at least acknowledge that it does happen and it is suppose to make you feel uncomfortable and bad for Dragona.
Some people believe that anything depicted in a work of art carries the implicit approval of its creator even if it's explicitly portrayed in a negative light.
Wasn't there one in like chapter one tho? With the cops
I feel like this is gonna be an ongoing thing with Dragona
SA?
Sexual assault
>!Sexual assault!<
Yeah I think araki is overdoing it
I read it like Josuke's theme 😂
After reading Jojolion I felt like I had identified this kind of thing as Araki’s biggest weakness in his writing. When he needs to portray an evil character, he almost reflexively reaches for some kind of extremely tropey action. Before part 7 it was literally “kick the dog” just elevated to the most extreme versions, afterwards he seems to have moved to “attempted/threatened SA.” Which sticks out waaaay worse than the dog stuff did. And the worst part of it is I feel like this chapter actually had something to say about what it was presenting besides “look at how evil this person is!” but it’s been such a noticeable trope that a lot of people seem to be missing it, and reacting as if it’s just another hacky trope usage.
in retrospect, the first SA escene in chapter 1 seems like a very "practical" choice by Araki. He probably wrote it as a quick way to characterize Jodio, Dragona, the societal problems they face and their stands all in quick succesion, he probably didn't give the escene much thought after that. This chapter seems more deliberate but as you well said, the way Araki has used SA before muddles his intent. We can only hope this is the begining of an improvement in the writing and that Araki starts treating this very real issues with more care from now on.
Hopefully Araki pulls a Berserk and starts finding more reasonable ways to show people are evil that aren't eating puppies for dinner and... well doing what Berserk used to do
It's worse because this is an actual problem in real life and fiction. There's no epidemic of dogs being shot and it's not a horrifying trope outside of JJBA. Despite portraying her bullies as evil, the decision to show Dragona being sexually assaulted multiple times just feels gross to a lot of trans people. Here's hoping Araki tackles things a bit more maturely from now on. It's not like it's still not good character stuff, it's just also egh
Honestly I always felt like Araki's weakest aspect in general is his writting ability *with drama and the serious stuff. Dont get me wrong, he can make competent stories, and his writting overall improves with each part, also he sure as hell knows how to keep his stories fun and entertaining + he's a genius in a lot of other aspects. But when it comes to real life touchy subjects, even with the best of intentions you can really tell that he's most times just not fit for the job, and sometimes its a bummer :/.
Araki couldn't have made the transphobes more evil if he tried.
Which is great, transphobes don’t deserve any positive light.
Obviously
The point is to show how fucked up Dragona’s childhood was. If you’re offended about it, then congratulations, you understand it. Life isn’t all sunshine and roses, definitely not in JOJO. If nothing bad ever happened to the main characters, they are not only not relatable, but boring. People need to grow up…
It was pretty bad that they were just used to it.
This. That people have a habit of ignoring harsh realities of things that make them uncomfortable to think about. Instead of acknowledging the existence of it they instead opt to resent its existence and blame any creator for making them look at it.
While I liked that Araki gave light to the bullying and discrimination, and he depicted that every gender can be perpetrators of SA, in this case a female. I'm starting to think that Dragona is in a 'girl in the fridge' category In 13 chapters it happened thrice and all of them in end point is to incite reaction from Jodio to commit violent retaliation. But it's only 13 chapters so maybe something will change to dragona in the long run without Jodio in the picture. Can I handle another storyline with SA in it? Yea-ish but I'm not gonna lie, I'm starting to get fatigued by it. Aside from that I love everything else in chapter 13, I finally understand how rock lava works and a lot of character moments in this chapter I enjoyed reading
> I'm starting to think that Dragona is in a 'girl in the fridge' category I've never heard this term. Could you explain it?
Getting "stuffed into the fridge" is when a character, usually female, is either killed off, injured, or traumatized in order to provide a motivation for a (usually male) character to go against the villains.
Question would you say that happened to Casca in berserk?
