The JoJoLands Review: Araki at 65 Pulls Off a Heist in Hawaii — And Steals the Whole Genre

Sixty-Five and Starting Over

Hirohiko Araki is sixty-five years old. He has been drawing JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure for nearly four decades — a run so long that readers who started with Phantom Blood in 1987 now have children old enough to read The JoJoLands. Most mangaka at this stage of their career are either retired, coasting on legacy, or producing diminished echoes of their greatest work. Araki, somehow, decided to write a crime manga.

Not an action manga with crime elements. Not a battle manga with heist flavoring. A genuine, structurally committed crime story about a teenage thief in Hawaii who steals a 24-carat natural diamond from a corrupt tourist and then has to deal with the consequences. The protagonist is not noble. He is not fighting for justice. He wants money. He says so on the first page.

I have been reading JoJo since I was in middle school, buying the tankobon volumes at my local Book Off in Yokohama, and I can tell you: nothing in the previous eight parts prepared me for this. When I read Jodio Joestar’s opening monologue — calm, direct, entirely unapologetic about his desire for wealth — I set the volume down and laughed. Not because it was funny. Because Araki, at an age when most artists are calcifying, had once again become someone I did not recognize.

Paradise with Teeth

The JoJoLands takes place in Hawaii. Specifically, on Oahu. Jodio Joestar is a fifteen-year-old high school student who works as a drug runner for a local crime outfit. His older brother Dragona is a fashion-obsessed Stand user who can manipulate smooth surfaces. Their mother, a single parent, works multiple jobs to keep them fed. The family is not destitute, but they are marginal — existing in the cracks of a paradise that was not built for people like them.

When Jodio’s crew receives a job to steal a diamond from a Japanese tourist’s villa on the North Shore, the heist becomes the engine of the plot. But what follows is not a clean getaway. The diamond carries complications — supernatural, criminal, and deeply personal — that pull Jodio into a web of island politics, Stand battles, and moral choices that resist easy categorization.

What strikes me most about the early volumes is the tone. Previous JoJo parts announced their ambitions loudly: the gothic horror of Phantom Blood, the globe-trotting adventure of Stardust Crusaders, the serial-killer cat-and-mouse of Diamond Is Unbreakable. The JoJoLands is quieter. It moves with the unhurried confidence of someone who has told eight stories and knows exactly how much rope to unspool before the first knot tightens. The heat of Oahu is palpable in every panel. The ocean glitters. And beneath the beauty, something is always wrong.

The Most Japanese Place That Is Not Japan

Here is something that most English-speaking readers will not immediately understand: Araki setting The JoJoLands in Hawaii is not exotic. For Japanese readers, it is practically domestic.

Hawaii occupies a place in the Japanese cultural imagination that has no parallel in Western experience. It is Japan’s mirror, Japan’s vacation, Japan’s second home. The connection runs deep — deeper than most people realize — and understanding it changes how you read this manga.

In 1885, the Japanese government and the Kingdom of Hawaii signed an agreement that brought the first wave of official Japanese immigrants to the islands. They were called “Gannen-mono” (元年者) — literally “first-year people,” named for the first year of a new imperial era. These laborers came to work the sugar plantations, and they came by the thousands. By the early twentieth century, Japanese immigrants and their descendants constituted the largest ethnic group in Hawaii. They built temples, started newspapers, opened tofu shops and mochi factories. They planted roots so deep that even today, Japanese culture is woven into the fabric of Hawaiian daily life in ways that surprise first-time visitors. You can buy musubi at 7-Eleven. Bon dances happen every summer. The word “bento” needs no translation.

Then came December 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor. For Japanese people, this date carries a weight that is almost impossible to articulate to outsiders. It is not simply a historical event — it is a wound in our relationship with the place we loved most outside our own borders. Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were interned. Families that had spent generations building lives on the islands were stripped of everything. And yet, remarkably, the connection survived. After the war, Hawaii became Japan’s favorite international destination — a place of healing, of return, of complicated affection.

When I first visited Waikiki as a child with my family, I remember being startled by how much Japanese I heard on the street. Signs in Japanese. Menus in Japanese. An entire ecosystem built to welcome us back to a place we had once attacked. The warmth was genuine, but there was something underneath it — a politeness that acknowledged history without discussing it. This is a very Japanese dynamic: the unspoken awareness of pain, managed through courtesy and the passage of time.

Araki knows all of this. He must. Setting a JoJo part in Hawaii is not choosing a random tropical location. It is choosing the one place outside Japan where Japanese identity has been tested, shattered, rebuilt, and ultimately woven into something new. The JoJoLands takes place in a paradise built on volcanic rock and historical trauma, and the story’s preoccupation with theft — taking what does not belong to you, occupying spaces that were not made for you — resonates with that buried history in ways I suspect Araki intends.

Honorable Thieves and the Glamour of Taking

Jodio Joestar is a thief. He steals. He is not ashamed of it. And Japanese readers bring an entire mythology to this character that Western readers may not.

