Aloha! This is @incorrect-jojolands-quotes. Many of you probably know that I am the editor, writer, and voice actor of Dragona Joestar for TJJL Fandub Project.
I will be using this blog specifically to post updates regarding the project as well as release some notes for each chapter produced. I'll try my best to be consistent but I wanted to make this so I can stop cluttering my incorrect JOJOLands quotes blog (focus more on actually posting quotes on there hehe) and dedicate a blog just for this project.
It would be nice if you give a follow, as I will be using this as my main form of interactions in addition to Twitter for things related to the fandub. In the meantime, let me know what sort of content you might want to see me post on here in addition to general commentary on how production went.
Well, it finally came out. I actually planned on uploading it before the actual chapter release but I didn't realize the schedule for chapters changed from the 18th to 17th my time. So, it ended up coming out the same day. I guess you can use the chapter that came out as a palate cleanser for this one.
While we try to keep a consistent schedule of completing our chapters in 2 months, this one took longer due to the nature of what the chapter entails and personal issues not allowing me to be in the right headspace to edit and delegate efficiently compared to previous chapters. Still, with some motivation and help, Chapter 13 was able to push forward. Shout out to the Skibidi Productions crew for really helping me out with all this; even the small things made a great impact and I’m grateful for the assistance. Buckle up; this retrospective is a long one.
A big part of why we took a while was how we were going to portray Dragona’s assault. When Chapter 13 first came out, I noticed a lot of mixed reactions and various conversations about what depictions of sexual assault and other forms of violence involving vulnerable and/or marginalized groups like children and individuals who diverged from heteronormative, euro-centric features should and should not be. Some argue that the assault on Dragona is excessive, an example of violence for views and fetishization over awareness and education, and how the scene could have been toned down through means like a cutaway, censorship, or a completely different approach to bullying that would not involve graphic sexual violence. Others argue the uncomfortable details and depiction are necessary to bring awareness and make the audience acknowledge the existence and brutality of sexual violence towards children, especially ones that do not adhere to the beauty and behavior standards they have no control over, and topics such as transmisogynoir and statistics regarding sexual violence or bullying overall faced by queer individuals argue that any censorship or act of downplaying depictions of such topics would make such issues ignored rather than lead to victims actually being seen and helped. At the same time, given YouTube’s policies and the fact that this is a fan project, there was a balance between how much we can show and staying as true to Araki’s vision despite us being in the clear already for previous chapters showing graphic depictions of body horror-esque violence as well as the team’s overall comfort level. It wasn’t until my last conversation on the crew retrospective on the use of flashbacks that I realized how they can come into play.
Dragona’s flashbacks differ from Charming and Jodio’s in that they are not in video format but instead photographs. Given Dragona’s philosophy on the absurd (in verbatim, acknowledge what happened but move forward), photographs match this mindset the most given that photos only portray a snapshot of the moment it is taken compared to videos being infinite snapshots that can be rewinded to find more details. Compared to Jodio, Dragona’s memories are barely aged aside from a light hue given that no one can truly go through life without recalling things every now and then, and yet everything else remains unchanged; even the audio remains fresh. The slight difference between Dragona and Jodio aside from the filter indicating Jodio’s flashback videos being aged and therefore making some background noises muffled is that you can hear way more details in the audio for Dragona. That makes it very easy to hear everything that Dragona is experiencing at that moment and hits hit home more on how awful the experience was. From disgusting remarks, camera shutters, and clothes being moved around, and how characters even ignore everything going on, we made it an effort to really show what the actual assault sounds like when it’s done in the environment we are seeing in this chapter.
The use of photography also has a connection with sexual violence and transphobic sentiments. Even before the age of the Internet that made things like leaked nudes, revenge porn, and deepfake videos and images the norm, the act of collecting evidence for crimes related to sexual or domestic cases involves photographs of the victim’s injuries taken and then scrutinized in court to determine if a crime should be charged. Meanwhile, the rise of transphobia on social media created a growing trend where individuals would take photos of strangers to post online, often without consent, and heavily analyze whether the subject is transgender and what cosmetic procedures were done on them before “exposing” them for “pretending” to be a gender that isn’t one given at birth. So, the use of photographs for Dragona goes beyond just philosophy but also, like Charming’s flashbacks being a reflection of how society views crimes similar to Mauka’s disappearance but also, a reflection of how society views victims of assault and the added layer of transphobia that is becoming more normalized.
Initially, the plan was to have the whole thing be in Dragona’s perspective. However, given Dragona’s philosophy about not dwelling on the past more than necessary and interpreting how a victim of sexual violence may recall their assault, it didn’t make sense and the idea of bringing Jodio’s flashback was brought in to address it. From experience, discussions with victims of similar circumstances, and seeing how Dragona talked to Jodio as well as recalled the event that occurred, it seemed like Dragona would only want to acknowledge it happened but not dive further into details themselves on the actual assault. At most we hear the audio details of what’s going on but visually not see it happen exactly as a way to represent how a victim would respond to recalling their assault. For a lot of them, that may involve disassociating, removing certain details by themselves or with external substances like drugs, or attempting to reframe or downplay the events such as blaming themselves for it happening. Overall, it seemed out of character for Dragona to recall their assault without some sort of visual that represents a cutaway or censorship that would prevent the viewers from seeing what happened. To add some sort of visual that would limit what the viewers see would also lessen the impact and severity of what happened; relating to the discussion about depictions of sexual violence earlier, both the team and I were in favor of being as straightforward as we can while still keeping the editing style consistent. That’s when a switch to Jodio’s perspective came in handy and why we went with that approach instead. Jodio is someone who is constantly trying to find each hidden detail that could possibly solve whatever question that has been plaguing him and it’s reflected on how his memories look like aged videos. The person who would be viewing Dragona’s assault as is without any mental censorship or cutaway that would hide any detail and possibly think about it often despite being told not to would be Jodio. This approach allows the viewers to see from his point of view and that also ends up making his decision to set the bus on fire and later on assault the cops in the first chapter more understandable.
Something ironic about Dragona's style of flashbacks and Jodio is the irony of details. With the audio filter on Jodio's flashbacks, I sometimes forget that the tiny details I like to put in are too low or soft to be picked up. So, in a way, Jodio's attempt to constantly replay to find additional information results in him losing it little by little. Yet, Dragona's lack of constant recollection preserved every detail despite not desiring to look back on it. I noticed this while editing and thought it was a cool coincidence.
Chapter 13 was also the first time we did an official casting call for Young Dragona and Young Jodio. Up until this point, our cast members either came from friends of other cast members or cold emails and DMs asking me or Pettrull if there are any roles available. Dragona's bully was actually a friend of mine that I requested to be the bully in my old project; she was interested in trying the role she never got to do and had been extremely accommodating with providing me with retakes and additional lines. Although we have cast members of varying styles and voices, we wanted to use the opportunity to hold auditions for Young Jodio and Young Dragona as a way to test out how future casting calls may go. We also allowed cold emails and Discord DMs for those who didn't want to use Casting Call but were interested in auditioning.
Another reason for the long wait came from trying to find the right voice for Young Dragona. Pettrull was looking for an androgynous voice that leaned feminine but still made sense for a growing teenager of young Dragona’s age to have. Honestly, there were a few auditions we received for the role that made me upset at how unserious they were despite our description indicating the role will entail some heavy issues surrounding transgender/gender-nonconforming young adults (i.e. doing intentionally weird voices for Young Dragona, just reading the lines provided rather than actually performing it, etc.). I was in the middle of ranting about this to Pettrull when I reopened Casting Call to find an audition from Robbie that just appeared and fit the criteria that Pettrull and I were looking for with the actor being someone who took the role professionally. Robbie also did an audition for Young Jodio as well, but by that time we had chosen someone else for the role, and Robbie’s range really brings a lot out of Young Dragona that I didn’t expect to have.
Speaking of Young Jodio, you may have recognized his voice in series like Blush Blush or even fandubs like the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Project. SoggyBogus is known for his role as Nim and Johnny Joestar respectively and he reached out to us to audition as Young Jodio via email when we made the casting call; we found him to be the best fit in general and how he was able to retain the cadence that Mike has with Jodio. Overall, doing an official casting call for the first time taught us a lot of stuff regarding the process of auditioning and finding roles. It may be a while until we do another one given that we have every major role for Act 1 filled in (i.e. the port city trio, Hacca Howler, etc.) and the more minor roles are usually filled by the people in our cast first before we start reaching out. Given that Act 2 is just beginning, we may have another open-casting soon for whatever character shows up that requires a voice outside our group. Keep your eyes peeled!
Like Chapter 6-7, Chapter 13 has original music made by Paperwerks that was previewed in Chapter 12 but this time for the absurd. You might have heard the leitmotif a few times whenever Jodio mentions the word and, like the lava rock theme, will be played more frequently soon after this chapter. When I first chose the song “Connor’s Theme (remix)” as the theme for Mechanisms, I chose it because it sounded very artificial and mechanical to indicate how the systems Jodio is trying to understand isn’t actually natural despite posing as such. For the Absurd theme, I asked Paperwerks for the opposite: something that is “made naturally” despite giving off the vibe of something unnatural and even intimidating to some degree. That resulted in a track that used acoustic instruments and voices that give off an eerie feel that would have traditionally required electronic ones and he made not only a full version but also one that has the melody by itself. It almost reminds me of Diavolo and gives off the vibe of the mafia boss lurking in the shadows waiting to strike for some reason but it’s amazing how Paperwerks delivered and interpreted what the absurd is. The beginning paired quite well with the bus fire, especially with the screams overlayed, and I’m hoping to use it more in other future situations. Although I had an idea to use the song for the bus fire, I wasn’t set on it until the song was created and I got to that part in editing; I was thinking of something more “heavy” and “aggressive” to match the event but Paperwerk’s music and approach ended up being the best choice.