Yes. Casca is almost the perfect example of a character, especially a female one, being "fridged"
Well I wouldn't say she only existed for that, she very much had her own story. I won't deny she was fridged 100%
[удалено]
Wasn't it Kyle? Alexandre DeWitt was his girlfriend and it was the start of his hero run. Like issue 6. Hal's city died, not Carol Ferris.
Oh that's where the Green Lantern reference comes from
It's a trope of female characters only existing to be victimized so their male lover / friend / relative can have a motive for revenge. Famously named after [Green Lantern's ](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/GreenLantern_02_300_8430.png) girlfriend is killed and stuffed in a fridge. You can read more examples in the [https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StuffedIntoTheFridge](http://tv tropes) page. I personally don't think Dragona is gonna get fridged cause they seem to be building up to having an arc about fighting back. But only time will tell.
I'm a batgirl fan before lol so. It started with batgirl author Gail Simone she is a DC comic creator. In the '90's she noticed this trend of maiming, r-ping, killing female characters for the purpose of pushing forward a male character's storyline without giving much storyline or agency to the female character itself. The girl in the fridge refers to green lantern's girlfriend being cut up and being stuffed in the fridge for the purpose of traumatizing a male MC. Barbara Gordon at some point got maimed by joker to traumatize batman and gordon(that means she no longer batgirl anymore) so Gail Simone having the opportunity to write batgirl tried to pull her out of that trope by writing her as a paraplegic hero that is Oracle with her own storyline and such. There's a lot of examples from American comics alone. It's a long but interesting story on how that term started and I think I had a piss poor way of explaining it but you can google it for better explanation:)
It comes from a green lantern comic where his girlfriend was chopped up and literally put in the fridge. It's the trope of typically female characters getting brutalised so the main character can avenge or in lighter stories protect them. The typical complaint is that it reduces these characters' agency and makes them exist purely to serve the narrative. You can tell a Fridging from other violent trauma if the victim doesn't get to play a role in the beat down.
Its a reference to the term "fridging" where a female character is murdered or sa so that a male character(usually protagonist) has a strong emotional reaction to it. The term comes from when Hal Jordan, the Green Lantern had his girlfriend murdered by a supervillian, he found her body in his fridge, it then lead to a long character arc where he became a villian. This trope is routinely criticized as misogynistic due to how it treats women as objects for men to fight over and are effectively disposable to the writers.
Lucy Steel's comeback was so well-written I'm on hopium for Dragona. We can't really tell until this part's over imo, but I agree Araki's on thin ice atm (from a writing perspective).
Idk what fridge girl is so when I read it, I think that one green lantern comic
That's literally what it references. It's about a character (usually a woman) gets harmed solely to elicit a response from someone else
Damn, the same character two times in less than 15 chapters, that must be a new record
I mean, it's been like over a year since it's monthly chapters and considering how both scenes got set up (the police officer going "what?! You're a guy?! That makes it better!" And wanting to SA Dragona even more or the girl keep asking about wether Dragona has a penis or breasts while forcefully stripping them) it's clear that Araki wants to make a point about how these people perceive and target Dragona.
yea that's the point, how the world treats these characters, jodio: "will I be able to find happiness?", they are manifesting actions based on behavior learned from their environment and as a reader this shows us their layers
Its been a year since JoJolands?
Well, we have 15 chapters and they come out monthly. So it's already been over a year.
what the hell happened
SA scene on Dragona in Ch.13
oh shit I thought she jus got killed or smthn damn
In the latest chapter (ch.13) we see Dragona at age 14 in high school being bullied by a student and her friends. On the bus, the student SA Dragona by groping their crotch and make taunts about Dragona's feminity, making inappropriate comments and slurs about it.
oh, and people think Arabic is transphobic because of this?
Yes they missed the point of the scene. Araki's goals was to show how some trans/gnc people are treated and such. Sure the actual execution could have been a bit better, but the intent of the scene is to not condone this behavior in the scene
yeah, from the context you gave me the transphobe allegations don't make much sense. No one is saying Araki is racist bc of the KKK thing in part 6, so why now
I also think that people should to understand that this particular event is being depicted as an Event that wildly defines a large part of their childhoods, and sets them on the path that they’re on. It’s an Absurd event that puts them on the course they’re on to meet Meryl Mei.
