Opinion: Jojo Doesn’t Really Work With The Netflix Model

The sixth part of the Jojo anime: Stone Ocean premiered as a Netflix original in December of 2021 and it was great. When it first premiered fans were hyped to see Jolyne’s Bizarre Adventure fully animated.

Unfortunately, the anime only consisted of the first 12 episodes and there won’t be new episodes until September of 2022, almost a year later. This killed the hype, Jojo is one of the most popular anime of all time, and no one is talking about it, all because of that giant gap in release dates.

The problem with large gaps is that anime communities heavily rely on weekly fan discussions of each new episode to keep the show’s momentum going. Talking about that latest fight, and making memes about that new jokes, these activities fuel the fanbase and promote the anime to new viewers.

While it’s fine for there to be a short gap between different seasons (like the one Jojo Part 3 had), the fact that Stone Ocean had so few episodes, they all came out at once and we’ve now gone three anime seasons without new content means that there’s little to keep fans investment after the initial burst.

With Jojo’s Parts 1-5, the series thrived from airing weekly on broadcast television since there were always cool new characters or stands for viewers to talk about. These previous parts, most of them over 30 episodes long, managed to keep viewers engaged for almost a year, waiting in anticipation for the next episode, plastering social media with screenshots and clips.

It wasn’t just watching a show, it was an experience revolving around the show with other fans and it helped grow the fanbase exponentially. With people being able to watch the entirety of Stone Ocean’s 12 episodes in a few days, the series didn’t garner the same effect.

The Netflix all-at-once binge model, while great for giving more content in a short amount of time, has also shortened the hype and discussion cycle of the Jojo anime. It has put the series in an awkward place where there’s no new material but the part also hasn’t finished yet so fans can’t reminisce about what a good series it was. I even personally know a few diehard Jojo fans who said they’d wait until the whole part was released before watching and has just kind of forgotten about the series in the meantime.

It’s so strange to think that there’s a Jojo Series currently going on and the internet has been fairly quiet about it.

If Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure: Stone Ocean returns in September and it’s another 12 episodes before going back on hiatus, I feel it will only be detrimental to the anime. At this point, it would probably be best if Netflix either wait for the entire program to finish production and release it all at once or return to the weekly airings like previous Jojo parts.

The large gaps in Stone Ocean’s airing schedule are not only slower in the long run but make the series overall less fun to watch, and Jojo should not be fun to watch.

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