(Minor spoilers from JJBA Parts 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6.)
Oh, would you look at that? Another JJBA post.
I didn’t mean for this to be an anime blog, but let’s be honest, we knew where this was going when I dropped the shipping post. Moving on!
Why do so many Jojos have sucky fathers? George played favorites with Dio, Joseph was a deadbeat for Josuke’s first 16 years, and don’t get me started on the parents in part 5. Even Jotaro’s father, Sadao was bad because… wait what did Sadao do that labeled him a terrible father/husband.
If you go to Reddit, Tumblr, and AO3, it won’t be hard to find someone saying that Sadao abandoned his family. I’ve seen people write that Jotaro resents Sadao and that Holy should divorce him.
However, no one in canon has ever said anything like that. Sure, Joseph isn’t a fan of Sadao, but he explains that this was because Holy lives so far away in Japan.
Here’s what we know about Sadao:
- He’s a famous jazz musician.
- He goes on tour and is likely on tour during Stardust Crusaders.
- He never makes an appearance in the series even when his wife is on her deathbed.
That last one seems to be what fans point to when they say he sucks. His wife might die and he is nowhere to be seen, but I have in story evidence for why he didn’t show.
Tell Him? Why? Ain’t Nothing But A Heartache.
There is a very good chance that the Jostar group just never bothered to tell Sadao that his wife was on her death bed.
Think about it. I already explained that Joseph hates Sadao for marrying his daughter. Of course, he wouldn’t bother to tell him. There’s also the fact that Joseph doesn’t even share with his wife that their daughter is at death’s door, so it’s not too surprising that he failed to tell her husband.
As for Jotaro, maybe he just decided that his father was powerless to help, so he didn’t bother telling him. Jotaro knows Sadao is just a normal musician and Holy’s illness is supernatural in origin. If Jotaro believed that he and his grandfather could defeat DIO anyway, so why bother to call Sadao at all? We know from the Darby incident that Jotaro doesn’t think that failure was an option.
Telling his father that Holy is dying when Jotaro believes that the cast will save her is pointless and a waste of time.
This reasoning for Jotaro and Joseph is stupid and selfish but not out of character.
The Oscar Goes Too…Holy!
In this part, Holy regularly lies to people about her illness. She doesn’t want to worry people, so she pretends that she is better off than reality.
Around the halfway point of the story, Suzie tells Joseph that she spoke to Holy. Apparently, Holy told her mother that she just had the flu that turned into some pneumonia. That still sounds pretty serious to me, and based on her reaction, Suzie thought so too. Suzie was somewhat reluctant to stay in America and she makes her way to Japan after Jotaro lets slip that he is with Joseph.
This implies that Holy made it seem like Jotaro was still home with her. That she wasn’t alone at home with no one to care for her.
So how does all this go back to Sadao? Because I think Holy probably lied to him too.
If he did call home, Holy would tell Sadao the same thing she told her mother. Even if he did suggest leaving his tour and going home, Holy would have tried to convince him otherwise. She doesn’t want anyone to worry about her why would her husband be any different.
Araki and Side characters
In reality, the reason Sadao Kujo doesn’t show is that he isn’t important. There are a lot of characters who we don’t know a lot about.
All we know about Kakayoin’s parents is that they could afford a trip to Egypt with their son. We don’t even know how they reacted to his death. Since Avdol’s father turned out to just be him in disguise, we know nothing about his family situation. Polnareff’s story revolves around the fact that he had a sister, but we know nothing about his personal life.
Hell, we don’t even know how Holy even met Sadao. Maybe it was a tour in the US.
There could be several reasons that Sadao doesn’t show. Maybe Sadao was actually in Japan but never in the room when we saw Holy. Maybe he came home the day after everything ended. Maybe he didn’t show up because Holy asked him not to. Maybe the Kujo family is a bunch of stoics, so they never expected him to come home in this kind of situation.
What we do know is that Araki has no problem saying when a character had a bad parent. All the characters in part 5 are examples of that. If Sadao were truly meant to be seen as an absentee father and husband, Araki would have likely made that fact very clear.
I Think Thinks 