This review contains major spoilers for the second half of Stardust Crusaders
Hello and welcome back to my review series on JoJo's Bizarre Adventure! Last time, I delved into the first half of Stardust Crusaders. While the show wasn't perfect, the camaraderie between the main characters, the colorful cast of villains, the imaginative fights, and the highlighted adventure aspect all helped to make Stardust Crusaders my favorite JoJo part thus far. But Stardust Crusaders is only half the story. For its anime adaption, David Production split the part into two halves. Simply titled JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, the first half chronicles the Stardust Crusaders' long journey to Egypt in order to reach DIO. The second half,Battle in Egypt, follows the group traveling two Cairo, battling DIO's last remaining henchmen on their way to him.
Battle in Egypt is an amazing continuation and conclusion to a great show. Battle in Egypt doesn’t see too many notable changes to the formula. In fact, it’s counterintuitive to think of this as a second season. It’s just another set of episodes of the same show. For the most part, praises I gave the first half simply grow in intensity, and the minor gripes that I have become a bit more major. But make no mistake, there are a few new tricks up Battle in Egypt's sleeve and the things that return are still great. Battle in Egypt didn't show me much of anything new, but it didn't really need to. Battle in the Egypt solidified Part 3 as my favorite part so far.
Beginning a bit small, the first thing you'll notice about Battle in Egypt is the change in OP and ED, with "STAND PROUD" being replaced with "JoJo Sono Chi no Kioku ~end of THE WORLD~" and "Walk Like an Egyptian" being replaced with "Last Train Home." As someone who wasn't at all a fan of "STAND PROUD", it shouldn't come as a surprise that I was open to the change. What does come as a surprise to me was the fact that this may be my favorite JoJo OP thus far. I tried skipping at first, still missing "BLOODY STREAM" and "Sono Chi No Sadame," but “end of The WORLD” is the type of OP you realize that you can't hate despite your best efforts. The quiet singing at the beginning sets up a feeling of dread before giving way to boisterous strings and guitars. It's really hard to not like this song when at the end of it, all the singers shout "ORAORAORA" to emulate Star Platinum's iconic battlecry; it's so much fun. And the song really epitomizes Battle in Egypt as the end of a saga. The song opens with images of Jonathan, DIO, Joseph, and Jotaro, tying them all together. Not to mention, each of the three former OP singers, TOMMY, Coda, and JIN form the group JO☆STARS to perform the song, leading to very sonically satisfying music via vocal diversity. The opening deserves a rewatch after finishing the show, as it contains a lot of foreshadowing of events. The craziest thing about “end of THE WORLD” is that, during the final two episodes, DIO has a surprise appearance where he uses The World to interfere with the opening sequence and it blew my fucking mind. Last Train Home is a song I knew and loved prior to JoJo. With its chill, soothing sitars, it’s the perfect song to wind down tense cliffhangers. Like the opening, the ending sequence also features foreshadowing and after Stardust Crusader's final episode, the song becomes very bittersweet. Beautiful, to be sure, but bittersweet, all the same. I'm not sure I can listen to it the same way again. On the other side of the spectrum, we have the two hilarious, catchy special EDs, which play during the episodes featuring the Oingo Boingo Brothers and the Boingo Hol Horse team-up. The rest of the OST largely remains the same, thus, is still quite good. Some notable tracks are Setting Off, Space of a Lone God, Awakening Darkness of The World, and Requiem.
The Stand users are even better here. They're all quite memorable and threatening with each sporting unique skillsets that force the Crusaders to think on their toes in order to defeat them. I think the non-DIO highlights are the battles against the D'arby brothers. D'arby the Elder is a professional gambler and cheat while D'arby the Younger is a Gamer™. When we're introduced to them, their creepiness and high skills are displayed thanks to the Elder's collection of his bested opponent's souls trapped in coins and the Younger's collection of defeated souls trapped in eerily-animated dolls. Forced to fight on the brothers' terms, the group (i.e. Jotaro) can't just punch their way to victory. This makes for the most creative fights in the series; in terms of logic used, it's actually more sound than that of the final battle. It's notable how tense these fights get without a single punch being thrown.