Our adlibs were also really fun and interesting to work with. I wanted to use them to show how cruel the world is towards the Joestars but wanted to see how much I can push the improvisation. As I mentioned prior, I tested the waters a bit with the investigation team talking in the background (granted, it’s not very noticeable) and you have background characters saying things like “these fucking people” and “aw, you’re gonna cry?” when Charming tries to speak up. The students on the bus have similar dialogues mixed with unrelated conversations to show how they are either active or complicit/ignoring the situation and I tried to come up with things that sounded realistic yet not contributing to the intention of using the adlibs for shock value. A few of what our actors did come up with sent chills down my spine and it’s been mentally taxing to sort through them. Similar to the interaction with the gang members Jodio and Dragona encounter where they make lewd comments about Barbara Ann; however, the majority of the comments are towards the siblings being “disrespectful” because they weren’t reacting and anger towards Meryl Mei for stepping in. There’s also a conversation between Barbara Ann and her husband while Jodio and Dragona are eating if you can hear it in the background. I tried to keep the discussion between the couple vague so that whatever the fallout of their relationship is about will not conflict with the conversation in the future; at most, the only specifics is about Jodio’s father working a lot and how there are some concerns Barbara Ann has that is being brushed off by him. On a slightly unrelated note, the “off” song was the most interesting to figure out; REEE2752 had the idea that everyone harmonizes with each other at the end and I mixed it so you can hear the gang joining in (and a couple being off beat).
I have to give a shoutout to REEE2752 and Matheus for helping me out in terms of visuals and audio given that my mental health had been extremely low at the time of producing the chapter. I’m doing a lot better now that Chapter 13 is finally over and I’m motivated again to work on Chapter 14-15. See you all soon!
I'll be honest. Production has really slowed down for Chapter 13 because the anxiety of it all causing me to put things off and I haven't even touched that particular scene yet. I fear how people will react to it given the nature of its contents. Anyone have any advice on how to approach this?
Chapter 12 is another single chapter after a double we had with Chapter 10 and 11, and marks the end of Volume 3 of The JOJOLands. It is also the chapter before the very controversial Chapter 13 that we will begin work on soon.
Chapter 12 was a fun challenge nonetheless; it was also the most experimental by far.
We have previewed Charming's voice in sketches and many noted how he has a peculiar accent contrasted to everyone else. While the story takes place in modern Hawaii, USA with the main characters having a "General American" accent (non-regional, primarily heard in US media like the news, etc.), Charming ends up standing out with what I call a "British" accent. I get the feeling that viewers from Great Britain or from countries currently or previously part of the British Commonwealth may have heard Charming's voice and wonder why it seems like an American is doing a British accent rather than an actual British person speaking the actual accent instead. The truth is... We didn't expect Charming to be British-sounding in the first place and it ultimately reflected the character he is so well that we kept it. When Pettrull started working on the voice, he initially considered Charming to sound like "an American Southern lawyer" in verbatim. Technically, the American southern accent is a drawn-out version of a British accent, so the transition from one to another is not very stark.
However, as he worked on his voice and particularly for our beloved "McBama" sketch, it became British and I came up with a few reasons why his voice seems to stand out compared to the rest. In addition to be seen as an outsider and Charming's connection to "The Smiths", a notably British band via his name and Stand, I proposed that Charming intentionally gave himself a British accent in hopes that it would make him appear more likable (despite otherwise based on how he is treated by the lead investigator in his flashback) and it also reflects on how theatrical and expressive he actually is when he speaks to the team. At the same time, there's a sort of historical, cultural, and political aspect to this. Great Britain (and the US) had a hand in not only the creation of the Hawaiian Kingdom but also the destruction of it, and both their involvement both culturally and systemically led to the socioeconomic disenfranchisement and discrimination faced by Native Hawaiians to this day. Charming adopting an "English-sounding" accent and possibly localizing his name to a "harmless" English definition reflects how indigenous cultures end up being reduced or erase as a result of whatever dominant culture enforcing the assimilation or erasure oftentimes out of fear or coercion. For the sake of survival, indigenous cultures are broken down and even commercialized to suit the dominant culture's views and repackage the other culture as inferior by comparison, and a cycle of reclaiming a lost culture or changing the oppression into empowerment ends up in the discovery of a new way to oppress and discriminate. To Charming, his British accent is less about him wanting to be well liked or "charming" and more as an attempt to be seen as a regular person and given decency that he is denied due to his Hawaiian heritage.
This concept ended up greatly influencing how his flashbacks came to be. We've mostly seen how Jodio's flashbacks are portrayed and there have been brief glimpses of Usagi's, Dragona's, and Paco's up to this point and the idea is for characters to have flashbacks that either reflects how they view the world or how the world views them. In Jodio's case, his flashbacks could be described as "raw footage" from a VHS tape: there is a timestamp, the speech bubbles and dialogue boxes are the same and the panels are mostly unchanged. The most notable thing is that it is aged based on its color and the audio sounds old. Jodio is someone who wants to understand why things happen (i.e. mechanisms) and will go to great lengths to find what he is looking for and achieve his goal. The reason why his flashbacks look like old tapes is due to him constantly "rewinding" his memories in hopes to find an answer he missed, a detail he can use that was overlooked. There's also a sense of nostalgia given he is a young boy thrown into the world of crime and having a childhood cut short as a response, so he may look at these videos almost like how one looks at childhood films to recall a more happier youth. Like Jodio, given how similar their characters are, Charming too has a past that resembles old footage in hopes that it can help show credibility to his words. However, unlike Jodio's it's clearly edited. There is a sense of coldness as if someone took his footage and manipulated it to be a show that suits their agenda rather than amplify the truth. In a way, Charming's "footage" has been turned into entertainment like how some "true crime" reenactments or retellings are made to entertain and end up reducing real lives into characters with no consideration for how the manipulation can affect the people actually involved in the tragedy. Faces are censored and voice filters are put on, especially on the people hurting Charming with their treatment and words, as if they want to avoid accountability for what they do. Interestingly, only Charming and Mauka have their voices rather unchanged aside from a bit of echo, and I'm thinking of basically keeping those who Charming love or sees him as a person would also have their voices unchanged in his flashbacks.
Koby also mentioned how the approach relates to the realities of missing persons who identify as Native American and how often such individuals "disappear" with little to no proper awareness or acknowledgment in addition to the systematic racism and biases that contribute to their cases being forgotten or downplayed. As Mauka would be a missing person of Native Hawaiian identity, it was an unfortunate thing to witness legal authorities not only downplaying his disappearance but use it to also further discriminate Charming. You can definitely hear the team in the background complaining not only about Charming man being "a nuisance" but also shaming him for reacting to their disrespect, and I can only imagine indigenous families in real life experiencing similar things when they report to local authorities and ask to find their missing loved ones before being treated the way Charming was.
There's also a hidden sound (because you know I love putting in details that can go unnoticed) that causes the lava tubes to appear more nefarious and terrifying than expected. I asked Koby to make some horrific screams that sound like they're coming from the tubes as Mauka is being pulled. Fun fact: Koby portrays Mauka in this chapter and he was Mauka in the Christmas album. I remember when he created the meows for Wild Cat Size for Chapter 7 and i got the same chills from the lava tube screams this time too. If the lava tube situation is the result of an unknown Stand attack, it's possible we can reuse the sound as a Stand cry when the opportunity comes. Alternatively, because of Charming's flashback being an intentionally manipulated footage, the sound could be something edited in to add to the whole "theatrics" aspect of it. Meanwhile, music choice has been... interesting. We have a mix of old songs being reused, new songs that have in added to our track list, and our "when in doubt, use SpongeBob music" tactic has yet to fail us. One of the songs we reused is "Feng Shui" by Yugo Kanno, which was first used in Chapter 5 when Rohan explained to Jodio about why it was important to hold onto the lava rock as a means to become filthy rich. In a way, Rohan's words with the music makes the power of the lava rock seem enticing, almost glorifying, but with a layer of warning underneath that makes things feel like an odd feeling to brush off because the potential benefits overshadow the reality that is to come. The music is then used in Charming's flashback when he begs the police investigators to find his brother; suddenly, that odd feeling comes back and makes itself more known and the excitement has disappeared. We also have some new music made by Paperwerks that I initially wanted to reveal in Chapter 13 but decided to use bits and pieces in Chapter 12 as a preview instead.
Of course, one of my favorite things to incorporated in the project overall is making background conversations that contribute to building on not just the Joestar siblings' relationship but the rest of the gang. Both Mike and I had a lot of fun coming up with lines that portray Jodio and Dragona fighting over the aux cord (it was also way to incorporate our "Dua Lipa in the car" rule we have been following without having to play the song in full). Matheus added into that by having Paco sound like a classic tired parent and I still laugh at him going "I will turn this car around" while the two of them argue. And, of course, Usagi being a loveable dork trying to butt into everything and be helpful; I need to write a post about Reee's performance eventually. I also had a lot of fun showing how Charming is starting to incorporate himself into the group and it gave me an excuse to reference the jokes we tend to make in this project (i.e. Paco's aversion to being pointed at) as well as make new ones. In a way, I've been trying to get as many jokes as I can in before the tone shifts to Chapter 13.