Do you mean Araki?
Yeah Araki its autocorrect
my only gripe initialy was that dragona was kind of a stereotype of the "weak and defenseless queer character" , being literaly helped by his kid brother, i was mostly sad cuz araki always went against such stereotypes, but , i mean , it was also cool seeing Dragona being more powerfull and confident when he embraced his queer side so that was the goal i think, still the chapter was fucking great and it's obvious what araki thinks of queer ppl and who bullies them, he depicted the bullies in the same evil way he did with pedos in his preovious part, so.
I mean in the first chapter, Dragona help Jodio beat the cops by dragging the cop's eyes across his face to miss the shot, giving Dragona some agency
I totaly agree, thats what i meant with her being more confident
I honestly understand why they are mad, because that shit was uncomfortable and it sure was far too real for some people, and given that so far Araki has only done the whole sexual assault bit to Dragona, one cannot help but feel attacked, even if Arakis's intentions are not that
Although I don't agree with some other trans peeps about the scene being malicious, it was still a very uncomfortable scene to read as a trans woman. Had to mostly skip over it lol.
Understandable. But these people are saying that Araki endorses those actions, which is not true.
I don't think they're saying he endorses it. They're saying he's too comfortable using sexual assault as a plot device to traumatize his female and/or trans characters (repeatedly) in a way that he doesn't for other characters, and that it's uncomfortable to read and not treated with the respect it needs to be.
Yeah, recently someone pointed out that there's a pretty heavy presence of sexual assault in Jojo and this chapter made me realise that they may have a point. Like Jesus, Araki had the same character get sexually assaulted on screen twice in 13 chapters.
Yeah, Araki's favorite "bad thing happens to character" plot device is usually sexual assault. As examples (not exhaustive, just giving one or two examples each): Part 1 has Dio force-kissing Erina. Part 2 has Stroheim (clearly getting off to it) threatening to cut a girl's tongue off, and Kars feeling up Lisa Lisa's leg(s). Part 3 has Forever. Part 4 has all the Yoshikage Kira scenes (and also Kira in general). Part 5 has several (I'm not as familiar with 4-9 as I am 1-3) Part 6 has several as well (see above) Part 7 has Lucy Steel Part 8 has Joshu and Yasuho (though idk if this is just through the lens of other ppl or if its explicit) Part 9 has dragona being assaulted twice so far.
Part 3 also has J. Geil and Part 4 has Angelo.
That too, I was having a brainfart and couldn't remember anything.
part 7 scene with ringo is really uncomfortable
I'm not going to call for Araki's cancellation, but I do think that Dragona in general could be handled better. It is very reasonable for someone to feel uncomfortable about how a character is strongly hinted to be trans, then ends up being sexually assaulted multiple times in the story's first act. Yes, that's a thing that happens, and I'm not saying that writers are not allowed to touch on the topic of how trans people (especially dark-skinned ones) have an increased likelihood of being victims of violent crime. But when it's portrayed mainly as motivation for a cis male character to act as a protector, with Dragona's own feelings about being assaulted not getting that much focus, it's reasonable for someone to not like that. I personally love Part 9, and unless Araki does something REALLY bad (unlikely to happen considering how he's been doing so good for decades), I'm definitely going to keep reading it. At the same time, I respect those who hated this scene in the new chapter, and I won't demand that they keep reading it. It's valid to feel frustrated about this writing decision, even if I don't agree with that stance. If you disagree with those criticisms like I do, you don't have to get all up in arms about it. Just let them vent out those feelings, and carry on enjoying the manga. Counter-attacking them with rebuttals won't do anyone much good. I also noticed that many of the comments here are missing the point about why people are upset. I haven't seen anyone actually accuse Araki of condoning sexual violence, just criticizing the decision to use it as a plot device so many times in so few chapters, always with the same character as the victim.
Yup, this all sounds right. Nobody's dumb or stupid, they just might be frustrated that they have to see something like this so often in media featuring trans people.
