Because I can’t be bothered to analyze part 3 in any sort of depth, I will rank arcs on whether they should be kept or cut if I was rewriting part 3 in [current year]. Because I don’t want to put “imo” after everything I say, keep in mind that all of this is my opinion. Also spoilers, obviously.
Intro: Keep. Pretty iconic and an effective introduction to Stands, Star Platinum range-ignoring bullshit aside. This Avdol guy seems pretty sick. I wonder what he’ll do later on…
Hierophant Green: Keep. Sizable amount of bullshit in this arc, but it introduces Kakyoin and the fleshbuds.
Tower of Gray: Keep. Hear me out — absolutely garbage arc, but necessary to explain why the Crusaders can’t just fly to Egypt. Also Kakyoin rips an old man apart, which is based.
Dark Blue Moon: Cut. Bullshit, but the stupid kind. Anne is the worst JoJo child character.
Strength: Cut. I hate boats only slightly less than I hate apes.
Silver Chariot: Keep. The real MC of part 3 had a sick introduction, and I like the Stand battle — especially the burning ankhs.
Ebony Devil: Cut. Garbage Stand, boring arc. I liked Devo in the fridge, though.
Yellow Temperance: Cut. Only valuable part is the card foreshadowing at the end and the “rero rero” joke that the fucking SPC users ruined.
Emperor: Keep. Hol Horse, along with Polnareff, is my favorite part 3 character, and I liked seeing them shitpost against each other. Also, the Hol subplot is the funniest thing in part 3.
Hanged Man: Keep. Sick fight, sick stand, sick beatdown. Character development for Polnareff, too.
Empress: Cut. Worst in the franchise. The Sun is bad in the anime because the pacing was fucked to hell, but it was basically a 2-chapter joke fight in the manga. Dragon’s Dream and Yo-Yo Ma are fine fights, just overhated because >Stone Ocean. Hell, even part 5 and 8’s final arcs had some cool moments. Empress is just lame. And the worst thing is that it’s one of Joseph’s only fights. Poor guy fell off hard.
Wheel of Fortune: Cut. No Pat Sajak here, only bullshit and that decently funny “Part 3 is over!” fourth wall break. But the joke isn’t funny enough to justify the filler.
Justice: Keep. Hol content, Pol content, an actually plot relevant antagonist. Remove the weird shit-licking scene and the bullshit ending and whabam, a decent arc.
Lovers: Eeeeeeeeeeeeh fuck it, keep. The Stand-shrinking bullshit is stupid, but Steely Dan is a really effective asshole villain and the beatdown is iconic.
The Sun: Cut. I know I said it’s only two chapters earlier, but no one likes this arc. It serves literally no purpose. The fight is won by throwing a fucking rock.
Death 13: Keep. I have an unreasonable bias towards scenes of Kakyoin being an asshole, and this fight has some great nightmare fuel. “BABY STAND” has been memed to shit because >part 3 but it’s goddamn iconic.
Judgement: Keep. “B-B-But Fizzy, are you really gonna keep this arc solely because of Avdol and the piss scene? The antagonist is l-lame, and the fight action is b-boring. B-Before Avdol arrives, it’s barely even a fight. You’re r-r-r-really keeping it?” “Yes! I am!”
High Priestess: Cut. This fight has nothing, and the Obligatory Jotaro Cool Scene is mogged to death by the next arc anyway.
(laughs) The Fool Iggy and Geb N’Doul: Keep. My god, this arc fucking slaps. The final confrontation and Jotaro throwing Iggy alone are sick enough to justify a keep. I don’t even mind Kakyoin being put on a bus — he was doing fuckall already.
Khnum Oingo and Thoth Boingo: Keep. Hear me out. This arc is the funniest filler arc in the series. It is pure bullshit and it’s great. Hell, Boingo is a weirdly well written character for a part 3 minor antagonist, and it’s technically part of the Hol Horse subplot. This stuff is radical.
Anubis: Cut. Lmao black polnareff funi
Bastet: Cut. This arc is trying to be shenanigans like Oingo and Boingo but it just kinda falls flat. The kinda neat beatdown doesn’t redeem it.
Sethan: Cut. Once again, beatdown can’t save this arc. Also it’s outright uncomfortable to read at points. Hard pass
D’Arby the Gambler: Keep. Genuinely one of the best arcs in the franchise. The original (to that point) Stand ability, the members of the group being picked off one by one, and the subtle tricks and psychological elements make this arc tense and thrilling. This is one of the instances where Jotaro being a stoic silent badass is to the outright benefit of an arc.
