In a new interview for Billboard Japan, Araki talks in length about the role Prince and other artists played in the JoJo series as well as his current thematic interests and the evolution of social representation in manga.
Here are a few of my favorite passages:
Billboard Japan: Thank you for your hard work on the serialization of “Jojolion”. How are you feeling at the moment? The series has been running for 10 years, the longest in the series thus far […] I wonder if it was a turbulent decade for you.
Araki: It was turbulent, but I also felt that it was a decade of going upwards. It was like we were moving towards a single goal. The story before that, “Steel Ball Run” is also a story of a protagonist pushing forward toward his goal. I felt like it was the right time to finish it (Part 8).
Billboard Japan: You said you listen to music to “get a sense of the musicians’ way of thinking, their fashion, their attitude toward the age they’re in etc.” Could you tell us more about what music means to you?
Araki: Music symbolizes a way of thinking and a specific time. I don’t want to show too much of my negative side so I try to stay positive. JoJo is a positive work but the fact that there are other works that aren’t like that is also a new feeling for me, and I think I need to learn from them. Right now, I’m interested in people who are bad. I like people like that. I’m interested in people who are falling apart.
Billboard Japan: Is that how you define a bad person?
Araki: I think people try to improve their lives and move up the social ladder, right? They want to be greater or richer. I’m not interested in people like that but in people who are on the verge of ruin, people who are causing harm to the world and to their families.
Billboard Japan: I think Thunder McQueen from Part 6 is the most evil person possible. His Highway to Hell stand, which drives another person to join him in committing suicide has no hostility, no malice, it’s just a truly evil ability.
Araki: You might be right. But in JoJo I try to avoid characters who go in negative directions. When I was younger, I decided not to draw characters trying to kill themselves or taking themselves in a negative path and after that I only drew people who were positively evil, and that’s when things started to change.
Billboard Japan: The Joestar group in Part 3 is quite a diverse group.
Araki: That’s right but I didn’t include women. I felt that I couldn’t put a pretty girl in a scene where people have to fight for their lives or if they’re villains, they might have to take an OraOra punch. That kind of thinking sort of disappeared around the time of Stone Ocean, however.
Billboard Japan: Times change, right?
Araki: Maybe it’s that, yes. Readers of Jump don’t mind it anymore if I draw women. In the past, it would have been rejected by the readers and the series could’ve ended. That was still the case in Japan in the 80s. I think that in shōnen manga, the way of looking at gender or social situations is changing. In Stardust Crusaders, I really wanted to include a girl and she (Anne) was there for a bit but ultimately it didn’t work out.
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