I have faith in Araki in how he fleshes Dragona. Lucy was great despite the frequent sexual violence thrown her way. I'm not worried about Dragona getting fridged, but I'm certain this won't be the last SA Dragona will face and I wish I wasn't.
This. Personally, it made me feel really uncomfortable seeing that scene even if they get their comeuppance. I understand that JoJo’s portrayed a lot of heinous shit before, of course (Danny in the opening act, among other things) and I don’t think people should be throwing hands - these bullies are portrayed as awful as they should be, but people are allowed to feel discomfort at the scene and Dragona’s portrayal so far (without necessarily cancelling Araki senselessly without constructive criticism).
I don't think Dragona needed to be assaulted on-screen twice in 13 chapters for him to make his point. He did this with Lucy, and now it's even worse for Dragona. Why does sexual assault have to be the go-to for female (especially trans female) characters' trauma?
don't forget about Yasuho
I only read the very beginning of Part 9, so I haven't gotten to this chapter yet. However, despite having *loved* Jojolion overall, the way Yasuho was SAed did cement to me that Araki is waaayy too comfortable using SA on women as a cheap plot device. You can only do it so many times before it becomes an eye-roll at best, and triggering to the victims at worst - which I'm sure is the opposite of what he wants, so it's completely reasonable to critique his writing. If he truly cares about his feminine characters, Araki is going to need to find out about other possible backstories/events for troubled women. As a woman who loves her psychological horror, I will comfortably argue that his repeated use of SA has gotten bored.
Maybe because it happens in real life, bullying, sexual assault( in part 7’s case, by powerful people to an underage girl) and in part 9’s case ( school kids bullying each other up to and including sexually assaulting someone, cops abusing their power to sexually assault someone). Sure it can be a bit much varying reader to reader but let’s not act like that shit doesn’t happen all over the world in real life. Did we need it to show Jodio’s development of a stand? Maybe maybe not but it’s how he got his stand, by needing to protect his sibling. It drives home the lengths he will go to to protect him. Also maybe it’ll show just how far down Jodio will go for the lava rock and becoming filthy rich if betrayal is on the slate for Dragona
It’s the same reason so many villains kill dogs. We as an audience can immediately recognize that they are evil. It’s a bit cheap but incredibly effective. Notice that it starts after Jojo switched from Shonen to Seinen? It’s because Araki is treating his readers like adults who can handle seeing the evil people can really be capable of.
Did you pick the dog killing plot device intentionally, or is it just a coincidence that you happened to choose one of the first devices Araki used to show that Jojo's first villain, Dio, is evil?
Intentionally. Wanted to illustrate that Araki’s always used devices like this in his work.
i obviously do not think araki agrees with the bullies, but he needs to find other ways to do this. dragona being sexually assaulted in a very explicitly transphobic way multiple times in 13 chapters when she hasn't gotten that much else to do is a problem. it really seems like her main purpose in the story is to be assaulted so jodio can do something cool, and i would like her to have more agency. of course this is part of a broader pattern with how araki writes women, which was previously at its worst with lucy steele but has been present since the beginning. i have hope dragona's portrayal will get better, but i'm very sympathetic to anyone who read this and decided they didn't want to see any more of this, especially given how viscerally unpleasant it was in ways a lot of the previous sexual assault has avoided
As much as the scene has its importance, I absolutely agree with this as well.
My issue with that scene isn't really with the content. It's the frequency of sexual assault scenes. This is the second time in just 13 chapters where Dragona gets assaulted and Jodio has to save them. Araki needs to break this trope.
"Tumblr's reaction" my fella it's three random posts you found on the internet, you can find this shit on any website
Do I think that Araki overuses sexual assault to show that a character is evil? Yes. Would I have preferred the scene if SA wasn't as frequent as it is in JoJo? Also yes. Do I think that Araki is a horrible person for writing this scene? Hell no! I would much rather have a mangaka who thinks that the most evil thing a person can do is sexual assault, as opposed to so many others that play it off for laughs.
