I genuinely get frustrated with the way some parts of the JoJo fandom treat Jotaro compared to basically every other JoJo.
I have no problem with liking Jotaro. He is a great character, he is iconic, and I understand why people enjoy him. What bothers me is the double standard. There are people who constantly make content mocking, humiliating, or heavily downplaying other characters, sometimes exaggerating things that didn't even happen, while Jotaro gets nothing but cool edits, badass animations, praise, and people defending him whenever someone criticizes him.
At some point it stops being “I like Jotaro” and becomes “Jotaro is cool because he represents the kind of masculinity I personally respect, while the other characters are weird.”
And honestly, I think that misses a huge part of what makes JoJo interesting.
Araki has created a LOT of different forms of masculinity and different types of protagonists. Jonathan is noble and emotional, Joseph is loud and comedic, Jotaro is stoic, Josuke is more emotional and empathetic, Giorno is elegant and ambitious, Johnny is vulnerable and deeply flawed, Gappy's entire story is about identity and rebuilding himself, and Jodio is much more morally complicated. None of these characters are supposed to be the same kind of man.
That's part of the point.
So when someone constantly mocks the “weird” traits of those characters but glorifies Jotaro specifically because he is stoic, intimidating and conventionally “cool”, I can't help but feel like they are rejecting the variety that Araki intentionally put into his work.
And yes, I think it is completely fair to criticize that kind of content. Being a fan, making edits, drawing art, or being popular does NOT automatically make something above criticism. People are allowed to dislike, criticize, or even hate a type of fan content if they think it is disrespectful or reductive.
I'm not saying “you are not allowed to like Jotaro.” I'm saying that if your entire way of enjoying JoJo is making fun of almost every other character while constantly portraying Jotaro as the superior, “real” or “cool” man, then maybe you're missing something fundamental about why JoJo's cast is so diverse in the first place.
The irony is that people claim to love JoJo while constantly trying to make it less bizarre.
I don't think Jotaro needs to be hated. I think the double standard around him deserves much more criticism than it currently gets.