These JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure face masks are more fanservice than beauty product, but they’re loads of fun.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is one of my favorite series, and it’s also a foundational text for many adventure shows targeted at a male audience. Hirohiko Araki’s art for the original manga is striking and full of personality, and while it runs on a knife’s edge in terms of internal logic and plot escalation, it falls on the entertaining side of pulling plot threads and resolutions out of its ass. The ongoing anime adaptation is wonderful, especially its opening credit sequences and fight scenes.
The face masks are tie-in merch for the anime. They are printed with either the stone mask that turns Jonathan Joestar’s rival, Dio, into a vampire, or with the face of Star Platinum. It is awesome.
The company that produced these, Isshindo Honpo, is a Japanese confectionary company that began making novelty face masks when they set up shop in a newly-opened kabuki theater. They now make novelty masks for a variety of franchises, like Doraemon, Shin-Chan, Attack on Titan, and the Marvel movies. Do you like your beauty routine with a heaping helping of nerd shit? Isshindo Honpo has got you covered.
I set my expectations low for the actual difference this would make to my skin. The masks said they would have a firming effect, and I can say that today my skin feels slightly tighter and is pretty well moisturized. I have combination skin, which is oily in my T-zone, and I should have washed off a bit more of the product before I headed to bed, as my face is bit sticky there, but overall I’m happy about the results.
But I didn’t want to use these masks for their beauty properties. I wanted these masks because I wanted to look like Star Platinum. For the uninitiated, Star Platinum is a Stand—a physical projection of a character’s psychic powers. He appears in the third and most iconic part of the manga and anime as the Stand of Jotaro Kujo. Jotaro uses Star Platinum’s strength and speed strategically as he and a ragtag gang track Dio to his secret lair in Egypt to save Jotaro’s mother’s life. (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is an absolutely wild show and you should definitely watch it.)
Now, most face masks don’t align up too well on my face—my huge forehead makes things wonky—but it was still pretty fun to wear this, all things considered:
You can grab these masks on Amazon for $14.75, but they might take a while to come through customs like mine did. Still worth it, though.