Roundabout

Roundabout is the name of the first ending of the Jojo's Bizarre Adventure Anime. The song is a popular single by British progressive rock band Yes.

Version 1 Ending (Episode 1-9)
The ending depicts an Aztec mural depicting the history of the people that used the Stone Mask, beginning with the Aztec chieftain killing the woman and her spilt blood running through the mural, whilst images of the various characters in the series are also displayed. The mural also displays the eventual destruction of the vampirized Aztecs by the Sun, culminating in the blood reaching the Stone Mask, causing it to activate.



Version 2 Ending (Episode 10-25)
The second version of the ending is similar to the first, to an extent, though in this case it is an upward vertical scroll, along with a shadowed, background, showing that the viewer is trying to inspect the mural via flashlight. The animation begins with the Stone Mask breaking into pieces, before scrolling upward. The mural depicts the Pillar Men as well as images of tribesmen worshipping the power of the Stone Mask.

Like the previous ending animation, images of whatever characters appeared in the episode appear as well. For the first two episodes of Part 2, the image of Speedwagon would briefly show his younger, Part 1 era appearance, which quickly fades into his older appearance from Part 2. Two images of Joseph would also appear in this version of the credits.

The animation ends on an image of the Red Stone of Aja placed upon a final part of the mural.



Trivia

 * Episode 3, 20, and 21 are the only episodes in Season 1 to not play the song in the credits.
 * Episode 17 plays the song while the credits appear, though it shows scenes of Joseph and Caesar training instead.
 * Episode 5, 8 and 24 play the ending song at the 6:57 mark of the Full version.
 * Episode 14 plays a cut of roundabout, featuring the flamenco section of the song.
 * The artwork Araki drew for the cover of the Ultra Jump May 2011 Issue is a reference to the album art.
 * In the second version, when the Red Stone of Aja is displayed, several pieces of iconic paraphernalia relating to later JoJo protagonists can be seen i.e., a handsign symbol (Jotaro); vines (Old Joseph's Hermit Purple, circa Part 3); several arrows and diamonds (Josuke/Part 4), a ladybug-like stone (Giorno); a butterfly (Jolyne) and a horseshoe (Johnny).
 * Roundabout was chosen to fit with the time frame of Phantom Blood's comic publication and Araki's own musical preferences. It was one of the requested songs included on a memo Araki wrote for the staff. It's a song that the sound director, Yoshikazu Iwanami, liked during his own teens and he was happy to finally work with it. According to him, he was initially stumped on how to end episode 6 after the audio climax for Poco's scene and struggled to come up with a natural lead into the ending credits. Then Iwanami listened to the beginning notes of Roundabout and was dumbstruck at how well the pacing fit with the episode's cliffhanger without editing. He considers it a strange and happy coincidence.

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