#hokuno no ken

[abri-chan]

[abri-chan]

I already knew Araki drew a lot of inspiration from Fist of the North Star, especially for the early JoJo parts, but rewatching some Hokuto no Ken clips, it hits me that Dio is basically Yuda, and the Dio vs Jonathan fight mirrors the Rei vs Yuda fight.

[abri-chan]

Are we sure Kamina isn't Raoh's son with all his talks on how he aims to pierce heavens?

[abri-chan]

I remembered watching Battle Tendecy.. and noticing Lisa Lisa didn’t do shit(and I meant that KIND of shit like battling Kars seriously). She just gave presence. She could’ve done a final act where she does something for Joseph as a mother aka fighting Kars Bcs none messes with her baby. But nah. I meant, it can work both way but idk the reactions. Like when Mob from Mob psycho gave his powers to Reigen to fight others adults Bcs he as a child shouldn’t do that.

I get your point, it’s not about doing anything at all (that’s a low bar), but doing something relevant to the plot, or have enough screen time. 

To Araki’s credit, I read in snippet of an interview where he does apologize for his view on women. He said that before meeting the woman that later became his wife, he had very skewed views on women and girls, and he even said that Lisa Lisa did deserve better, and perhaps her own story. So with that in mind, back in the days of Battle Tendency Araki was a man who consumed media made  by men. Long analysis ahead, but the gist is seeing a woman as a prop or part of a man’s story, not as her own independent self. When you regard and portray women as creatures different from yourself, you find them at some level fascinating-- something exotic. Lisa Lisa is there to make Joseph’s adventure interesting to the audience-- assumed to be male, even though it’s probably mostly female by now. 

Speculating here about what tropes inspired Lisa Lisa, but Araki did say old JoJo was heavily inspired by Fist of the North Star and Western movies. 

Fist of North Star/ Hokuto no Ken. (On a side note, even Polnareff looks like a run of the mill Hokuto villain, that gets his ass handed to him by Ken’s “Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru”) Spoilers ahead, but the anime and manga are also old, so it’s past due for spoilers. Yuria, Ken’s fiancee, was a beautiful and powerful woman; she was the most important general of the Nantos. But even then, she does nothing consequential to the plot; she’s assumed mostly dead, then shows up as general but basically still does nothing, as the main conflict is Ken vs Raoh. Less powerful characters had more battles than her. She was used to make Shin look like an asshole and set up Ken’s arc of fighting for his fiancee. Poor Shin kept begging Yuria to just get his power and army (and riches), stuff she should be doing anyways as the last Nanto General, and she just mopped around saying she could love only Ken. What is ambition, am I right?  (also justice for Shin!) I disliked Yuria because she willingly gave up her own power to other men, including Ken. Anyways, from a man’s point of view, he would care for the story of Ken and other male characters; Yuria is there as this fascinating woman, but in no way threatening to the male ego. She’s there to just love the main hero and either wait to be saved by him or sacrifice herself. Lisa Lisa is probably a mixture of Yuria and Mamiya, who had more autonomy, but ultimately her story had to make way for a man’s story. Interestingly, Yuria’s star was the mother star (guess who Lisa Lisa is to Joseph, and all men in Hokuto no Ken have mother issues)

Western Movies. I don’t watch that many movies, and my parents mostly had those 80s macho fighter ones, but I’m guessing femme fatale is Lisa Lisa’s trope. She’s mysterious, she’s strong, she’s beautiful, but ultimately it’s there for the main hero. Kinda like Fujiko in Lupin III didn’t get her own story until recently (by another woman). From Joseph’s perspective, and the reader’s, it’s cool this JoJo takes us to Italy, now it’s even more fascinating our trainer gets to be a femme fatale because we also get nudity scenes, but ultimately Joseph has to fight the main fights and Araki needed a way to remove someone he set up as too powerful from the plot. Hence Kars playing dirty, but even then, did neither Lisa Lisa or Joseph suspect he would? I think from the perspective of a male adventure, Lisa Lisa had already fulfilled her role: she’s a mother and thus not a love interest, she was only as useful as training her son and showing the audience the exotic “femme fatale” trope, and that’s it. 

FYI Netflix’s Castlevania did a good job of giving the female protagonist equal screen time to her two male co-protagonists, but that’s a recent example, and hopefully we see more. 

I also know Araki’s original stories did have women as main protagonists, but they didn’t do so well. I wonder how much that affected his take on female representation in his works, and why we see a female JoJo in part 6 only. 

The thing about Reigen and Mob is that they are more like Jotaro and Josuke or Bruno and Giorno. Reigen was not an actual mom to be pushed aside.