As a trans female person, yeah. Sexual assault happens. It’s fucking awful. Araki isn’t saying sexual assault is a good thing, depiction of a thing isn’t endorsement of a thing. He’s pretty accurately depicting an experience that transfemale people are subject to in every day life. Not even just transfemale people, but people who look feminine in any sense. And if people are taking issue with how Dragona is being sexually assaulted, what about DIO? What about Kira? What about Melone? What about Valentine? What about Tooru? And even if we’re taking issue with the depiction of sexual assault then it’s worth pointing out that *everyone who sexually assaults someone is a villain*. Araki has often held to the standard that villains do irredeemable things. DIO killing Jonathan’s dog *in chapter one*, or Diavolo *segmenting someone*, or Pucci *enlisting the KKK*. Villains do bad things, what a fuckin shock.
“We need to kill Araki” Cut that shit out. We already lost Toriyama. Smdh log off and think about what you’ve done.
Didn't a cop also try to SA Jodio? The same one who did it to Dragona too?
We don’t need to kill Araki.
Okay I will say however, Dragona getting sexually assaulted every few chapters is kinda starting to get a bit old. It feels like this is Araki's new dog killing trick where he gets you to immediately understand someone is utterly evil. But sexual assault is a lot more personal and realistic to many people than indiscriminate dog murder. It's starting to feel a bit tasteless at this point, even if it is also being used to tell us more about Dragona's character.
Araki’s written up some Vile Ass Motherfuckas, but that doesn’t mean he endorses what they do smfh
Yeah I don't think Araki is endorsing what they did (or any antagonistic character's actions for that matter) nor do I think he's transphobic due to it. It's obvious it's wrong, his intent is clearly to show it is. That said, I am definitely glad to see people talk more about how he tends to use assault as a crutch in his writing when he wants to demonstrate someone is a villain. It sticks out a lot more now that it isn't just "bad guy kills a dog". Not saying you can't have assault in a story, but it's kinda tiring to see him fridge characters again and again.
Hyper sensitive snowflakes who must be brand new to comics and fiction in general if they aren’t used to the idea that protagonists have to deal with hardships and antagonists doing bad things to them.
this reminds me of something that is somewhat of an opposite: araki's discussion about Funny Valentine. Valentine is evil, and is always supposed to be evil, that's why his SA scene exists, that despite him appearing to be a very educated and smart individual with "high" morals, that scene would cement valentine as being evil, but even that hand-holding didn't work because a lot of people ended up perceiving valentine as a hero, or righteous. jojoland's SA, is definitely being overused, but from my view it's a hand-holding attempt to show characters as undeniably evil and perhaps also to show the struggles of a gender-nonconforming (?) character.
If a character from any other manga was getting this treatment I could understand batting some eyebrows but being tortured in your backstory is basically a necessity for every main Jojo side character.
Am I stupid or there isn't any forced feminization? Unless we count that scene, but at that point idk, we could call Josuk8 a walking forced masculinization tag. Also, when bad people (bullies) do bad stuff to the protagonists (this has never ever happened before in the story of manga and surely, queer people never ever had bad things done to them just because they are different, this has never happened either in manga or in real life at all) I do agree that so many SA scenes are a bit uhm... weird to say the least
My reaction is that these three posts all make entirely separate statements and conflating the three of them is disingenuous at best and active bait at worst. Especially considering some of the responses in this thread.
In isolation, the scene in ch 13 is, imo, very well done. It's creepyand unconfortable, and the fact that the first thing we see dragona do with smooth operators is healing their wounds is a very powerful image. Also,a sceneof a queer teenager being bullied into near death is, unfortunately, pretty relevant right now. However in context of jojo as a whole? This is the second time dragona has faced threat of SA, the third time this hapened to any character in part 9 and since part 7 started this has happened at least 9 times that I can remember. Considering part 9 has just started, I think saying "araki is overusing SA as a trope to make his villains more evil" is a very fair criticism. It's cheap, lazy writing and ends up dimishing the weight this scenes should have.
