In the manga industry, mainstream publications are usually split by target demographic: shonen for boys/young men, shojo for girls/young women (think Sailor Moon, Rose of Versailles, etc), seinen for young men, and josei for young women are the main four, with shonen being THE thing people think of when they hear the word "manga". Before SBR, Jojo was published in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump, alongside such titans as One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Naruto. And until SO, Jojo pretty well fit in with the shonen demographic, bizarre though it is. Fundamentally, it comes down to cool guys punching each other in cool ways, which shonen readers are absolutely down with.
But then SO comes along. Imagine Araki going to his editors at WSJ and saying "yes, this next part will be centered around a nineteen-year-old American woman in prison". It's a stark contrast to the historically-focused Jonathan or Joseph, or the Japanese cool guys Jotaro and Josuke. The whole premise is absolutely orthogonal to WSJ's target demographic; looking at SO as a whole, it's clear that Araki was pushing boundaries - for example, making Anasui first appear as a woman (he "wanted to make a character that transcended gender", which ironically FF ended up doing in the anime).
All this is anathema to the famously formulaic shonen genre, where the friendly, big-eater protagonist with a good heart who never gives up defeats enemies with the power of friendship, even from his hot-headed, abusive rival/frenemy, and also there is a Designated Girl there for some reason. There were few other WSJ titles with female protagonists; the only contemporary that comes to mind is Claymore, which only got a few months in WSJ, starting and ending in Shueisha's adjacent, less-renowned monthly publications Monthly Shonen Jump and Jump Square. (These days, there are more titles with female leads, like The Promised Neverland, and, uhh... hm. The Emperor and I, I guess?)
In other words, SO pushed the envelope in many big ways. Interestingly, we already saw Araki start to expand his creativity beyond the shonen genre a little in DiU, and definitely in VA, where he starts to delve deeper into his idea of "fate", and where there are rumors about how Giorno was originally supposed to be a girl. But it's not just feminism - the story itself is complicated, with postmodernist touches that bring the reader's own experience into the story (i.e. the ending) and all the classic Jojo bullshit cranked up to 11 (frogs, snails, rods, "assassination feng shui"...). So it didn't exactly resonate with, say, Dragon Ball's reader base.
The final thing to remember is that SO ran from 1999-2003. All these themes that we're much more accepting of now - I mostly mean messing with gender roles - were not so unremarkable 20 years ago (at least in America; I can't comment on the gender politics of millennial Japan). It's not ancient history, but times have certainly changed; look at Guilty Gear's Bridget controversy, and ask yourself how that would've gone down in 2000, when virtually no one was coming out in support of trans people. To put Jolyne and Hermes and FF, and their bizarre adventure, in that context - it just didn't resonate with the world at the time.
For SBR and Jojolion (and, presumably, Jojolands), Araki moved to seinen magazine Ultra Jump, where he could be more creative and more adult. Stone Ocean got screwed over in a lot of unfortunate ways, but in my opinion the main thing was the growing pains of Araki's maturing storytelling, which just didn't jive with the typical shonen reader. The fact that Stone Ocean got published and sold at all is a testament to his existing reputation.
So yes, SO is massively underrated, and seems to have a curse on it to that effect. It's subtle and daring and complicated, which people reading Jojo for the fights didn't really go for. But it was not only a foreshadowing of Araki's even more matured storytelling in SBR and Jojolion, it's a magnificent work in its own right, and deserves to be appreciated as such.
(If you want to know even more, you might ask around over at r/manga for more context. I wasn't actually a Jojo fan back then, but I know the western Jojo community was very different pre-Reddit and definitely pre-anime; they had to make do with hilariously bad scanlations, which is a story and a half in itself.)
>>280558220How come we don't lennyface anymore?
>>280558340No it isn't you schizo
>>280558365https://www.reddit.com/r/StardustCrusaders/comments/x6378p/comment/in7jofv/
>>280558365>2 seconds in Googlehttps://www.reddit.com/r/StardustCrusaders/comments/x6378p/comment/in7jofv/
>>280558387>>280558391The point still stands
If you have problems with SO you're a sexist that didn't understand it
idk what you're talking about anon, I enjoyed stone ocean
if you're trying to prove something is underrated your first job is to establish how popular it is
>>280558399I think its more simple than that
the teenage boys reading WSJ don't want to catch cooties from a female protagonist
so it didn't do well
>>280558451Yeah, nothing to do with the poor writing, nonsensical stands, futile ending, horrible art style, no characterisation etc etc, it was HECKIN SEXISM
>>280558209 (OP)Storytime proved it was good. 'nuff said
>anime refuses to say her for FF
LMAO
>>280558209 (OP)I always thought Stone Ocean was one of the best parts. Especially the last third is absolute kino
Iām not gonna read all that
>>280559623It's why sexists hated Stone Ocean, it was literally too intelligent for the audience
I liked Stone Ocean.
It's not the best part but it wasn't bad at all.
People really overrate Jojo
It's a decent, dumb shounen, but people think it's a genuinely deep art piece
>>280560176>people think it's a genuinely deep art pieceit is
>>280558399>story about girl and her daddy issues>why don't boys like it... they must be... le sexist... You can't be this retarded. For the record I liked stone ocean until the ending. She's the most useless protagonist in the series and still needed a man to save her rather than stand on her own merits. If anyone is sexist it's the author.
How long until the next Jojolands?
>>280558209 (OP)tl;dr also you're retarded for caring this much about what 4chan asshole think about whatever you are talking about
>>280560176It got some pretty big features so it's a deep art piece to some degree.
>>280564356Just under 2 days from now
