round3anime

Since I find myself in quarantine, now seems like the perfect time to not only watch tons of TV, but to also write way too much about it. My other hope is that I’ll have something of a captive audience for this blog, given most of the world is in lock down at this point. 

Given the recent global situation, I’ve found myself watching soothing shows, goofy and action pact shows. Cathartic shows.  Last time I talked about JoJo’s Bizarre adventure, which is all those things, and I want to continue that conversation. 

What I want to address is why the show has such staying power. I’ve tried watching other shows like it – other action shows, other anime, other comedies. But JoJo stands out in particular, and I wanted to talk about why. 

You can miss it, but Araki (JoJo’s writer) is a pretty nuanced writer. Nuanced may seem a strange word to apply to a man who has the sense of humor of a twelve year old boy, but he clearly understands the mechanics of a story well. In particular, I wanted to highlight his use of stakes. 

Stakes are a huge part of what makes a narrative compelling. Without them, there’s very little reason to watch. But simply raising the stakes is not enough to make a story compelling. A prime example would be a drama like Criminal Minds. I only watched season one, but the episode I remember most, nearly a year later, was about a family being held hostage. At some point, the killer is going to murderer this family, and the detectives find themselves racing against the clock. 

There are episodes with higher stakes – episodes where a bomber threatens to blow up hundreds of people, episodes where the protagonists are held hostage themselves. But here’s the thing – we know the protagonists can’t die. The stakes may seem high,  but because we know the protagonists can’t die, the tension is low. 

The same applies for any Drama, like SVU or Dexter. Whenever Dexter is in “trouble,” it’s hard to be particularly worried, since we know he’ll get out unscathed. But in the premier episode of Dexter season 4, the stakes are not life and death for our serial killer protagonist – the stakes are maintaining his marriage and his normal life. That is something he can actually lose.

I want to focus on a specific pair of episodes today – The Lovers parts one and two, from the third installment of JoJo’s Bizarre adventure. In terms of establishing and escalating stakes, I consider these episodes something of a masterclass. Araki successfully manipulates stakes in all of his episodes, but this one is particularly easy to learn from. 

The first scene sees one of our protagonists haggling with a merchant, negotiating the price of their lunch. This is a very short sequence, but there’s a good reason for that. Stakes generally dictate how long a scene can last. With just a few dollars worth on the line, the stakes don’t create enough tension to sustain a long scene. 

But this does not mean that high stakes can carry a long sequence. To give an example, let’s say we’re watching a slasher movie. The villain is chasing our protagonist through the woods with a knife; the stakes are high. But after thirty seconds or so of chasing we’ll probably be bored. 

In this episode of Jojo, the stakes are constantly changing. At first, they are very low, with a bartering match. But then the gang’s hostage, who has valuable information, is attacked and is bleeding out on the street. The stakes, once again, are not life and death. Someone is dying, yes, but the stakes are whether or not the gang can extract information from this person before they die. 

If one pays attention, the tension in this episode is constantly shifting. Once the antagonist shows up, a man who goes by the name of Steely Dan, the point of tension starts to change from minute to minute. First, there is the larger tension – Steely Dan has placed a parasite in one of our heroes, Jonathan, which will eventually kill him. Also, if Steely Dan is killed or injured, Jonathan will suffer the same fate. 

It is good to have a large, overarching tension that lasts throughout a whole episode. But this alone is not enough to keep a viewer invested. A good example of why would be any poker movie. Usually, we only see a handful of critical hands, at least two. This is because, hand to hand, the stakes don’t actually change. We can only tolerate about five to ten minutes worth of a poker game at best. 

With that in mind, let’s look at the movie Rounders. In the final sequence, our hero is gambling for his very life. But as high as those stakes are, watching the entire poker match play out in real time would be boring and tedious. That’s because stakes create anticipation – you want to see an outcome. Prolong that outcome for too long, and you lose your audience. You want them to care about the game of cards, but human nature often cares more about the result.

If we understand stakes being about anticipation, then the question is how to sustain it. Rounders gives us a good hint. In the final sequence, our protagonist wins the match to save his life, even wins a bit of money in the process. However, it’s not very satisfying, as he still doesn’t have enough money to pay back his debts. That’s when he’s offered double of nothing odds. 

Now the stakes are changed. Now he doesn’t just stand to lose his life, but all the money he just gained. On the other hand, he could also gain quite a bit of money, enough to live out his dream. The stakes just changed, and they just got higher. 

This is what I call the ladder of stakes. You almost want to keep a viewer addicted, looking for their next fix. As soon as you give them one outcome, tempt them with another, then another. In this way, one can sustain tension throughout an episode or movie, by continually introducing new stakes.

