Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders S2 – 24 [END]

If only we had known earlier that lipstick and hair gel would make him this powerful!

It feels like I’m been begging for this Dio vs Jotaro showdown for the entire season. Honestly, I could not get to this point soon enough. It seems a bit greedy to want to go straight to the pay-off, but I can’t help it…this was a long journey spanning across 2 (equally long) seasons. And finally, after all this time, Dio is fighting the Joestar family once again.

THAT WAS REALLY COOL! RIGHT?!?! Didn’t you guys think that was cool? Alright, I’ll calm down and form relatively more coherent sentences instead of yelling (caps locking?) at you. I liked that the end of this fight was short and sweet; carefully punctuating each major scene where there was a power struggle. Dio’s extended ZA WARUDO ability was an excellent little twist, especially the way he used all the extra time just to brag in Jotaro’s face. This is a show where characters have a habit of saying precisely what is going on, but Dio takes it a step further by acting as a timer and conveniently announcing the upper limits of his powers to Jojo. I thought Dio was lying just to trick him and he could actually pause time for up to 15 seconds or so, but no, he apparently wasn’t that clever to play mind games. I guess it ruins the whole “characters saying what they’re doing” thing if the narration isn’t trust-worthy. Then you’d never believe anything.

Anyways, I can’t really chalk up Dio’s loss to being careless. Trickery wouldn’t have gotten him very far in this fight. If anything, Dio is actually very cautious, and plays it safe by using a STEAM ROLLER as his finishing move so he won’t get within Star Platinum’s range. Sidenote: Dio using a steam roller as his final attack is hilarious because it makes me assume that no matter who he faces, he will straight-up go out of this way to find a steam roller to crush them with for his final blow. How is he supposed to know that Jotaro’s Stand would magically pick now out of any other life-threatening situation he’s been in until now to stop time? It’s a total asspull but man is it cool! I give Jotaro a pass because he said earlier that his Stand was similar to Dio’s, so the possibility was always there. Plus, I stopped thinking logically between the steam roller smackdown and Dio squirting blood into Jotaro’s eye from his gaping leg wound. Asspull or not, that was a great fight.

He must be great in bed

You know what was an asspull so ridiculous I’m still in disbelief they actually trying to convince us it could work? Reviving Joseph. Apparently all you need to do to revive someone is pump blood into them. Shrivelled up corpse that’s been dead for a while and still has deep wounds? Fill ’em up with blood! They’ll perk right up, you’ll see! Thank you very much, Dr. Jotaro Kujo, for advancing our medical science to the point where we can bring braindead raisins back to life. If only we had known sooner that blood transfusions were the secret to eternal life! Seriously though, I’m happy Joseph is back but…that’s a bit of a desperate move just to make a happy ending for Susie Q, no?

Meanwhile, Kakyoin, Iggy and Avdol remain dead. Maybe if they had a blood transfusion soon enough, they’d be ok too. Rest in peace…and suck it, because Polnareff is still alive! I’m happy the way things ended, even it was a bit of a facepalm-inducing route to get here.

Final Thoughts

I’ll be honest – I’ve been tempted to give up on blogging Jojo for quite some time. There’s not much to say aside from commenting on the insanity and even then, sometimes that insanity falls a bit short of the bar that has been set by all the past craziness. It just hasn’t lived up to my love for the past seasons since this one seemed like a series of poorly strung-together boss fights. When they showed Holly at the end I couldn’t even remember who she was because I had forgotten that she was the impetus for the whole journey…and that’s bad considering they literally just reminded me a few episodes ago with Susie Q lamenting her sickness.

Even worse, they showed the 3 dead martyrs (Iggy, Avdol and Kakyoin) to remind us of the bittersweet tinge to Jotaro’s victory against Dio. Oh, how sad! But I was like “why are they showing a dog with all these dead characters?”. I had entirely erased Iggy from my memory as well. Okay, so I was sad about the other two guys so it wasn’t a total waste, but I clearly wasn’t too highly invested in the story here if characters died and I moved past all the stages of grief into complete amnesia faster than it takes to sneeze. It just wasn’t a compelling story. But then again, maybe I just have early stage Alzheimer’s at the tender age of 24? Keep an eye on me, guys!

So while the whole reasoning for their journey wasn’t really there, I still had fun with some of the fights. Some of them were wild, whacky, and filled with Araki’s excitement to play with his newly-found Stand mechanic. I say some because a good portion of the Stands were bullshit and those ones almost always had 2-episode fights. It was so bad. SO BAD. There were a ton of ups and downs here, much unlike the constant adrenaline of Battle Tendency or the excellent, slow build-up of Phantom Blood.

But the end makes it very hard for me to remember what it was I disliked about the series because mannnn that Dio fight was so good! So I’m ending this season with a lot of goodwill towards the series thanks to the great ending. Which is great because for a while there, this series was causing me physical pain at how boring it was getting when I knew it could do so much better. Anyways, thanks for sticking it through with me and I hope everyone had fun with this silly little romp to Egypt. Will we get a next season? Should I just start reading the manga so I can speedread through the crappy fights? Only time and my minimal amount of patience can tell,

NOTHING IS MUDA. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.

About Overcooled

A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.