Jojo's Bizarre Adventure's distinctive art style has been winning over the hearts of manga fans for decades now, and it's certainly one of the most iconic and influential art styles in the world of manga. But would you be surprised if your teacher walked into class one day and says "Kids, open up your textbooks, we're studying Jojo today." For some Japanese middle schoolers, this has recently become a reality.
A post of an X from a mother whose child attends a middle school has been causing lots of excitement among Japanese users because she was taken aback to see that the art textbook used by her son contains none other than Hirohiko Araki.
“Apollo and Daphne are mentioned (next to Araki), but I’m relieved there was no mention of the Mona Lisa” the lady jokes, possibly alluding to a famous scene from Diamond is Unbreakable, in which Yoshikage Kira talks about his bizarre sexual awakening after seeing the Mona Lisa in his textbook.
On that note, there's also a theory on Japanese Twitter that Araki has lived many centuries prior to his supposed year of birth and has been featured in textbooks not once, but twice as the Mona Lisa and as the swordsman Toshizo Hijikata.
In the textbook, Hirohiko Araki's work is placed back-to-back with some of the most famous artists in the world, like Van Gogh and Claude Monet. Japanese X users were quick to say how envious they are that middle school students get to learn about Araki in art class, and honestly with you I'm jealous too.
As we’re able to see in the preview that was posted on the official website of the textbook’s publisher, the main purpose of putting legendary manga artists such as Araki in textbooks is for the students to be able to interact with art in a way that is more familiar to them; Araki’s timeless art pieces are not valuable just because they (very deservingly) marked an era of manga history, but because through them he was able to channel a lot of the important aspects of both classical and modern art of the World. No wonder that his work was actually displayed at the Louvre at one point.