Hoingo: Keep. The perfect end to the subplot, blending two antagonists who each work as second in a pair and taking that combo to its natural conclusion. This is filler, but the best kind of filler, and it features my favorite minor antagonists. I love this damn arc unjustifiably and it’s my review, dammit, so I’m choosing what arcs to keep.
Gatekeeper of Hell, Pet Shop: Keep. Iggy has some charm, and the action is pretty sick. It’s a worthwhile beginning to the great mansion sequence.
D’Arby the Player: Cut. So much for “great mansion sequence.” Daniel was a hard act to follow — Terence can’t keep up. Only valuable for the beatdown and the games’ Engrish in the anime.
Miasma of the Void, Vanilla Ice: Hardest possible keep. While Kakyoin, Joseph, and Jotaro are fighting against Tyler Fortnite Ninja Blevins, Polnareff, Iggy, and Avdol (for about five seconds) are locked in an incredibly tense battle against an egregiously overpowered Stand. In JoJo, overpowered abilities often make for great fights, which I’ve always believed is why parts 5 and 6 have such strong fights while part 3 mostly doesn’t. And honestly, VIce drove the protagonists to the brink — if he wasn’t such a fucking dumbass, he would’ve finished off Polnareff too, but there’s gotta be some limit on his bustedness. This fight is Polnareff’s third big character arc after Judgement and Hanged Man, and it really serves to make him the most sympathetic main character of part 3. The ending hits, dammit.
DIO’s World: Keep. Look, I don’t think Dio or this arc are as great as anyone says they are. Both are nonstop hammy bullshit, which I’m iffy on. But I gotta give it credit — the hammy bullshit works ungodly well in this arc. Everything from the magnet trick to the books to Polnareff coming in randomly to Dio miraculously reaching Joseph to the motherfucking road roller is bullshit to the highest order, but it’s so goddamn compelling you can’t help but continue reading. The ending is so satisfying because of how utterly fucking frustrating Dio’s timestop is throughout the entire fight — I get an ungodly visceral reaction when Jotaro enters the final timestop. It’s like the manga version of the Koloktos fight from Skyward Sword — the frustration makes the end so much more satisfying.
Honestly, I can’t help but wonder if that statement holds true for the entirety of part 3 itself. I mean, think about it — part 3 drags. Dark Blue Moon-Strength-Ebony Devil and Empress-Wheel of Fortune-Justice are the weakest arc lineups in the entire franchise. The first half is a slog to get through, and the Egypt arc isn’t really spectacular either. But D’Arby, VIce, and Dio have three of the best arcs in the entire series, which I think is due in no small part to the overwhelming presence of boring villain-of-the-week arcs in part 3. Even though I’ve been critical of them, these arcs serve at least some purpose. They familiarize us with the main cast, giving us an emotional connection with them even though they’re not well developed, which makes shit like Avdol returning, Vanilla Ice’s fight, and le ebin humorous Kakyoin death scene hit all the harder. And their boring nature paradoxically increases the reader’s hype for the final fight, which has been foreshadowed since the beginning. “This arc is pretty boring… but Dio’s fight has to be great, so I guess it’s worth continuing.” This effect has only been accentuated by the shitpostification of the final fight, which gives viewers an even bigger incentive to read the funny Jotaro and Dio walking page or watch the funny donut. In the end, my question of which part 3 arcs I’d cut is moot. They may suck, but I can’t change that. Reviewing a piece of media by saying what I’d do to change it is pointless. In the end, it’s more productive and effective to analyze it for what it is. Though part 3 hasn’t aged well, and though it may not be the deepest part thematically, and though most of its arcs may be kind of lackluster, it is what it is. And for what it is, being a shonen battle manga from the 80s, it’s decent. It’s not the best — especially not for a JoJo part — but it has some damn good bits, and those good bits alone justify the slog of the journey. Just like Jotaro and crew fight a bunch of minor antagonists to save his mother and take revenge on Dio, so too must the reader outlast the lackluster parts for the promise of something better. And the reader, like Jotaro, is rewarded by a gem of a final fight and a satisfying conclusion.
Overall rating: 7/10. Not great, but deserves a read.
34.5 out of 44 users liked this review