Speaking of tense, it's really a testament to how well this series is crafted, how invested I got considering the fact that I knew exactly how DIO's Stand, the World, worked. You see, the mechanics of DIO's stand are a bit of a mystery, and finding out what it actually does is a big part of the final arc wherein ~~the Crusaders~~ Jotaro dukes it out with DIO. Due to the prevalence of JoJo memes, I already knew that The World had the power to stop time. I was surprised to find out that this really didn't impede my enjoyment of the anime at all. While I knew how his powers worked, I was blissfully anywhere of how the fight would shake out.
In my last review, I detailed how I was okay with Avdol's fake-out death since I knew that main characters can die in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. As if to prove it, the bodies really hit the floor during this half of Stardust Crusaders. Thanks to DIO and his right-hand man, Vanilla Ice (and his Stand, Cream), more than half of the Stardust Crusaders are wiped out by the end of the show. The ball really gets rolling with Avdol's death, which is quite shocking in its suddenness. One moment, everything's fine, then the next Avdol is pushing Polnareff from some unseen foe before his body is sucked into another dimension thanks to Cream's powers. As they fall to the ground, Avdol’s arms are the only proof that he ever existed. You might hold onto the hope that Avdol somehow survived, that he'll be able to return from whatever dimension he's been sent to. But in the pit of your stomach, you know it's unlikely; Araki doesn't seem like he'd employ a double fakeout. After the fight is won, we're treated to narration (used prior to comedically state that an enemy has "retired") confirming that Avdol has, in fact, died. Kakyoin takes a bit longer to die, but his fatal wound comes no less suddenly — a brutal punch through his gut courtesy of DIO. As Kakyoin has seemingly ensured that DIO would be unable to attack him, this death comes even more as a shock and will confound viewers who haven't been spoiled as to the nature of DIO's Stand. Stardust Crusaders is easily the saddest, most emotional part so far due to the deaths of these characters. It's not only enough that we've come to know and love them but, as I outlined before, we really buy their comradery. Stardust Crusaders can achieve sentimentality without dipping into hokiness. I'll admit that the framing of Kakyoin's death begins to veer into the overwrought territory — we get his backstory during the episode where he dies, which feels a bit manufactured, especially as it could have easily been added a few episodes prior where Kakyoin is the focus character. An example of sentimentality done beautifully right is the scene in which Iggy and Avdol's spirits watch over Polnareff before they ascend to heaven. The ending with Holly knowing that her son and father are coming home is also well-done.
On the other side of the spectrum, both halves of Stardust Crusaders are quite funny. I've heard some state that Battle Tendency is funnier, but I have to disagree. Even when an arc is serious, it will often end in a humorous way such as with Judgement and Death 13. In this half, after the tense fight with Anubis, the announcer states that it "retires" after a drawn-out gag wherein the Stand keeps hoping, in vain, that something will stop its trajectory towards the Nile river. The equivalent of "badumtiss," "chan-chan" is used several times in the series. The comedy is most notable in the situations Joseph and Avdol get into thanks to Mariah's magnetism as well as the episodes involving Boingo. The show is positively a riot and it's really impressive that it manages to blend tension and comedy so well — sometimes in the same scene, such as D'arby the Elder freaking out over Jotaro raising the stakes of their bet.
However, as I alluded to before, not all is well in Egypt. A lot of my gripes, unfortunately, remain. This makes sense, because, again, this is essentially just one continuous show, but that really doesn't do much to temper my annoyance.
