JJOCT7 R3M13 Jojolity

Judge Baldr (Arch)

As for Jojolities, I’ll keep it brief. I found both teams did excellent jobs at approaching their jojolities. Brighid and Kid not only took on how their characters differed from Ichi throughout the strat, but even how different they approached the issue of “killing the Middleman”. They embodied duality proficiently and tactfully, thus, I’m giving their Jojolity an 8!

Onto Ichi, I found her method of throwing herself further into the role of the Middleman throughout the match compelling, especially through the theming of each of her weapons used. Through these ‘lessons’ she grafts onto herself, they all make up what the Suite has always wanted from Ichi: a multitool to any problem they could face. In the process of taking on these aspects, Ichi loses more and more of herself, thus hitting rock bottom. For this theming, I’m going to give her Jojolity an 8, as well!

Judge Mr. X (Ceep)

Starting out with the players here, and I think that you really understood the assignment on the Jojolity. There’s a strong exploration about how you differ from the Middleman and how you’re similar to them, especially the latter with Kid’s own determination to kill off the Middleman. That isn’t to say Brighid is neglected at all; carrying within herself just as much determination to kill the Middleman, but in a more philosophical way. There’s a lot of flavor writing here, but you don’t skimp on the mechanical integration either. Even in the small scale, like Kid beating himself up if Ichi gets away and Brighid’s refusal to do anything that would kill Ichi, to the large scale; wearing down Ichi with unrelenting pressure and forcing the persona of the Middleman to be pressured, exposed, and die when exposed to the light of scrutiny.

Overall, this is a strategy that really has an excellent narrative built into its core, and as I said, it fundamentally feels like the players understood the assignment and executed on it very well. While normally I’d give this a high 8, I think that I’ll bump it up to a low 9/10, due to my own discretion. Really excellent work!

Moving onto Ichi, again this is some excellent work. Making memories out of the other (revealed) members of the Suite, taking inspiration from them, and incorporating them into her own unrelenting violence as the main thrust of her strategy dovetails neatly into the Jojolity plays of Ichi. Fundamentally, there are two consistent facts about the Metropolis Suite members. First, that they lost their boss matches. Second, that the Suite made them miserable. Hāvā’s compromise with their interference for the sake of promised protection; Rasna’s alienating captainship of the VULTURE gang under their employ; Vasant and Xenagoras’ hollow and horrible plenty; Hira’s duty causing loss of any heroism to the point of leaving them hollow; and Zhengqi’s sacrifice of everything about herself. Ichi takes all of their pain in and doesn’t know how to handle that than to keep going down the path of the Suite. A formless, no, unformed hate, ready to be whatever it needs to be for the sake of the Suite. A true casualty.

It could be argued that Ichi’s Jojolity isn’t terribly clear, and I’d even make that argument, but as I’ve bumped up the players, I feel that the thematic resonance is strong enough here to earn a low 8/10. Great job, again!

Judge Regenerator (Alpha)

Alright, it’s time for the meat and potatoes, the section that takes Alphamon the absolute longest because he gets heated super easy and wants to applaud strat-writer-effort on the narrative front by tackling it with the same fervor that the strat writers do, at least a little bit.

I’ll start with the players again, because this is easy!

You embraced the JoJolity from the mechanical writing on! Both characters embody different meanings of ‘kill’ and use the space and time they have on-screen effectively, both in-plays and in-character!

I wanted to go back and read the character bits before I came back here, but I wanted to applaud the quality of the narrative writing within the mechanical writing before I did, this is great! Using both separated plays and character narratives as similar drivers, pressing the singular action forward- Kill The Middleman- while learning each others’ style and building on their plays together- it is fantastic!

Anyway, take this cool **9** I found.

So the boss strat does something different than I’m used to, with the stratters deliberately stating their interpretation of how their character adheres to the JoJolity.

I’ll be using that metric, as other judges have, for the sake of fairness.

From the word Game, we have Ichi breaking a rock to go hide and start the process of badgering her opponents. (I purposefully didn’t mention how her kit was used in Quality, explicitly to save it for here in JoJolity)

Between thrown projectiles from the backrooms, the six different weapons and attack styles, the dancing skills being used to avoid terrible damage and breakdance up walls (I know this wasn’t done in literal), and every little other thing being used for the sole purpose of killing and surviving to kill again is… well I won’t say admirable, but it’s good writing!

The brutality of your moves and motives have given you this **8**! Well done!