The concept of “nusumu” (盗む) — to steal — carries different connotations in Japanese narrative tradition than it does in Western storytelling. In English-language fiction, theft is generally wrong. Heist stories in Hollywood are built on elaborate moral justifications: the target is a bad person, the thieves are lovable rogues, the money was ill-gotten anyway. The audience needs permission to root for criminals.

Japanese fiction does not always bother with this permission.

Consider Ishikawa Goemon (石川五右衛門), the legendary sixteenth-century thief who stole from the rich and gave to the poor — Japan’s Robin Hood, except that Goemon’s historical existence is better documented and his execution (boiled alive in a cauldron, possibly with his young son) is remembered with a strange mixture of horror and admiration. Goemon became a kabuki hero, an ukiyo-e subject, a video game protagonist. His name is synonymous with a particular kind of theft: bold, theatrical, performed with style. The “Goemon-buro” (五右衛門風呂), the traditional iron bathtub heated from below, is named after his manner of death. We named a household object after the way a thief was killed. That tells you something about how Japan processes its outlaws.

Then there is Lupin III — Monkey Punch’s iconic manga character, a gentleman thief inspired by Maurice Leblanc’s Arsene Lupin. Lupin III has been running in various forms since 1967, and he is arguably the most beloved thief in Japanese popular culture. He steals without moral justification. He steals because he enjoys it, because the challenge excites him, because beauty — whether a painting, a jewel, or a woman — deserves to be appreciated by someone with taste. Lupin’s morality is aesthetic, not ethical.

And then there is Nezumi Kozo (鼠小僧), the “Rat Boy” — an Edo-period thief who supposedly robbed samurai estates. Historical records suggest he was a petty criminal who gambled away his takings, but folk legend transformed him into a champion of the common people. His grave at Ekoin Temple in Ryogoku, Tokyo, is visited to this day by people who chip off pieces of his headstone for good luck. I have seen salarymen in suits scraping the stone with coins, pocketing the dust, hoping that a thief’s fortune will rub off on them.

What connects Goemon, Lupin, and Nezumi Kozo — and what separates them from Western thief archetypes — is the concept of “giri” (義理). Giri is often translated as “duty” or “obligation,” but in the context of theft narratives, it functions differently. Japanese theft mythology cares less about why someone steals and more about who they steal for and from. Stealing from the powerful for the powerless carries giri — a social obligation fulfilled through transgression. Stealing for pure self-interest, without giri, is simply crime.

Jodio Joestar is fascinating because he sits exactly on this boundary. He steals for money. That is selfish. But he steals to support his family — his mother, his brother — people who have been chewed up by the economic machinery of paradise. Is that giri? Araki does not answer the question. He lets it sit in your lap like a stolen diamond, warm and heavy, waiting for you to decide what it is worth.

The Artisan Who Refuses the Mold

There is a phrase in Japanese that I think about every time Araki starts a new part: “shokunin kishitsu” (職人気質). It translates roughly as “artisan spirit” or “craftsman temperament,” but the English misses the stubbornness embedded in the word. Shokunin kishitsu is not simply dedication to craft. It is the particular, almost irrational commitment to improving that drives a sushi chef to spend three years learning only to cook rice. It is the refusal to repeat a success when repetition would be easier and more profitable.

Japanese culture venerates this quality. We have swordsmiths who have passed their techniques through twenty generations. Ceramic artists who destroy pieces that do not meet their standards, even if a collector would pay millions. Woodworkers who join timber without nails or glue, spending months on joints that no one will ever see. The shokunin does not work for the audience. The shokunin works for the work.

Araki is a shokunin. Every part of JoJo is a different genre. Phantom Blood is gothic horror. Battle Tendency is pulp adventure. Stardust Crusaders is a road trip. Diamond Is Unbreakable is a small-town mystery. Vento Aureo is Italian gangster fiction. Stone Ocean is a prison break. Steel Ball Run is a Western — and as I explored in my review of Part 7, it might be the most thematically complete manga ever drawn. JoJolion is a puzzle-box mystery about identity and memory. And now The JoJoLands is a heist manga.

Nine parts. Nine genres. Thirty-eight years. No repetition.

This is almost unheard of in manga. Successful mangaka are incentivized to keep doing what works. Editors pressure them. Sales figures pressure them. Fan expectations pressure them. Eiichiro Oda has been drawing One Piece for twenty-seven years and it is still, fundamentally, a pirate adventure. That is not a criticism — One Piece is extraordinary — but it is the norm. You find your genre and you stay in it.

Araki refuses. And the refusal is not casual. Each new genre requires new research, new storytelling muscles, new visual approaches. The JoJoLands demanded that Araki study Hawaiian geography, local crime dynamics, heist narrative structure, and the specific quality of Pacific light — because Araki’s Hawaii does not look like his Italy, which does not look like his Egypt, which does not look like his fictional Morioh. He draws each setting as though he has never drawn anything before.