I know, at the very least, this next chapter is going to be something that requires extreme care and attention and I'm honestly scared. What the investigation team says to Charming in the background is a bit of a means to test the water on how the kids on the school bus will interact with Dragona in Chapter 13. The fandub's goal at the end of the day is to portray the part in a way that celebrates and reflects the spirit of JoJo's but still acknowledge the realities it has taken inspiration from. Given how serious Dragona's experience is, the team and I will do our best to present Chapter 13 as best as possible. You can expect a long hiatus as a result of our team making sure the next chapter will be done at least respectfully or close to what Araki may have intended.
And here it is: the most anticipated Paco fight and the first that we see THE Hustle face off Bigmouth Strikes Again. This was also the moment where we get a deeper look into this "Lava Rock Owner" and Pettrull himself makes an actual debut as Charming Man.
Another combination chapter means a lot more new challenges, especially when the double chapters often entail a lot of fighting. For Chapter 10 - 11, the challenge came from something that was not only unexpected but revealed a rather fatal flaw with how we create our chapters: music curation.
While we do choose music in advance, even conducting meetings to determine the best songs, what we did not really consider is the possibly of the music not becoming a good fit in the end. For me, having the right music allows me to plan the scenes accordingly and get the audio done first, as well as collaborate on sound design, before handing it off to the rest of the team for visuals. It's a big part of why we are able to stick with our 2 month schedule. With Chapter 10-11, a lot of the scenes where the right music choice is crucial (i.e. dramatic reveals, fight scenes, etc.) ended up not sounding as great as envisioned so we ended up with basically no music and therefore no plan for how the chapters would go. Some of the song choices are hard to cut, extend, or loop to fit the scene, some transition into a completely different vibe that goes against the scene, and some simply did not work out in the end. We usually choose songs from all over the place or see if we can reuse songs we had before, but nothing really clicked. So, I ended up taking on a lot more of the visuals because I needed to see what was going on with the lack of music to guide me. I think Koby and Mike really helped me out the most with ultimately finding the right songs and me realizing I have to mashup and cut songs a certain way to get the right vibe.
One example of this is the end of chapter 10 when Charming is revealed to be hiding through the birds and slices Dragona’s throat soon after. It took three different songs from the Dune soundtrack to combine to fit the flow from Dragona noticing the birds supposedly carrying the watch to the throat slice to Smooth Operators scrambling to save their Stand User. Like Chapter 6 - 7 when the music for the trap setup by Wild Cat Size, the music had to be poignant but not compromise the voices of the characters as they react to the scene. Mike is an avid fan of music soundtracks from movies and shows, so he brought up the idea of using songs from movies like The Invisible Man and TV shows like The White Lotus. What did help with finding the right music was remembering we can revisit old songs, especially those we have already used frequently (such as ShioOST and Gwinn’s work), or music from Yugo Kanno’s work on the anime adaptation of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. One of the inside jokes I have with Koby is to use music from “Spongebob Squarepants” for certain scenes; in verbatim “when in doubt, use Spongebob” is what we sometimes tell ourselves. Even though many of the songs are rather lighthearted and comical, there are some good songs that fit whenever it is needed, and it makes a great contrast between when a scene seems like things are going well to things going downhill quickly. Although the fight scene is serious and dramatic, we were able to put in a couple of jokes from the show through our adlib like Paco and Jodio going “my leg” and “my eyes” respectively. Also yes: the "harder daddy" was put in there after much consideration because Riverdude is that funny.
Another inside joke we have is how we say we are unable to take in more actors but one way to become an actor is to join the production crew first and then become an actor. The people in Skibidi Productions never planned on being an actor but end up taking on some roles when needed. Robo is an example of this where he came in as an editor and became the voice actor for Leo. We had a sketch planned where he played around with the voice that may one day be uploaded but it led us to asking him to be Leo officially for the project. You may hear a few of our crew members show up eventually as other roles in future chapters, but this is probably the first instance of our crew members becoming actors with spoken roles and a name to the character rather than be an unnamed character, someone in the background, or exclusively on the crew. Also, shout out to Bunnfyre, who will be a familiar lawyer in the series very soon.
I think Chapter 10 – 11 by far has the best sound design despite the trouble with music. We build more on Bigmouth Strikes Again’s design, which I talked about already in Chapter 9’s notes. Initially, I only reverb the voice once in Chapter 9 for the reveal at the end but played with it more by having it heard while Charming speaks and is still in that transition between his transformation and his reveal; Pettrull mentioned he really liked this take once he noticed it and now it will be a mainstay. It is rather difficult to keep track of the voices but adding that layer of reverb gives him that “fractured” sound that hints at how the Stand can change his voice to create his disguises; it is like how the Stand can manipulate your vision by using light and fracturing it to warp perception. Plus, there is that element of the supernatural that the reverb provides as well as how it almost resembles the wind blowing through your ear and affecting how things can sound because of it. Another cool thing we incorporated and designed was the scenes underwater. Koby did an amazing job with figuring out how things would sound when November Rain activates from under the surface and it was a fun challenge to figure out how to transition the sound from under water to above water.
We are almost done with Volume 3, and I am excited for Chapter 12 since Pettrull can finally shine and we can play around with couple of interesting scenes. Also, we will be holding our first ever official auditions! If you want to be a part of the project, here's a link to the casting call club page or email us at [email protected]!
I've talked about Mike's interpretation of Jodio and now I'm gonna make it a series where I just yap about the main cast. And what better way to do a part 2 than to do it talking about Matheus and his take on Paco Laburantes.
Out of the five of us, Matheus arguably had the most experience in terms of not only being a voice actor but being a part of a JoJo fandub project prior to joining this project. You may have recognize his voice in the reboot of the Steel Ball Run & JoJolion fandub project as various voices such as Steven Steel and he's actually going through a program in his home country to become a professional voice actor. Matheus has been a great help with aiding the actors in delivering lines and providing feedback on not just delivery but also the editing process. Having him on the team as a sort of resource in addition to being an actor of arguably one of the best characters in the series is something I can talk forever about.
Interestingly, while some of us had to pitch our voices slightly up, Matheus is one of the few people in the cast who have to pitch it down to suit his character more. In fact, Matheus is one of the few that are closest in age to his character when he started yet chose to keep his voice rather gruff and slightly more aged than his original voice to reflect the events of Paco's past (i.e. abusive father, military experience, etc.) and how he's adapted to sound like this as a result. Something that we also decided to do is to keep Matheus' natural accent when speaking English rather than have him conform more to an American English accent that the rest of us have. Many know that Matheus is actually from Brazil and English isn't his first language; he is extremely fluent in it due to being a former English teacher and having lived in the US for a while years ago but not as fluent compared to his native tongue. I actually didn't know that fact until he told me and many of us actually assumed he was from some part of the US that has an accent that isn't as familiar as something like Boston or Texan yet plausible to have. Given the way Paco is raised and how acts like he doesn't really care about how people think (or waste his energy on acting based on societal expectations such as practicing table manners), keeping Matheus' way of speaking reflects how unabashed Paco is about himself as well as showing Paco has sort of pride in his identity as Latino. At the same time, it helps the listeners in Chapter 8-9 already pick up the deception Charming Man does because Paco's accent is completely off suddenly; as you may have read in the post about Mike's take on Jodio, the accent also sparked inspiration and motivation to have Mike play around more with how he portrays his character.
Matheus could tell that Paco is one of those characters who's voice makes sense given the appearance and there would be a general ballpark of what people may expect when they first see Paco. It's why he kept the expected gravely, deep type of voice, but Matheus wants to convey that, despite giving off the impression that he's typically serious and no-nonsense when it comes to the job, he does care for the people he likes and goes as far as sometimes joking with them. Matheus, possibly due to his experience in experimenting with characters, is also down for any creative approaches, and that is why you often hear Paco talk a lot compared to the others. He has so many adlibs that it's often difficult to not include them because of how creative and funny they are. As he is straightforward and willing to call out his thoughts and judgement towards others, Matheus ended up taking advantage of that by making these interesting improvised lines and jokes that continue on to this day. I think if I were to summarize his interpretation, Matheus really experiments the most yet still maintains the core character of Paco that doesn't make him diverge from Araki's work.
You may have remembered how he first says "don't point at me" in Chapter 2 as a response to Usagi doing that but then says it again to Dragona in a more whiney tone, reflecting the contrast between his relationships between those two (and something Charming Man picks up and references in Chapter 9). Similar in Chapter 2, seeing how particular with his personal possessions based on how Paco in Chapter 20 mentioned his clothing cost 2000 USD, you can hear Paco talk about his scooter being taken away while cursing at the police. Adding to how proud he is of his heritage, Matheus often delivered lines in Spanish and Portuguese (both of us like to speculate Paco is Portuguese, Mexican, and Argentinian in some way) that range from common insults to references that viewers who are more familiar with pop culture from those cultures may recognize. I still can't believe he convinced me to keep that Barbie Rapunzel joke in Chapter 5 but Pettrull liked it so much we kept it. Even with his rough appearance, there are moments that Matheus does to contrast this with affection and fondness. He's reassuring Dragona as pains sets in at the end of Chapter 6 and talks about sharing his food at the end of Chapter 9 with Jodio. Despite what the cats did, he can't help but comment on how cute they look at the end of Chapter 7 while Jodio thinks about Rohan's message prior. It really helps to show that Paco is not just outspoken about negative things but also positive things.
