#like it's literally an pure iteration and love story of all the big jump battle manga that came before it

[chiarrara]

the core idea i'm working with concerning the jjk finale discourse is that people are mad about the wrong things.

I have had serious problems with the writing in jjk since at least shibuya, and I even found criticism in the hidden inventory arc and the sister school exchange arc (though the main problem there is that it was boring pre-disaster curses and the characters suck).

Similar to Game of Thrones, some people were criticizing the broken writing choices as far back as seasons 3 and 4 while most people were glazing the series until the cracks in the foundation caused the entire story to crumble right at the end, leaving most of the fanbase confused how it "suddenly" got so bad.

The commonly held sentiment is that JJK fell off after Shibuya. I disagree. I think it fell off during Shibuya where the entire worldbuilding, power system, and plot broke irreparably.

HOWEVER where JJK never fell off was in character writing, relationship writing, and the overall themes of the story which were all consistent, had strong throughlines, were well integrated into the action (another strength), and were in my opinion, the core appeal of the the entire project.

And yet, most of what I hear people complaining about is either a) missing or dissatisfying character moments and a lack of satisfying exploration of the themes, or b) contradictory outrage over plot and worldbuilding elements not lining up as if these issues haven't been there from the start.

I know a lot of people don't operate this way, but when there are fundamental problems with the storytelling, but there are other parts of the story that I find incredibly meaningful and impactful, I find it really easy to glaze over those problems and even justify and rewrite them in my head so they make more sense. When good character writing shows up in JJK, I stop caring that the plot sucks.

The finale chapters of JJK had amazing character writing, delivered on the main themes of the story, and made literally all the broken plot elements, lack of focus, and shoddy worldbuilding secondary concerns for me. They don't break the important parts of the story, I don't care that they aren't wrapped up because I didn't like them in the first place, and their lack of exploration just cedes more ground to fan creation allowing the story to thrive for years into the future.

If you were reading JJK for the complicated plot, complex scheming, or intricate worldbuilding, I can see why you're upset, but you made a mistake a long time ago because that stuff has sucked for ages. But I know most of you fuckers on this website were reading for good characters, impactful themes about love, and yaoi bait, so why are you mad????? I really don't get it.

Who cares that the shittily written American Military subplot didn't come back? The fucking basis of the power system doesn't make any sense and isn't well thought out, so how was it ever going to deliver on the solution/potential for cursed energy? You're mad that the random New Shadow School subplot was randomly thrown in at the end, I've been mad since that random fucking grasshopper showed up in the fucking subway!

And some of you are literally admitting YOU DIDN'T EVEN READ THE TRANSLATED CHAPTERS so how would you KNOW if the story themes and character writing had been delivered on? based on summaries? that is the absolute worst delivery system for a story, you have to know this. you're getting mad at machine translations of out of context pages like WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT.

In conclusion, most of you are mad at the wrong things and none of what I wrote up there is really about what the things you should be mad about are, because they don't matter. The point of a story is to mean something and JJK did. It was always good at what it was good at, and I wish people were engaging more with the story in it's own domain instead of being mad it wasn't exactly what they wanted it to be. The finale delivered on everything that made me care about this story. It made me love it even more, and I'm never going to regret spending so much time on this series. Everything else is just criticism for fun.