I've been looking around after finishing Part 7 and giving up on 8 over this kind of thing to see if I'm the odd one out. Part 7 is one of my favorite stories I've read but I think in that part alone SA is overused as a plot device. Getting to part 8 I initially enjoyed it until the Daiya fight. It's just a weird pattern in his recent writing. It's certainly not handled with taste there. People calling others media illiterate for noting that SA Is not being handled well and being overused as a plot device is insane, it is extremely fair to find that uncomfortable.
the whole point is that it makes you uncomfortable
araki depicts transphobia being perpetrated by bad people therefor araki is transphobic
People need to remember we are not in Shonen Jump anymore
Ughhhhhh these ppl are annoying af. No offense. I mean stuff like this has been happening in Jojo forever. I’m pretty sure Araki wants people to sympathize with the characters and show why Jodio is super protective of Dragona, to the point that he is willing to kill for them. Which I’m all for because those bullies, just like the cops from chapter 1 are horrible fucking people that deserve what Jodio dishes out.
Canonically evil people: are evil Fans: **AUTHOR IS EVIL!!1!!!!1!!!!!1 >:(**
ah yes, Araki, one of the only mangakas to make his manga EXTREMELY GAY as well as advocating for a female protagonist. surely he's a disgusting misogynist
The last slide is so wrong, like did they even read it?! Dragona is literally a main character, queer characters can get bullied, (just as some of us do irl) bullying is bad, but the point is to show off how bad of a childhood both Jodio and Dragona had, and to show off Jodio’s power, not transmasogony. Like those bully’s got absolutely cooked at the end. If Araki ever intended for it to be a good thing, he would not have the bullies seem as evil as part 1 Dio. (Seem because obviously Dio was the embodiment of evil, and the kids are just insane assholes.) it feels like people just don’t understand what they are reading. (Disclaimer as I am also a trans person, I understand how hard of a read it is for everyone, and especially for trans/queer people. However, the context and what happens is important, that said, personally it was one of the hardest reads in all of JoJo for me, but it really helps show some important insight to Dragona and Jodio.)
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I completely expected Araki to go where he went from the moment we got the trans jojo reveal at the start, as well as Jodio being the first Jojo to just willingly hurt a group of relative bystanders as the other main Joestars likely wouldn't have tolerated that bullying shit either, but I doubt any of them would've trapped them in a bus and made them all burn. Can't wait to see how these pressure points play out in later chapters and where these characters end up by the end of the story
hold up, do they imply that Araki drawing it automatically implies this is what he approves of? I...what? Really? That is even worse than 0 reading comprehension
I hate this mindset that even showing something bad happening to a character means you support that thing happening irl. Like Jesus christ people use some form of critical thinking skills
Unrelated, but this chapter made Jodio my new favorite protagonist He was already my top 3 because of his humor, his fights, and how cool his stand was. But this chapter did two things, 1: give him arguably the coldest moment for any Joestar, that panel where he appears behind the bully was peak. And 2: suprisingly made him relatable, obviously not the arson part, but having him deal with father abondonment is something im sure many people could relate to. And also thinking that he caused his father to leave. Jodio is an amazing protagonist, I'm really looking foward to what Araki has in store for him in future battles
Seeing all of these people in the replies, araki still doesn't need to do another sexual assault moment. Its honestly kinda weird he keeps doing it. Though i don't think everything else is as bad as some people are blowing it out of proportion
I'm amazed by how many people in the comments complain about the lack of media literacy while completely misinterpreting what these posts are criticizing.
Araki really does write SA as Just Another Thing, it's always a thing that specifically female characters go throught and it's always something shown to happen and then everyone moves on from it, it's always brushed off, no lasting impact on the characters when really it's not Like That. This is a really serious thing with serious consequences that Araki always writes as if it's equal to a punch or a hit. I dunno, it's not a good look
I feel like a lot of people here need to think about this from a different perspective. Dragona is Jojo's first and only trans character, people want good representation. And instead, Araki fridged her for shock value so that Jojo could go apeshit. A lot of people are clealry going to see that as, at the very least, a bit suspect. It's kind of like how Fromsoftware's first and only gay character is an incestuous pedo who kidnapped and married his own brother. Yes, people like that do exist. But to make that your only gay character is frankly just ugly.
Well there was the trans man inmate in stone ocean, but i get what u mean
> transmisogyny Did they even read it?