First of all, the emphasis on Jotaro remains in full effect here. If Jotaro is present, then he will invariably be the one to save the day even if other characters could logically shine. The only way for someone not named Jotaro to defeat the enemy stand is to not have him be present. As much as I enjoyed the arc, I think D'arby the Gambler is a pretty egregious example of this. D'Arby's a gambler, so there's not much reason that Joseph couldn't have been the one to beat him, since the conflict doesn't rely on physical strength. Hell, it's been noted by fans that Joseph shouldn't have lost the game involving dropping coins into the drink since Hamon has been shown to be able to manipulate liquids. With Jotaro and Avdol the only Crusaders remaining, I thought it would finally be Avdol's time to shine before this possibility was promptly shot down by Avdol stating that he's too noble to gamble. When D'Arby the Younger is fought, Kakyoin is revealed to be a Gamer™ whilst Jotaro is implied to not have played video games before. Naturally, Kakyoin loses while Jotaro is the one to win to show how smart he is. It's really annoying because it can start to feel like this is less about a team of allies and more about showing how cool Jotaro is, with everyone else there just to make him look better. Polnareff also gets the spotlight a lot, but it feels a bit different since he's squarely characterized as an underdog and he bumbles into his fights. Avdol is probably the biggest victim of underutilization as he never really has time to shine by himself. A part of this boils down to Araki considering fire too OP for a protagonist Stand.
I stand by Stardust Crusaders being great, but having seen the whole thing through, I can acknowledge some of the growing pains fans talk about. From what I can tell — Araki had trouble balancing a large group of heroes. The interactions between them all are great, but in addition to some spotlight hogging, there's not much synergy in terms of fights. The powers of the heroes are seldom used in tandem in order to defeat their foes. There certainly are examples of team-ups like Joseph and Avdol working together to defeat Mariah and Joseph and Jotaro outwitting D'arby the Younger, but these moments are few and far between. And again, there’s never a moment when the six Stardust Crusaders are fighting as one, which feels like a missed opportunity.
Nothing more exemplifies the dichotomy of Stardust Crusaders, its strengths and witnesses, than the fight against DIO during his eponymous arc, DIO's World.
The fight against DIO is, in a word, messy. The more I think about it, the more I find things wrong with it. First and foremost, the underuse of the Crusaders as a whole, a problem the entire Part struggled with, isn’t rectified here. There's still a heavy emphasis on Jotaro to the detriment of the other characters. Instead of them all fighting him at once, the Stardust Crusaders "fight" DIO one by one. I put "fight" in scare quotes because the remaining Stardust Crusaders not-named-Jotaro simply get bodied by DIO. I know that the show states that the group would have most likely lost if they attacked him all at once, but I still can't help but feel disappointed that Araki went with the formula that he stuck to since the beginning of Stardust Crusaders. And yeah, on paper, DIO was defeated through The Power of Teamwork™: in his dying breath, Kakyoin revealed the secret of The World, Joseph warned Jotaro of the ability right before being fatally stabbed by DIO, and Polnareff was able to distract DIO long enough to save Jotaro's life. On paper, this shows how great of a team they are, but in practice, this is really just another example of this being Jotaro's show. The team feels a bit hollow when their contribution is getting merc'd all so Jotaro can get a one-liner in the end.
To quote a terrible movie, in regards to The World and Star Platinum's sudden, flashy movement abilities, I have to ask "they fly now?" To which Araki responds, "they fly now."
And Star Platinum's powers, good God, Star Platinum's powers. As stated before, DIO's The World has the power to stop time. In most works of fiction, the power to control time in any way, shape, or form is a devastating ability, and Stardust Crusaders is no exception. Despite only having six seconds of stopped time, DIO can do a lot with that time and it's all the Stardust Crusaders (i.e. Jotaro) can do just to survive his onslaught. How in the world will Jotaro beat him, you may ask. Surely there's some weakness that Jotaro can exploit? Nah, Jotaro just gets the ability to stop time, too. You see, it's revealed that Star Platinum and The World being the same type of Stand, an inference made by the fact that the two of them both punch really fast. Is this foreshadowed or hinted at at all? Sure isn't, save for a brief frame of the OP wherein Jotaro moves his finger while time is stopped, but as I said before, this is really only something you'd notice in hindsight (and it wouldn't have been in the manga where this story originated). I really don't buy Star Platinum's rapid fisticuffs being proof of time-stopping capabilities because it happens in real-time and The World's use of it is framed as independent from its time stop.