Unlike Mike, Matheus ultimately got the voice he needed for Paco by saying "who the fuck bought a teleporter" until he gets the right cadence. I think, like Jodio, interpreting Paco can result in pigeonholing him into a stereotypical rough macho guy who could sound like he's in his mid-40s despite being a teenager approach, and it's incredible to see that Matheus is able to add a unique charm to his character. I think the things he does makes Paco more lovable adds to how admirable he actually is.
The most anticipated chapter for a lot of us on the project simply because this is when much of the beloved action begins as well as the introduction to Charming Man! It's the same usual in terms of general production and voice acting. I really like how Koby sound designed the slithering watches. Both he and I played around with having the security guards bicker with each other during the watch scene to add some comedic touches after the tense reveal of how the lava rock works. Of course, it's also great to see Noelle again as Barbara Ann and foreshadowing from actors like Robo being Leo.
I think, of all the Stand sounds and cries, Bigmouth Strikes Again was the most fun I had creating. I wanted something that crumbled to reflect that crumbling sand-like texture but I also wanted a unique complement so it's not just the sound of something cracking or crumbling. I stumbled across some wind chime videos on YouTube and found one using glass chimes. The video itself showed how the chimes seem to reflect against the light and create these mini rainbows, which sort of embodies what Bigmouth Strikes Again does (manipulate light waves to create false images). The sound of the chimes itself sounded so dainty and light, and it felt like a great contrast to the harsh crackling and crumbling sound I had as a base. Like many other cries that don't have an official Stand cry, I chose an onomatopoeia that reflects the Stand and went with ゴア as Bigmouth Strikes Again's sound. On the surface, it is the onomatopoeia for anything crumbling and breaking in terms of a big explosion of sorts; it's ironic given how the Stand crumbles into little bits. It's also meant to sound very breathy yet harsh, and I added a reverb on Pettrull and Matheus' voice to show how Bigmouth Strikes Again is able to alter its users voice while also enhancing the breathiness. However, the onomatopoeia was also chosen because it was the closest to November Rain's cry ゴロ and shows a foil between Jodio and Charming as characters. I'll talk a bit more about that when we get to Chapter 12.
If you probably noticed at the end of Chapter 8, Paco sounded very off and Charming has a certain accent. If you've seen our McBama sketch and listened to our retrospective, you would already know that Charming has a "British" accent (in quotations because it's not an authentic British accent but instead an impersonation of someone attempting to do one). There's more details about that in Chapter 12, but it's the dead ringer for why "Paco" sounds very different until the reveal at the end. English is not Matheus' first language and the only accent he could actually do is a Russian one, so he was struggling a lot with doing a slightly British accent to convey the switch. The whole audio of them having combined voices and being revealed to Jodio was heavily inspired by Mr Mike and I thought about replicating the sound design. Ultimately I went with this rather echo-y, chaotic approach and struggled to time both Pettrull and Matheus' voices before keeping the way it is to give it that "fractured" vibe. Here's a fun fact: the actors for Jodio and Paco in Mr Mike's video are Riverdude and Armani respectively and they play the Diamotch bodyguards in this chapter instead. Who would have thought this would happen!
Similar to Chapter 8, visuals were relatively easy until the very end when we have those ending action scenes show up. Something that I wanted to experiment was how Dragona's flashbacks are done. You may have noticed that each character recalls past memories differently and how it reflects their personalities and beliefs. Jodio's, for example, resembles an old video recording to reflect how he constantly tries to look back to find meanings that could ultimately help him find the impossible answers he seeks. Videos in general can constantly be replayed, slowed down, or manipulated in real time to find hidden details. Meanwhile, there's a brief glimpse of Usagi's version of flashbacks you may have noticed in Chapter 8 where the coloring completely changes and uses The Chromaverse's works. This is to reflect how Usagi tries to make himself more liked by others and how it even extends to him changing the colors of his world to suit people's taste; given how divisive the official colors are, many fans end up reading The Chromaverse and the purpose of that project is to have fans be creative with how they want the characters to be portrayed in terms of color. In Dragona's case, their way of doing flashbacks is similar to Jodio but uses photography instead of videography. Photos can be looked back to find clues like videos but are more stagnant and capture a singular moment rather than being a flow of scenes moving together in unison. While Jodio would constantly look back and forth and resume fixated on finding new details, Dragona being snapshots reflect how they focus more on the present, the singular moment, and move on from there. They don't necessarily use memories to recall at any time but an acknowledgment of something that happened from the past that you can simply move on from once the snapshot is taken. You can get more of a feel of this when you see how Dragona reacts to the horrific events they faced in Chapter 13.
As we approach the end of the year, I've noticed we've been relatively good on schedule. Our last chapter video for the end of the year (or beginning of next year) will be Chapter 10-11 before we go on to Chapter 12. Although not set in stone yet, we do plan on taking a hiatus before releasing Chapter 13. This is not just to give us a well-deserved break but to give ourselves some proper time to really organize and present Chapter 13 in the most appropriate way. On top of that, we may be holding our first ever auditions soon. Up to this point, much of our actors either came from mutual friends, the production team who want to have a hand at voice acting, or people who sent in their work and we decided to give them a role because we were in dire need of it (i.e. Riverdude). More details will come as we approach the end of the year.
I just love the little quirks the actors have ultimately come up with. their approaches to delivering their lines and even the adlibs that have become a part of their character. So, I'm gonna yap about it- starting with Mike's Jodio Joestar.
Mike really gets into a mood when preparing to be Jodio. According to him, he'd sulk while wearing a hoodie and make himself sound bored and softspoken and mostly pitches his voice so it sounds youthful despite it being naturally low. But, there are moments he interprets that proves Jodio is mostly acting apathetic and bored and there's more to him than being an angsty aloof Gen-Z teenager.
Especially when we see Chapter 2 right after the flashback about his conversation with the psychotherapist at his school where his persona drops for a quick moment and reveals how Jodio is really a scared kid who is forced to hide the fact that he's in a very vulnerable place out of survival and he feels like there is no one who truly understands him. To this day, the "I'm pretty darn sure I can; I'll work hard" delivery breaks my heart whenever I hear it and how he immediately snaps back to his persona before anyone notices itches my brain a certain way. The times where Dragona is hurt (i.e. Chapter 6) has Jodio also break his seemingly emotionless character in response and provides that great contrast between how he often portrays himself compared to when he encounters his loved ones getting hurt in front of him. You can hear him not only rage but also have that brief moment of fear in the way his voice cracks or stammers. Based on the upcoming audios for Chapter 10 I've been listening to, I get chills listening to the genuine fear and eventually anger coming from Mike's portrayal of the ending scene. Spoilers....
But, it's not just all about vulnerability. Jodio can be "a little shit" as Mike would describe him in the sense that he is still immature rather than a psychopathic asshole. In Chapter 1, Mike had the idea of Jodio doing an impersonation of Paco's "There's a gym over there" down to copying Matheus' accent. Matheus himself gave the all clear and found it hilarious that Jodio, despite not caring much for his team beyond work, has spent time and observed his team so much that he can easily do silly impersonations of his team members. On top of that, there's the sentiment of "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" and its likely that this is one of the few ways Jodio can show affection and admiration while not compromising his persona. It's very likely that Paco is aware of Jodio's imitation and at the very least finds it impressive, so I like that Mike used the opportunity to show this "childish" side of him. There's also the little excitement he gives off with seeing "Pink Dark Boy" work on Rohan's iPad in Chapter 3 and how his joking manner is used to manipulate the situation to his favor in Chapter 5. One of the quirks you may have noticed a bit in both the chapters and the comic dubs is that Jodio has a rather dorky laugh he's actually embarrassed about (according to Mike). We had to cut them down a bit to fit the timing logistics but it's such a cute and endearing laugh. I can't help but smile whenever I hear it play.
Honestly, it's very easy to pigeonhole Jodio into being a kid who doesn't care and acts like a teenage asshole, so it's really cool to see Mike experiment and try out these approaches to build Jodio to be the complex character he is. It took a bit of motivation to get him to do this though, given that Mike had no prior experience with voice acting compared to other people on the team and Jodio is such a major role, but it's really cool to see his hard work pay off. It could be the "big bro" in me, but I think he's been doing a fantastic job so far. Fun fact: Mike actually auditioned to be Paco first because he thought his voice was more suited due to his deeper range and Jodio seemed like too massive of a role to undertake by comparison. Pettrull convinced him to try out Jodio's voice in the end and that's how he got the role! Also, he's the oldest member of the team, which makes it super hilarious that he's playing the youngest member of the JoJo gang; yes, the Jodio VA is actually older than the Dragona VA. Anyways, that's enough lore drop for the day.
And we currently have over 2000 subscribers on our channel.
It's incredible that not only has it been a year of creating content, but also a year of working closely with a team I've come to bond with. I used to think we might plateau in subscribers and viewers after a few hundred people started to follow us, but we're still growing steadily in views and subscribers. Our little team has been growing up too!