This is shokunin kishitsu at its most extreme. It would be so much easier to draw another battle-tournament arc, another globe-trotting adventure, another serial-killer hunt. Fans would buy it. Critics would praise it. But the artisan inside Araki — the voice that whispers “you already did that” — will not allow it. At sixty-five, he is still learning. Still reaching. Still uncomfortable.

I find this deeply moving in a way that has nothing to do with the manga itself. In a culture that worships mastery through repetition, Araki achieves mastery through reinvention. He is the shokunin who breaks his own mold every time it produces a perfect piece.

Every Fight Is a Riddle Wearing a Fist

The Stand battles in The JoJoLands continue a tradition that Araki has refined over decades — and that tradition has deeper roots in Japanese culture than most readers realize.

JoJo fights are not really fights. They are puzzles. The question is never “who is stronger?” It is “who figures out the mechanism first?” Every Stand ability has rules, limitations, and hidden properties. Victory goes to the character who deciphers the opponent’s “shikumi” (仕組み) — the mechanism, the system, the hidden structure governing how things actually work.

This is a distinctly Japanese approach to conflict, and it connects to a broader cultural fascination with puzzles and hidden systems. Japan is the country that gave the world Sudoku, that turned escape rooms into a mainstream entertainment industry, and that produced the honkaku mystery tradition — a school of detective fiction, pioneered by writers like Edogawa Ranpo (江戸川乱歩) in the 1920s, that treats mystery stories as fair-play logic puzzles between author and reader. In a honkaku mystery, all clues are presented to the reader before the solution is revealed. The reader is expected to solve the case alongside the detective. Withholding information is considered a form of cheating.

Araki’s Stand battles operate on the same principle. When a new enemy Stand appears, its ability is demonstrated — sometimes clearly, sometimes obliquely — and then the protagonist must reason through the mechanism. The reader, if attentive enough, can solve it before the characters do. This is not action storytelling. This is puzzle storytelling wearing action’s clothes.

In The JoJoLands, this puzzle-solving dimension takes on an additional layer because the context is theft rather than combat. The characters are not trying to defeat enemies — they are trying to steal things without getting caught, to manipulate systems, to exploit gaps in security both physical and supernatural. The shikumi they must decode is not just “how does this Stand work?” but “how does this entire situation work, and where is the crack I can slip through?”

Araki’s art in The JoJoLands serves this puzzle-solving energy with characteristic brilliance. His panel compositions in Part 9 are tighter, more controlled than the sprawling canvases of Steel Ball Run. The Hawaiian settings give him new palettes to work with — turquoise ocean, volcanic black rock, the sun-bleached pastels of beach town architecture. His character designs remain as fashion-forward as ever, but there is something slightly more grounded about them. Jodio does not dress like a runway model. He dresses like a teenager who has good taste and limited money. This restraint — Araki pulling back from his maximalist tendencies without losing his signature style — feels like yet another act of reinvention.

Who Should Steal This Off the Shelf

You will love The JoJoLands if:

• You have read other JoJo parts and want to see Araki working in a completely new mode
• You enjoy heist narratives with supernatural complications
• You are fascinated by morally gray protagonists who do not pretend to be heroes
• You appreciate meticulous world-building that makes a real place feel mythic
• You want to see what a master artist does when he refuses to retire

You might struggle if:

• You are looking for the bombastic, maximalist energy of Stardust Crusaders or Golden Wind — The JoJoLands is a slower burn
• You prefer protagonists with clear moral compasses
• You have never read any JoJo before (start with Part 7 or Part 4 instead)

Rating: 8/10

The JoJoLands is not yet Araki’s best work — it is too early in its serialization for that judgment, and the slower pacing of the opening volumes means it has not yet reached the devastating emotional peaks of Steel Ball Run or the claustrophobic intensity of Diamond Is Unbreakable. What it is, already, is proof that Hirohiko Araki at sixty-five possesses something rarer than talent or experience: the courage to begin again. The Hawaiian setting is inspired. Jodio is a protagonist unlike any Joestar before him. And the heist structure gives Araki’s puzzle-minded battle design a new framework that feels like it was always waiting for him.

The one-point deduction is for pacing — the early chapters take their time establishing the world and cast, and there are stretches where the momentum dips before the next mechanism clicks into place. But this is the complaint of someone who knows what Araki is capable of at full velocity. He is building something. The foundation is solid. And if history is any guide, the structure he builds on it will be unlike anything we have seen before.

Here is what I keep turning over in my mind: Araki has spent nearly forty years writing stories about the Joestar bloodline — heroes and villains connected by fate, gravity, and a star-shaped birthmark. But Jodio is the first Joestar who does not seem to care about destiny at all. He cares about money, about his family, about surviving in a paradise that was not built for him. So I want to ask you — is that a betrayal of the Joestar legacy, or is it the most honest thing Araki has ever written?