This review covers all three parts. And it’s actually fitting that MAL splits Stone Ocean/Part 6 into three parts because I actually had different feelings for each third of the anime:

-The 1st third is good! It does a good job at being an interesting introduction to the premise of story. You could call the first six episodes the longest prologue in history — and that’s not even derogatory! The setting is certainly interesting, and Jolyne adapting to it was done well.

-The 2nd third had me considering dropping it, honestly. I think the setting and formula had run its course by this point. Plot progressions also started feeling fewer and farther between. It became stale. Stone Ocean is very dense — every minute is packed to the brim with something — which is great most of the time. But that made it even worse once I started becoming fatigued around this point. I think this stretch lives or dies by how invested you are in JoJo’s fights, because it felt like it was exclusively one fight after the other with no real setting/circumstance variance.

-The 3rd third was amazing! The formula drastically shifts and becomes a huge breath of fresh air! I think it’s the most I’ve enjoyed JoJo since the first three Parts. And of course, as the story starts reaching its climax, it puts a lot of attention on the main antagonist (a type of character that Araki has mastered right out of the gate). The ending was crazy good, too (even if I didn’t really care for how the final scene went down).

Stone Ocean is by far the weirdest, silliest and dare I say bizarre-est JoJo has ever been. The character designs, their clothes, the Stand abilities, the strategies during fights — most of them are just unhinged in a very fun and funny way. And — maybe JoJo has always been like this — but Stone Ocean felt very much like “Araki’s Fun Facts: The Anime”. It’s like the guy just had a list of very specific facts he liked and formed the abilities/plot progression around them; it’s very funny. I can’t even be mad that this Part’s “arrow” is discs this time because it just fits with the “???” vibe Stone Ocean has (and at least it has more interesting use cases than the arrow but I digress).

Unfortunately Part 6 suffers from the same “gory” problem that Part 5 did. There’s a ton of blood and body horror that makes it difficult to watch if you’re squeamish of course (and even if you’re not completely hardened against that kind of stuff like me). But my main problem with it is that characters always sustain a ton of damage. It’s hard to feel like any attack, no matter how intense, actually handicaps anyone when they’ve continued to stand and fight through everything. Or, almost everything, because the damage feels inconsistent. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jolyne got shot/struck in the same places across several different scenarios, but with different results based solely on how Araki wanted the fight/situation to go. Combine that with JoJo having a ton of surprise miracles and it’s hard to feel any tension or reason to try predicting anything during the fights.

Character-wise, the cast is good! Unfortunately I felt like only Jolyne, the main antagonist, and FF really stood out in the same way my favorites from past Parts have. But the other main characters are still great and the enemy Stand users are very eccentric. The main antagonist steals the show I think (despite being a bit repetitive with their goal).

I think I’d put Part 6 just below Part 5 thanks to Part 5 not really having a pacing problem and having an overall more interesting cast. It didn’t annoy me like Part 4 though, so I’d put it at a comfortable “5th place” in my JoJo rankings so far. At the end of the day Part 6 is More JoJo, so even at worst you know you’re in for an interesting time.