Since Chapter 1, our team has expanded in cast and formed a dedicated production crew that you see now help develop much of our chapters; I’ve become close to many of the team members as well and they have become some of my best friends. There's real excitement as we reach this one-year mark in fandub work to say the least. We never expected this level of attention or to still be consistently posting chapters and related works to “The JOJOLands.” Nonetheless, we’re delighted and amazed by our progress and look forward to what comes next.
I wanted to create this one-year review from my perspective as an editor and producer of the TJJL Fandub Project.
Looking back, joining this project was a blessing in disguise. Few knew things were tough for me at the time I first joined: I'd been laid off at the beginning of the year struggling to find a job, was at risk of losing a close family member to a critical health issue, and the fandub project I previously worked on had been canceled. I considered stepping away from “The JOJOLands” and the JoJo fandom for those reasons but especially the last one regarding the previous project; the abrupt end of it left me wondering what to do next given how huge of a chunk that was in my life among other things. Coincidentally, the timing of this current project marks one year since I joined the last project, which made reaching this year-long milestone feel even more meaningful but also melancholic.
I found myself positive for COVID for the first time shortly after that whole fiasco, and therefore had to spend time in my room until I recovered. To say I was bored during my quarantine was an understatement. I had nothing to do, I couldn’t do any work, and lots of negative thoughts were running through my head that I couldn’t be distracted in any way besides sleep and doom-scrolling. I joined the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Server in the hopes of not only finding something comforting to rekindle my love for JoJo but also to cure my boredom while I recovered. I had been familiar with project owner Jonah a while ago because of my old project, and it never crossed my mind to join his server until that week. Something you might not know until you join the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Server is that they have a project board section where people can outsource for VAs, editors, and more for personal projects or videos separate from the server’s own projects, and one of the posts in that board was about making a fandub for “The JOJOLands”. It was founded before the entire breakdown of the previous project and by someone unrelated to it that I've never met, and I was initially curious about how this project was being managed at the time. They were looking for a voice actor for Dragona Joestar among other voices, and there was little to no activity because they were lacking several actors needed to get the project running; however, they managed to get the rest of the main cast and an editor on board. This casting call post was basically an opportunity to start anew if I wanted to, and seeing it made me debate on whether I should move on from being involved in anything JoJo-related or give it another shot. It was your typical “what if I get hurt again” and “what if this project flops” thoughts that ran through my head as I tried to find any excuse not to message the people in the project about this. It was scary to think about all the possible bad things that could happen if I reached out. Then again, it was also exciting to think of all the possible good things that could be created as a result of jumping off the edge.
Ultimately, I decided to audition for Dragona, while noting I was open to other roles that would suit my voice better. I doubted my chances due to COVID symptoms affecting my voice and my lack of acting experience, and I used a basic phone setup for recording. Given how Dragona’s voice could be interpreted in so many different ways, I thought my interpretation, and therefore my audition, would not be considered. I was used to taking on minor roles where I could be comedic relief and not have to really think much about things like character complexities, so getting cast as Dragona in the end was initially a shock and ultimately something I still feel grateful and honored for.
When I said this was a new project starting, I meant it was new. I joined the server when there were only five of us, plus one guy who was set to play Rohan Kishibe, one guy who ended up being one of the cops, and an editor. Nothing really was done with the project, given that there weren’t that many voice actors yet, so a lot of the time until I joined was spent just talking to each other. I told myself that I should avoid getting too involved in the project for fear that the same things that happened in my old project were going to repeat. Not only that, I was the only person who identified as female who joined, and everyone else identified as male at the time; I didn’t want to open myself up a lot to random strangers, especially male strangers, in general. I came in thinking I could make it with just doing my lines and nothing else. Secretly, I was relieved there was an editor already at the time, so I didn’t have to be made to edit for long hours with little to no assistance, and I told myself I was going to take a long break from doing anything regarding production. I did have my old scripts from the old project that I offered to be recycled for everyone’s ease, but that was how much I thought I was going to contribute besides my voice. Within a couple of weeks of joining the team, however, the initial editor who was brought in suddenly disappeared.
I wasn’t familiar with this editor, nor interacted with him much. I did offer some help in terms of assets and possible minor assistance if needed, and past messages indicated nothing negative about my inquiry. However, the person who was brought in to help with editing was suddenly gone and unreachable. No one was able to find them; there was no message or note about why they left, and I was worried the project was going to end right then and there. Feeling suddenly afraid about the project ending so early surprised me because I had been debating about leaving the project despite becoming friendly with the original cast. I remember mentally fighting whether I should tell Pettrull I wanted to quit the project and leave the server, or just leave without saying anything. As I felt the waters over the next few days since joining, I realized that, despite the lack of experience and skills, these guys had something I felt was somewhat lacking in my past project: passion. In my previous work, I felt like it was extremely one-sided that I wanted to work seriously on the fandub, I had ideas that I wanted to talk about and explore, and I was often met with “yeah, whatever” or “can we not think about this too early” or sometimes a similar sentence said in a bit more on the snarky and mean-spirited way. I didn’t want to address that much at the time because I thought I was being too annoying, or people were too busy and were just lashing out because of stress. When I first sent ideas on the server, I was expecting similar reactions, but I ended up getting genuine feedback and comments from cast members wanting to actually contribute to making some of these ideas a reality. I was transparent about being in the previous project and what became of it, but didn’t really disclose to them how it was working with the crew until recently. I don’t think the team noticed, but their positive reactions to the work I’ve done, the assets I managed to keep, and the way I have things ready to go made me feel like I was finally being recognized and appreciated. It was the weirdest thing to feel and get used to. I remember messaging voice actors about ideas for the first chapter and expecting some or all of them to be like “you’re weird” and “why are you messaging me about useless shit”. I was especially anxious about how Pettrull, particularly, would respond as a director, but was relieved and slightly surprised by how receptive and excited he and the team were with their feedback. I think, because of how he was acting as the director and how the cast were motivated to contribute ideas and work together, I started to open up and trust these guys more. Needless to say, I deleted the termination letter draft from my Google account.
Honestly, Chapters 1 and 2 were easier to set up and put together because I didn’t really give a fuck about reusing the work I did in my previous project. I made and organized several of those assets myself, so I had the right to use them however I wanted; kudos to the former members of my previous project for putting those things on lockdown before the old project's channel was deleted. There were assets from the old project that changed based on feedback, and I trusted this new team enough to start bringing some online mutuals and friends I knew would love to get involved; that actually helped us fill out a lot of our voice acting roster! Even though I learned most of my editing skills in the previous project, I didn’t think I was confident enough to actually have the style that is now a mainstay for this project. I’ve always thought it would be cool to have an editing style similar to the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Project, where it’s full of movement and animation made by After Effects, and the approach I have initially made me feel rather inferior by comparison. It’s also why I shifted my focus more to sound design and editing, especially seeing how divisive the official colored version was for fans of “The JOJOLands”, and I expected comments to say something like “this editing is boring” or “the visuals are stagnant”. But, it seemed like the visual editing was viewed positively (per Riverdude among other comments), nonetheless, and hearing viewers and cast members mention it was effective yet simple made me realize I should hold my head a little bit higher in terms of my skills. I still have a long way to go, but I’m glad that the fandub has decent visuals, audio, and overall presentation that people enjoy.
After Chapter 2 was released, I became more anxious and worried that the project might end soon or decline in production and quality. I was fine with doing the first two chapters because I had an extremely clear view of what I wanted and used my previous project as a reference, but the chapters that followed had more vague and ultimately no previous works to rely on. I started leaning more on feedback and suggestions from the team, which really helped because we started growing and creating a separate production crew to help make the tasks easier. Fun fact: Skibidi Productions started as a joke group chat name on Discord that has not changed.
Not only that, this project would be the first to go beyond Chapter 2 based on the available fandubs that existed at the time we were producing the next chapters. Up until that point, I thought of ourselves as just one of many fandubs that are following their predecessors, but to go beyond meant we were now leading the pack. Especially with how the series is ongoing and often resulting in a lot of real-time discussions, we had to be careful with how we were presenting the series and whether our design choices would pass the test of time. It’s beneficial that we aren’t completely up to date, given how much time it takes to produce a video, and we can use what we know so far to make previous chapters, but how to react if we end up being up to speed does cross my mind. That anxiousness relating to that has subsided greatly since the release of Chapter 5, although it is starting to crawl back in as we are approaching a more beloved arc of the story and seeing how much the part has progressed so far. I just hope that we continue to make content that people enjoy and that continues to motivate me.
Because I was used to taking everything for myself, so no one would be inconvenienced or in fear that someone was overwhelmed and in need of help, it was honestly hard to create and delegate tasks when more people were brought in. I sometimes find myself doing work I already delegated to someone else, but I would replace it with their actual work if they wanted to. I started adding more to the assets and structure to help the team and future newcomers familiarize themselves with the structure we’ve now developed. I wouldn’t say we are a perfectly oiled machine just yet, but we have managed to consistently send videos that barely diverged in style and approach. The idea I have been trying to set up is how to address potential turnover or when life inevitably gets in the way; whether it be due to personal reasons or because the individual simply wanted to leave the project, I think it’s important to think of how to bring in and adjust new cast and production members for a project expected to last more than ten years. A big part of what I brought from my previous project was documentation and notes on how certain motifs and assets should be set up, and I tried to use my experience in running projects at my old job and things I learned in project management to help run things smoothly. Some may find it overkill, but it has been helping the team consistently upload a variety of content. I think I’ll have to dedicate one day to making sure everything is organized and recorded, and possibly have the team involved in this organization as well. That can be a discussion for next year’s retrospective.