I think it's mainly hearsay, but I've heard that Araki intended DIO to have the power of all of the other Major Arcana stands. Since time stopping would have had to come from somewhere, the group would have then been able to deduce the power originated from Star Platinum. Without much foreshadowing/hinting, it still wouldn't have been great, but it would have at least been much more solid of a reveal. The point is moot, of course. It's said that Araki thought this would make DIO too powerful, so either way, this is nothing more than a neat trivia point.
In short, DIO's defeat came in the form of an asspull, a deus ex machina. Oh sure, DIO's hubris played a part of it, but without Star Platinum inexplicably being revealed as being "the same type of stand" as The World, Jotaro would have taken the L. Araki wrote himself in a corner for the second time now. It's clear that, at least as of Star Dust Crusaders, Araki struggles to write compelling conclusions to his climactic fights because of how powerful he makes his antagonists. It's really hard to logically beat "The Ultimate Lifeform" or someone who can stop time. Kars' fight wasn't great — what, with him being able to survive the one thing that could have logically and creatively killed him, and him only being defeated because Joseph's body "moved on its own" — but at least it wasn't hyped up the way DIO's fight was. The frustrating thing is that DIO's fight didn't need to be this way. Araki could have easily given him some weakness for Jotaro to exploit such as over-utilization of the world tiring him out.
Those are just the main things; the more I think about it, the more little nitpicks I can think up. I mean, you're telling me that the guy who survived as a disembodied head was completely destroyed because of a punch? Really?
But what a glorious punch that was.
Because at the end of the day, I acknowledge that the fight with DIO is far from perfect. But I ultimately don't care, because goddamn if it isn't cool. For the better part of forty-eight episodes, Stardust Crusaders was hyping up an epic rematch with DIO, always obscuring his face, always showing his immense influence through his sheer charisma. And what can I say except that DIO's World delivered? The fight might not have been that satisfying, narratively, but I was promised an epic showdown and I wasn't left hanging. DIO was sorely missed and I was very happy that his cockiness and hamminess came back in full force. It's the type of fight that annoys me if I think about it but is a damn good time if I just let it wash over me, enjoy the spectacle of it all. Does flying make sense? Not really. Is it cool? Hell yes. Would it have been more impactful if somehow Jonathan's body was able to stop DIO from hurting his descendant? Yeah. Is the fight still good without it? Yes. The Stardust Crusaders got bodied in the service of a one-liner? Pretty much. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't a great one-liner.
Rule of cool can hold sway over my opinions more than I'd care to admit. The fight shouldn't work and I should be annoyed about it. I am annoyed if I think about it, but then I can't help but smile.It's like my brain is going
but my heart is going
That's probably a good summary as any of my feelings towards Stardust Crusaders. I might have thought it was nigh-perfect come the end of the first half. The second half has made it pretty clear that it has some notable problems. But at the end of the day, those problems don’t impede my enjoyment too much. It's too cool, it's too funny, too tense, too heartfelt to stay mad at for too long. I'm still happy to say that this is my favorite JoJo Part thus far and I feel it deserve its notoriety, deserves being as iconic as it is. I'm excited yet nervous as I approach Part 4, Diamond is Unbreakable. I'm nervous because people often describe it as being completely different from Stardust Crusaders and I'm afraid the show will do away with everything I loved about this one. I'm excited because it could improve upon what I didn't enjoy as much. Though I'm moreso excited because I'm sure I'll have a good time, regardless. It is JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, after all.
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