return home | to Cosplay Central
I watch Jojos in 2020 on a friend's recommendation; I tell the tale of my initiation elsewhere. By Part 4 I am fully invested in this series, thinking about it constantly, drawing it all the time, rekindling social media accounts to participate in the fandom. If I'm asked for my favorite part I will usually say Part 3 because it most effectively broke my heart, some of the characters remain very high on my favorites list, and the monster-of-the-week format goes down easy on rewatch, but Part 4 might ultimately be closest to my soul. In some ways it feels like a culmination or a more full inhabitation of some of the best features of the series, a certain genuine hope despite real stakes, a warmth and generosity for its definitely weird characters. We're more often invited to pity evil than to fear or hate it, but we do meet true evil in mundane, insidious form.
First of all, Rohan is visually perfect. He has so many outfits and they're all 1) completely off the handle 2) kinda femme but not in a wholly committed way? 3) to my eye the most deliberate Actual Real Life Couture references yet 4) broadly sort of matchy/on-brand but with a pretty loose palette and set of shapes. He's like the most successful version of those capsule closet people or something. His visual brand is clear but also he can wear whatever he wants somehow. He also is wearing something different every time we see him, so he's a demonstrated in-universe fashionista (maybe the only one? Which seems weird for a series so steeped in fashion!).
Second, he is not a hero or villain because he is already self-actualized. He is granted magic powers and he uses them to continue to do his job. Imagine any other character receiving the godlike ability to rewrite anyone else and not immediately using it to, at minimum, manipulate people to their own ends. Imagine any real life people you know with this power. No way I'm not using that to make everyone like me, right? Rohan could never, because he does not care for a single second about anything except making his own art more interesting. That's insane. That's either so inconceivably well-adjusted and reasonable that it's impossible to imagine or it's actually insane. Unironically I would like to be just like him. The unshakable self-confidence paired with the genuine curiosity and commitment to a higher purpose. Unbelievable.
He's also deliberately weird and self-absorbed. He's annoying! And he has next to no instinct for self-preservation. He's prideful and spiteful, nearly anti-social. No interest in dealing with actual people beyond turning them into abstractions for the sake of his art which sort of begs the question why he has so much investment in the art. He doesn't seem all that attached to the benefits of fame beyond getting more resources for his art.
Also, crucially, his art is manga! He behaves like a smug literary type who must set aside all worldly concerns in service of the muse, and he's seemingly writing like, exclusively popular fantasy comic books for young teens? In any case he takes his craft very seriously despite its position in the market as an inherently unserious form. Obviously I love this and I think it's key to his character. He is capable of deciding for himself what is important and good and worth dedicating a life to, and I think that's genuinely inspiring. (Obviously, as someone who strives to take their own nonprofessional craft seriously.)
I start the process by yearning for all of his outfits and seeing how many I can just make out of closet cosplay, trying out fashion-magazine poses in greens and whites. In creating a simple version of the [[]] outfit and in the process of searching for other cosplayers' takes on this outfit I decide the sweater in particular has been criminally underbaked in most versions I've seen, so by god I'm going to knit it myself.