All that said and done, being in this project taught me one thing. What’s really important when it comes to working on something as big as this fandub is knowing who you're working with and getting along with them. Having a really good team can help your project go very far and realize you're not alone in enjoying and creating the things you love. God forbid this project ends but I'm glad it resulted in me finding some amazing friends and continuing to be passionate in my love for JoJo and “The JOJOLands.”
Feel free to use this retrospective as a motivation to kickstart or continue a project you’re passionate about. Even if it doesn’t turn out the way you expected, you might end up with some awesome, talented friends in the end.
"A warning. This is a warning! ... They're here to take back the lava rock!"
After the upset I had with Chapter 6-7, I was really excited to work on Chapter 8. We have more actors working on this, mostly as background characters, there were more things to play around with, and we are one step closer to everyone's favorite chapter 9.
Visuals were a bit easier to do since the pacing slowed down up to the very end. As a result, we were able to get Chapter 8 out a little bit faster than expected; our planned release date was late August or early September. Usually, this is to release the videos after the latest chapter release but we decided this time to do it earlier instead. Plus, I was actually going to be out of the country and proposed we get this out beforehand since we were making really good progress.
Because this is building up to Charming Man's introduction as well as foreshadowing the abilities of the lava rock, there was a lot of foreshadowing done: Paco's comment on how things suddenly got dusty right before cutting to the watch store, the faint sound of Smooth Operators while Dragona and Usagi looked at watches, and much more. The actors had a fun time coming up with adlibs for the people in the background, since the characters were at a busy food court. I wanted a range of characters that included disgruntled service workers, tired locals, and annoying tourists, so try to catch what many of them are saying. As I mentioned, the adlibs can either be things the actors come up with on the fly or read from premade dialogue that serve more as a suggestion than a requirement. There were also a few unused lines from Chapter 2 that I mixed in to make it sound fuller. My personal favorites are the guy in the beginning hinting about his date with a "rich billionaire", two friends realizing they were both dating Joshu Higashikata, and the food court thief reciting Big Smokes' Clucking Bell drive-thru order in GTA: San Andreas.
Music was really fun to figure out for this chapter, since we wanted the vibe to contrast the intense and serious tone we had towards the end of the last video. I also liked the idea of the music being more casual and fun to make the change in tone at the end be very drastic. Not only that, a lot of the songs chosen were picked because we wanted to reference other media. "Seijaku no Ma Kara" was used because it was the same tune used in Episode 19 of Diamond is Unbreakable when Josuke, Okuyasu, and Shigechi are interrogated by the banker. "Reina's Theme" was chosen because we thought a cheeky little reference to the Yakuza series is overdue and found this particular unreleased audio as ideal for the watch scene. "Chicken Burrito" and "Ripples in the Sand" however... let's just say it's another foreshadowing trick. Also, that one particular song by Sza playing randomly is totally not another foreshadowing gimmick too.
Fun fact: the Diamotch Salesman is played by an OG member of the cast you might have not really heard of as much until now. Dr. O was one of the first members to join the project and was initially set to play Rohan Kishibe before some unexpected things happened that caused him to step away. He's back again and will be playing more characters in the future but we had him play as the salesman as a way to welcome him back.
There isn't too much to say in terms of production. Pettrull says I need to take a break and I'm on the fence. On one hand, I really want to stick to the schedule we have and we've been making good progress. On the other, my life has been a mess and a step back would be good.
I'll be honest: chapters 6 and 7 were my least favorite to read and ended up being my least favorite to edit by far. Although I love the body horror and know why it was needed to introduce the lava rock, this arc is clearly not as great as the other arcs that followed. Still, I kept at it and was motivated by Chapter 8 being put in production once this finishes.
I really got to hand it to Koby for helping me with this chapter. He audio edited a couple of parts in chapter 7 and added more to the sound design for Wild Cat Size. Things like the string dancing and tightening were reused from Chapters 3-4 and he created sounds for the net parts. I remember him sending in one version with all the cat meows and it gave me chills. Even for three little cats, he managed to make them sound terrifying.
You might have noticed since Chapter 5 that there are 3 completely different cat sounds. This was a sort of bit done in the Christmas album where we had three separate people playing Wild Cat Size and meowing like them. In a way, it helps allow more actors to be involved in the project even when the number of characters present isn't much, and both Alalium and M Hubbard were more than happy to make themselves sound like screeching cats alongside Mike. I also had the idea that the cats themselves sound eerily human rather than use premade cat meows. So, I had our actors for Wild Cat Size provide various takes and meows ranging from hisses to screeches to purrs to chirps.
Something to note with this chapter is that we actually had one of the songs made for us! Allegore, who made the thumbnail for our Made in JOJOLands Podcast, actually reached out to us afterwards wanting to make music for our project. He and I went back and forth with how the music should sound and now he's become part of our Skibidi Production Crew! Fun fact: he actually played Paco in Mr_Mike's animation for chapter 9, which has been a massive source of inspiration for me-- so it's really cool that I got to meet and work with him! Originally, "Snared and Kicking" was supposed to be played in Chapter 7 and Gwinn's "The Calamity" was set for Chapter 6. However, upon hearing the first drafts, I realize Allegore's music fitted better with the beginning part of Jodio becoming trapped. I initially was going to have Gwinn's music play when Dragona is struck to show a shift in the scene and use a second part of Allegore's for Chapter 7 when we see the cats above the gang. As things ended up going, Allegore's work was used for the entirety of the cat encounter instead, seeing how well it paired with the chaos that ensued. The challenge with finding music for this scene lies in the fact that it needed to convey the sense of urgency and danger yet complement well with the sounds of agony and fear the actors were showing. I think Allegore did a great job given how much back and forth we did to make sure the music works well. I hope we get to see more work from him soon!
As mentioned in the retrospective, music is a major driving force for this fandub. We not only use music to convey the scene at hand but also make some bits. One of the bits you may notice is how a Dua Lipa song plays while a member of the gang is driving. In Chapter 1, we had "One Kiss" when Dragona was in the truck and Chapter 2 we had "Levitating". Because Usagi is driving in Chapter 7, we had to find a Dua Lipa song to play while he's crashing the car-- and "Don't Start Now" seemed to be the perfect fit! We actually have some pre-set song choices for future chapters, so stay tuned to hear those!
The thing that really irked me about producing this chapter is that my dumb ass managed to lost a lot of the visual and audio edits right before the deadline. For the project regarding these chapters, I always try to finish everything and then the video is released 2 days later. The grace period allows me to do any last minute edits and give some time to promote the video. Initially, we planned on releasing this mid June but had to push it, so I was already not happy with having to delay further. Because of how the panels are cut diagonally for action shots, visual editing involves me cutting around and making images from these panels so that they can fit the 16:9 ratio and I'm able to do a bit of the animations you see on screen. So, the day of the deadline, I lost not only the progress but also the image files I used and basically redid so many scenes the day of the deadline. Thank God the team and I pulled through but man was it a nightmare to not be able to finish in time. I do apologize if there are some sloppiness as a result but hopefully it doesn't take away from your enjoyment too much.
Once again, a huge thank you to Koby for his sound design efforts, Allegore for that dope track, Pettrull for helping me last minute on visuals, and our "Discord Kittens" for the meows they provided us. Chapter 8 has just begun recording. I'm really excited for this one since we're finally in a new scene and we have new characters to voice! Signing off!
Not going to lie, this one gave me a bit of anxiety. My old project had plans set for most of chapter 4 (music choices, storyboarding, etc.) so I was only working with unfinished scripts when I started chapter 5. Not only that, this chapter marked the first of the second volume and we saw a huge jump in subscribers after the volume 1 compilation was released. Nonetheless, creating a new chapter from relative scratch was a challenge welcomed.
A previous question in our retrospective asked if we would have characters speak in accents and our short answer is no. Rather than have a characters speak an accent that is implied by their appearance, we actually have the characters (both background and main ones) speak in their native tongues every now and then. This has been a mainstay since Chapter 2 but you get to hear it a bit more in this chapter with Paco and Rohan. Matheus is Brazilian and many of us speak Spanish to a degree to allow Paco to speak both Spanish and Portuguese when the situation calls for it. Rohan speaks a bit of Japanese here and there, specifically the actual Japanese text used in The JOJOLands, and a couple of us also speak Japanese to help out on this too. Some of our other actors speak languages like Korean, Vietnamese, Italian, etc. and those have been heard in the background too. In the future, we may have characters speak more languages besides just our main cast.
Both lines that Paco say in Spanish and Portuguese are known by Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese speakers. The first is "porque no tiene derecho con ésa cara de caballo de Dió", which came from a lengthy monologue in The Viviana Canosa Show by Carmen Borrego. I thought about using "¡para un poco, loca!" instead but decided to use it for another time when the perfect opportunity strikes. The second is "pega ele, frita ele, faz purê", which is from the Brazilian Portuguese dub of Barbie's adaptation of Rapunzel that has become a meme of sorts for Brazilians online. We actually debated on having the lines in just one language or have them done in English but the final cut incorporated both. Meanwhile, because the line is so iconic, we had to put in the famous "だが断る", which is actually said again in the original text when Rohan freaks out about Jodio destroying the lava rock. What Rohan said in Japanese during that all came from the original text. The song "Semari kurukiki" was the same one used in Diamond is Unbreakable for the infamous scene as well.