Before we move on, I just want to look a little more closely at the anatomy of a poker scene. As I said before, we usually only see a few hands – at least two or three. This is because there’s a very basic set up that you’ll see a lot if you look for it. 

Player A wins a hand, starts to feel confident. Then Player B wins an even bigger hand; it’s looking bad for Player A. But then Player A wins an  even bigger hand still, walking away with the pot. A lot of Poker games in TV and movies are some variation of this pattern. But why? 

For stakes to work, all the possible outcomes need to feel possible. Your average poker scene is tense because we believe either Player A or B can win. This creates a feeling of uncertainty. Meanwhile, if we know what’s going to happen is inevitable, the anticipation that makes stakes so effective goes away. 

For example, let’s go back to the scene of someone chasing someone else through the woods with a knife. I remember this exact scene played out in the movie the Strangers – a very typical home invasion movie. And yet, I wasn’t the least bit scared or even that invested. The reason was that the protagonist was in the middle of the woods, with no cell reception, no weapons, nowhere to really hide, and their car had been totaled. There’s no way to escape, which makes the stakes feel meaningless. The stakes are high, sure, but the outcome is obvious. 

If the movie made a critical mistake, it was taking away the protagonist’s gun so early, or taking away the car so early. Without them, there is no real tension, since the only possible outcome is their demise. Yet we have to wait over an hour to see that play out. 

Now let’s return to JoJo. Like Rounders, it makes a ladder of stakes to keep the viewer invested. But unlike Rounders, the construction of its ladder is much more sophisticated. 

After Steely Dan appears, our protagonists split up into two groups. Joseph and the others try to remove the parasite from his brain, while our title character, JoJo, confronts Steely Dan. But he can’t hurt Steely Dan, since doing so would kill his Grandfather. What’s clever about splitting these groups up is that it creates two kinds of stakes. Very high, life and death for Joseph, but much lower stakes for JoJo.

For instance, Steely Dan demands JoJo give him a massage, or be a human bridge so he can walk over a moat, or steal expensive jewelry for him. The stakes are smaller here, but there’s still a great deal of tension. Will JoJo, who is a very prideful character, give into these demands? What will Steely Dan do if he says no? What horrible demand will Steely Dan make next? What will happen to JoJo if he’s caught stealing the jewelry? 

The Stakes are constantly changing throughout the episode, every two minutes or so. And often those stakes are very low. But low stakes can be very compelling, even more effective than higher stakes. After all, if you start off with the highest stakes possible, then there’s no possibility for escalation. There’s nowhere to go but down. But start low, and you can still rise.  

Furthermore, if the stakes are lower, then the outcome becomes far less obvious. Low stakes are more concrete too. It’s hard to imagine what life or death stakes actually feels like; it almost becomes too abstract to fathom. But many of the stakes in JoJo are quite familiar. For instance, Joseph is freaking out and writhing In pain, compliments of Steely Dan’s ability. The stakes here are that he’s attracted a crowd and it’s embarrassing. 

But perhaps more critical than any other element here is the payoff. As the stakes rise, so does the expectation of an epic finish. As the episode continues, and as Steely Dan tortures and humiliates JoJo, JoJo starts to write receipts, explaining to Steely Dan that he will “pay him back,” when this is all over. 

Whenever you write high stakes, it is important to remember that they must lead somewhere. In many narratives, a big mystery or large threat is introduced, to keep us watching, only to be essentially dismissed a few episodes later. In this pair of episodes, a glorious beatdown is built up the entire time, until finally the parasite is extracted from Joseph’s head and JoJo is free to put a beating on Dan. 

Most writers would likely do just that, right away. It is indeed a satisfying choice. But Araki takes it even further, adding a few last rungs to the ladder of stakes he’s constructed. Steely Dan grovels, and JoJo lets him go – it looks as if we won’t get that beat down we so wanted, the very beat down all this has led up to. Suddenly, the stakes are increased. What we thought was an inevitable outcome may not occur. 

And then, complicating matters even further, Steely Dan takes a young girl nearby hostage. We don’t know this girl, but because she’s an unnamed character, the danger feels real. She could actually die. But then, in a twist of events I won’t get into, the hostage is freed – and then, and only then – do we get the beatdown we were waiting for.

After that, JoJo walks away, throwing his receipt back behind him, saying that Steely Dan’s debt is paid in full. 

Wow, so, this became more ramble than initially expected, but here is a basic summary –  stakes are all about anticipation. Thus, don’t simply make your stakes high. That will give you nowhere to go next. Also, make your stakes believable. There should be at least two possible outcomes that seem truly feasible. Also, a single set of stakes can only keep your audience invested for so long. Keep introducing new stakes every couple of minutes. And of course, make the outcome truly satisfying. 

Until next time, stay safe and stay healthy all.