Board Thread:Manga Discussion/@comment-27659575-20171102233127/@comment-27659575-20171110020403

Kakorat wrote: Comparatively, art means nothing in the face of Characters and Story. It could be used to bolster the quality of the work, however, it should always be considered the cherry on top and should not be used under any circumstances to be a replacement for quality story and characters. I was halfway into making a long and sophisticated counterargument, but my laptop crashed. Now i'm back and frustrated, sorry in advance for being rude.

Basically, you stupidly think that there's "substance" against "style" and that because of their universal quality, story and character prevail over artstyle. In art, style is substance. You and most casual consumers don't know that, you have a mental blind spot that hides how the manga's very drawing serves to convey the story and flesh out the characters. That's why you have such a low opinion, you don't even grasp how many things are shown through the drawings themselves, you only get the succession of events shown and the speech bubbles.

Secondly, you are simply insensitive to Araki's writing decisions. The lack of focus on plot is because Araki wants to spend his week polishing his characters. Also it means the manga doesn't drag on like One Piece. Also you criticize the episodic plot, but that's a completely assumed writing style. Araki wants to and makes everything so the reader is captivated by what's happening in the now, as opposed to future events like "when is Jotaro arriving to Egypt, I want to see Jotaro vs Dio now!". It will work on some, not on others. Don't think that Araki is a bad author because of his choices. He does his thing and nothing else, and he does it well.

Thirdly, JJBA does have themes. Lots of theme. But Araki has a weird thought train and his themes aren't obvious because characters don't make long philosophical speeches about "war is bad", or "follow your dreams".

tl;dr version: Because you don't see what makes JJBA good doesn't mean it doesn't exist.