You may have noticed another voice as the 9-1-1 Operator done by Robo. I wanted to have that voice somewhat muffled to show that Rohan is talking to someone on the phone and Robo did a great job at it. I had to make it a Five Nights at Freddy's reference, especially after Mike recorded himself humming "March of the Toreadors" for the chapter. The scene itself seemed a bit strange given how operators in the US are trained to always pick up the phone and never hang up until emergency services arrive or the call is deemed unnecessary; even so, they are trained to stay on the line to get as much information as possible and ask the caller to not hang up until things are resolved. In Japan, apparently operators will hang up if they deem the call is a non emergency and it's common etiquette for the caller to hang up first rather than the latter. With how Rohan was ordered to stay on the line but then Jodio told Rohan to call him back, I came up with an idea on how to interpret the scene:
The call never hung up and the operator could only hear what they think are muffled sounds in the background from when Rohan tried to tie Dragona up to Jodio picking up the phone. Only Jodio noticed the call is still going on and pretends it was already hung up by openly asking Rohan to call back; Rohan sees this ruse but the rest of the team don't. Jodio then pretends to be tapping the phone on his head in front of his team as if he was thinking about it but in reality hangs up the phone so the operator doesn't hear the rest of the conversation. The operator does try to call back a bit later but Jodio smashes Rohan's phone mid ring.
In a way, this explains what Rohan says about finding Jodio interesting later on; Jodio wasn't just coercing Rohan to hand him the rock but also showing how detail-oriented he is, how quick on his feet he can be to adapt any situation to be in his favor, and overall gutsy he was to get his point across. Someone who wouldn't want further trouble or avoid further agitation from Rohan wouldn't add more or risk it all by doing any outlandish action like Jodio, but he wanted to show that he doesn't care and is confident of succeeding in his plans. What matters more is that he gets the rock, something that seems so important and secretive that Rohan would be hesitant to talk about to others, and he's able to point out that it's an extremely valuable bargaining chip; not to mention he really studied how Rohan works, possibly to the point of feeling a parasocial relationship with him, and uses that against his idol. It's an interesting power move that works in Jodio's favor in the end and that's how we interpreted the scene.
That's mostly all for this chapter. Although... as we mentioned in the retrospective, there is a hidden Stand cry that's been hinted since Chapter 3. You might hear it most evidently at the very end. Can you guess what that Stand is and who it might belong to?
"If you pick up that diamond, you'll be in danger."
We took a break to get ourselves readjusted and also worked on a silly project for the Christmas season. This was also when we saw a lot of growth in terms of the production side, since we were joined by two new editors: Koby and Robo!
Because of how long the series is expected to be, I brought up the idea that we were going to combine chapters to allow the fandub to catch up better with the release dates of the series. I proposed we combine all the ones that have numbers attached to the chapters but Pettrull wanted two chapters max combined. Chapters 3 and 4 will be the first of the combination bunch and you can expect each volume to have one combination.
Shortly after Chapter 2 was released, we received an email from Koby asking to join as an editor and voice actor and we decided to let him join to provide some assistance with sound design. It was Koby that came up with the design for Wild Cat Size and created a lot of noises that we weren't able to get from online. With Wild Cat Size, he incorporated things like fishing wire and zip ties and edited their noises to make the Stand have that unique sound you hear now. I had a lot of fun going back and forth with him on how we wanted the strings to sound. The cat noises were actually made by Mike with no change, and we kept that rather than use premade cat sounds to give a vibe of something off with the cats. While I remained the primary audio person for the project, Koby worked on adding additional sounds and making things into a final draft version of what you hear now. During the production of the Christmas album, he helped with mixing a couple of songs and even debuted as the voice of Mauka.
Originally, we had Dr. O as the voice of Rohan Kishibe. However, Dr. O was going through personal things that resulted in him being unavailable to perform as Rohan for Chapter 3 and 4. At around the same time before Dr. O went M.I.A, Riverdude actually messaged us asking if the role of Rohan Kishibe or Acca Howler was available. For those who don't know, Riverdude is a known figure in the JoJo community for his voice acting abilities, song covers, and parodies of various songs related to JoJo. Initially, we turned him down because Dr. O was still available and we already had an actor for Acca Howler. However, Riverdude ended up becoming our actor for Rohan and performed his role beautifully, and it made this little animation made a while ago where he voiced him rather silly too. You can tell how similar Rohan sounds to Jodio, which was something Mike and I noticed when Mike was first figuring out how to do his voice. When Riverdude sent in his lines, he did two version: one that sounded similar to the English dub actor Landon McDonald and another that was more of what Riverdude interpreted Rohan to be. Given that Rohan is introduced as an antagonist against the team, I went with Riverdude's interpretation to present Rohan has a much more serious and intimidating character. There were some things Riverdude improvised that inspired the chapter trailer too.
While we were starting on visual edits, I met Robo on a server during a video call. We actually were playing chess when I mentioned my project and he asked if he could be a part of it as an editor. After talking to Pettrull and showing his own YouTube channel as his work, he was brought in and helped with the ending scenes of Chapter 3 and 4. Compared to me, Robo had more editing skills and was able to animate the panels in ways I didn't know how and I think it's a really great thing to making our fandub better and better. Both Koby Robo really added a lot to the project, and Robo really helped with establishing the visual style we have for editing. I especially like how he timed zooming in the speech bubbles with Dragona's breaths.
Although you may have heard it in Chapter 1, The Hustle's Stand design is prominent in this one as well as Smooth Operators. I'll just talk about The Hustle for this note. The Hustle has no known Stand cry but I had the idea of using "muki" because it is the Japanese onomatopoeia for muscle bulging and flexing. However, in English, the word sounds childish and cutesy rather than intimidating, so I was wondering how to incorporate that onomatopoeia without running the terrifying nature of The Hustle. I was rewatching a scene from Villeneuve's Dune where the Sardaukar were introduced. For some info regarding the Sardukar: they are an elite military force known for their ruthlessness and complete devotion to the emperor in addition to their fighting abilities, so it seemed fitting to have that influence for someone like Paco. The way they talk and chanted in the movie adaptation gave me the idea of having "muki" sound similar and terrifying. I asked Matheus to send in lines of him saying the onomatopoeia deep and slow, and Pettrull edited it to turn it into the deep rumbling you hear when The Hustle is used; that is then layered with sounds of rope tightening to mimic muscle flexing and straining.
With that, Volume 1 is complete. I had the idea of combining all the chapters within the same volume into one compilation and it surprisingly got a lot more traffic to the channel. Honestly, I never thought we would make it this far given that we were the first ones to go beyond chapter 2. Hopefully, we can continue to do this for as long as we can.
I think I breathed a little easier once we finished Chapter 1 and saw how people responded to it. Nonetheless, this chapter's production was more about learning how to adapt to new ideas than encountering new challenges.
The goal for the project is to complete a chapter within 2 months every time, but we were able to get this one in 1 month instead. Like I mentioned before, a lot of old assets and designs from my old project were reused in this project and that included a full visual edit of Chapter 2. In the last project, I worked with my buddy Seth and he was more than happy to have his work reused. Seth is one of the Discord moderators on a JOJOLands discord server I am a part of before the first chapter published and editing was mostly us retiming the visuals or replacing a few scenes to fit the audio better. So, a lot of the time spent was on collecting new recordings and audio editing in comparison to the first chapter. Pettrull also learned how to do visual editing in time for this chapter and did a great job on the Usagi's Stand introduction scene.
I like to call Chapter 2 our "special guests" episode. In addition to Seth, we had two more people featured for the cameo as a little thank you to the JoJo fandom. Ky, who is an online mutual of mine known for his cosplays in Jojolion, played the role of the DEA agent. A few people knew me as the voice of the DEA agent in my last project and Ky has mentioned how he is a real-life version of Dragona (both are trans, from New Jersey, and Black to name a few of their shared traits), so this was a cheeky little nod seeing how the roles have switched. Another person we had as a special guest was Jonah, the current director and owner of the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Project. Many know that TJJL Fandub Project started because of the SBR & Jojolion Fandub Project; we are forever grateful for them helping us jumpstart our work and we asked Jonah if he would be interested in playing one of the background characters. He played one of the cops during the drug bust and I made it a little joke to have him voice the cop that was arresting Paco. Matheus is actually one of the mods for Jonah's Discord server for that project and the voice of various characters such as Steven Steel. We might have a few cameos here and there in the future but it may be a while given the next time we have new characters besides Rohan and Wild Cat Size is in Chapter 8. Even so, we've had other actors join our team for future character roles and may try to fill in with them first before branching out to other characters.
Like I mentioned in the last note, a lot of what was used in the project came from a previous one. Many items were planned and slightly altered, but there were also some that changed significantly and went unexpectedly during production. The most obvious is the whole flashback Jodio has that I call "The Psychopath Monologue". In the past project, I had the idea of making the fandub almost like an old video tape of a family vacation and the idea was to make all flashbacks look like these VHS videos to also differentiate between a scene for a flashback and a scene for the present. This also involved putting the sound and voices through a filter so it sounds like it's an old recording. I kept this approach for the new project but the concept of using a tape is less about being a part of an aesthetic and more of representing Jodio as a person. Our main Joestar desires knowing everything and cameras in today's age are commonly used to find hidden details of events initially missed but recorded to be seen again. In a way, Jodio sees his past as less of a memory to bond over with others and more of a means to recall and understand the world around him. How different characters recall memories may differ based on their personalities but we'll figure out what that means when we get to it.
I wasn't sure how the actors were going to take the scene but I told them how I wanted Barbara Ann to argue with the psychotherapist as something to improvise while Jodio talks. The idea was that it's done muffled in the background so the attention is all on Jodio and him talking. Noelle really channeled the mom energy, improvising the scene further to show how Barbara Ann is extremely protective and willing to speak for her children, and I had many other lines she improvised that unfortunately didn't make the cut. Seeing how both she and Alalium (the actor for the school psychotherapist) made the scene more chaotic than expected made me take the scene in a different direction. In this new version, Jodio is basically drowned out by the voices instead and you can't really hear what he says in the moment to the adults in the room clearly. Mike interpreted Jodio as a soft-spoken kid who whispers when he talks, so that and the filter over his voice makes it very difficult for us to hear him to talk over his mom and the school psychotherapist. In a way, it makes it seem like the world doesn't care, continuing to go on while leaving Jodio with his thoughts and as if no one wants to listen to him. The next idea I had in mind was for the filtered voice and the actual voice to blend together and the scene has a smooth transition from flashback to present day as the music continued. Funny enough, while trying to implement the idea, I was trying to set it up and accidentally cut off the music and deleted the filtered voice when Jodio says "happy". I ended up with this dead silence that made me notice Mike shift the tone from the usual apathetic voice Jodio often speaks in to something extremely vulnerable and scared. It's a reminder that, despite his diagnosis and how he presents himself to the world, he's still a kid and he never deserved to be in the situation he is now in. I felt the silence was now necessary and I had to keep that in before drowning him out again with the voices of the DEA agent and two cops. It was an extremely rare sight that could easily be missed and I hope we get more opportunities to showcase that. That scene really went against what I had planned on editing overall and I'm really glad it did.
You might have noticed some Stand sound designs in chapter 1 but I'm going to start by explaining THE MATTEKUDASAI first. I took the sound effect for King Crimson in the anime adaptation of Golden Wind and simply reversed and slowed it down to make THE MATTEKUDASAI's summoning sound. Taking the bird elements of the Stand design, I layered in some flapping wing sounds and used a squish noise to indicate when it's transforming. I have this idea that the Stand noises are made by the Stand User's voice actor unless intentionally otherwise, so THE MATTEKUDASAI's sound is made by Usagi's voice actor. Reee made the noises with a filter over his voice and, though not intentional, mimicked the seagull-esque guitar riff made by Adrian Belew in the song of the same name. I find these noises rather adorable and quite fitting, and Reee used a filter that would make his voice sound birdlike yet metallic. Based on how the characters had their appearances changed and the text color changed, the other actors would speak in different voices and we had fun coming up with different ways to say the lines. Throughout the times the Stand uses this camera trick, we may play around with this feature more.
Fun fact: We had an editor planned for this but said person went M.I.A. two days after I joined TJJL Fandub Project. For someone who vowed to never edit again after the previous project went awry, who would have thought that I would end up going back on my word? Second time's the charm.
A lot of assets and procedures(?) from the old JOJOLands fandub project that I made were brought back and improved upon for this one, which made production a bit faster than had everything needed to be from scratch. It was a massive change for me to be able to sit down with others and talk out how things should be planned out with people willing to be in the room and help out. As a result, there were some changes made from the original concepts I had in terms of the direction of how scenes should go and how tasks were to be delegated. It was super fun because it not only made planning things easier but also let me really enjoy myself rather than feel burned out and stressed. It also helped me warm up to the team a lot more.
To this day it boggles me how cohesive we all are despite us never working on any projects together prior. All of us save for two (Pettrull & Reee) never met in person or knew each other prior to joining this project but we've spent the first month getting to know each other, doing small dubs to see how we work together, and helping each other on how we do our lines. Admittedly, I got whiplash with how different the voice actors for this project have interacted with me compared to the last project's, but I welcome the change nonetheless. As Mike has put it, the ability to just come together and make what we made has been "serendipitous". Maybe it's due to our astrological signs being very compatible (4/5 of us are air signs with the 1/5 being a water sign), or maybe we're just really lucky to find each other in this lifetime. I managed to bring some people from the old project back into the fold, as many of them were waiting on opportunities to voice act but never got the chance when the old project was shut down. Most are friends/online mutuals I've known way before the project and you can hear their voices in the background or as minor characters.
Chapter 1 took the longest due to how long the chapter was (69 pages????) and how many characters we had to assign voices to but there was another additional issue at hand: hurricane season. The majority of the team is based on the East Coast of the US, which resulted in lost Internet connections and less people to be able to work on the post-production side of things; some people also got sick too. As the only West Coast person at the time unaffected and with little time to train other people to help make the work go faster, everything ended up falling to me and I honestly feared it was going to be my old project dynamic again. Luckily, as I found in the next production of chapters, it wasn't.
The way the chapter was edited was rather out of order due to me editing scenes based on availability of lines and what I felt compelled to do at the moment. The first fully edited scene (sound and visual) was actually the interaction between Dragona and Paco at Iko Iko. At the time, it was Matheus and I who had our lines fully done and Matheus had the idea of combining our parts to see how we sound together. I think that started to let me warm up to the team a bit more and sparked the inspiration I thought I lost before, because I started to edit Matheus' concept audio and even showed visually how the scene may go. Mike managed to wrap up on his lines by the time I sent in the first draft of that small clip and had the idea of making Jodio mimic Paco's speech pattern. I realized the cast didn't just want to perform but they wanted to really make the characters their own, and I really like how this added a personal touch to our project. The fandub became less of an ongoing work and more of a passionate creation we all collaborated on. I really hope whoever watches our fandub sees this and enjoys how we present the characters too.
The last scene that was edited was the beginning sequence right before the story begins. I deliberately kept that last to ensure that first scene must give a sense of what sort of fandub we wanted to be, how we wanted to present ourselves, and what we think the series is about; it would be impossible to do that unless everything else was done first. I actually tried to look at other JOJOLands fandubs to see how they interpreted the beginning and see whether I should follow whatever consistent trend seemed to pop up among what is available. It wasn't until I reread the pages and even rewatched the beginning of the anime adaptation of Stardust Crusaders that I realized we are being reintroduced to Stands in a different way for The JOJOLands. The first time Stands were introduced-- there was this sense of Stands (particularly of the main protagonist and antagonists) being extremely powerful entities that are almost terrifying and out-of-this-world. But, the beginning of Part 9 seemed to rewrite Stands as everyday events and situations that may seem ordinary but can be extraordinary and potentially powerful if looked in a different way. As the "certain mangaka" puts it, one cannot see how something ordinary can be extraordinary (a Stand ability) unless they are seeking it. I interpreted statement as "there is beauty, greatness, potential in everything regardless of how it seems at first but you must look for it and potentially accept changing your perspective to see it"; I like this new message Araki is giving honestly. Fitting enough, the song "Sekkin" used for that introduction was the same song used when Jotaro shoots himself just to prove the existence of Stands and using the song would homage to the scene where Stands are introduced for the first time in JoJo. So, rather than the initial idea of making the scene ominous and dark, we open with wonder and excitement. For an inevitably dark and tragic story The JOJOLands will become, we should at least make it a bit happy before we head down that path, no?
We actually did a call to show the chapter to everyone else on the team before it was released on YouTube the day before and I honestly shed a few tears realizing what we envisioned for several weeks became a reality in front of us. I was glad we succeeded in making the first chapter but there was a sense of bittersweet nostalgia felt while I cried. I'm still grateful for my old project because it did help me provide a foundation I used for TJJL Fandub Project, I met so many people because of it, and I wouldn't be where I'm at without everyone involved (good, bad, and ugly). But, obviously, there were things about that old project I really didn't like and regret not changing or fighting against. Not only that, it took a while for me to get into the groove of things. I actually considered leaving the JoJo fandom altogether, especially The JOJOLands, because of how badly the past project affected me and my love for the part. Hell, even after joining the team, I was hesitant to stay or really let myself be comfortable with people on the team. I didn't think I would be able to contribute much given the sheer talent and passion I got as a first impression of the project and I wasn't confident in both my skills as an editor and actor. Let's just say I'm so glad I got over all that and I really appreciate the cast and crew for allowing me to do what I loved so much and thought I could never do again.
I don't want to get any more sentimental in these notes but I'll end these notes with one final word:
There's this belief in my culture that people will become the names they are given or give themselves. Many people in my culture would choose names that would bring them or their children good things or believe certain names shouldn't be used in fear of future calamity that it would entail. I was desperate to move on from my past that I wanted a new name from the one many people know me as when I joined TJJL Fandub Project. Sort of on a whim, I chose Phoenix because I wanted something more gender-neutral yet somewhat related to my actual name (my middle name translated but spelled slightly different). I wanted something to symbolize the rebirth of the love for a niche I loved dearly. Little did I know I was going to experience my own rebirth too.
