JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S01E15 Review: Wedding Rings and Piercings

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 15: A Hero's Proof

[updated 10/2018]

This episode mainly focuses on the fight between Joseph and Wamuu. Well, it was two-on-one at first, but after shooting some rather sub-par CGI bubbles at Wamuu, Caesar sort of just got himself knocked out. It's kind of okay, honestly -- I've always thought that this particular leg of Battle Tendency was always paced a bit oddly in the manga, and it's about the same feeling watching it in the anime. There are so many moments where it's evident that Wamuu just stands around doing nothing, while Joseph pulls off increasingly nonsensical crazy shit. And it's certainly entertaining, don't get me wrong, but even considering the usage of Hamon, it really stretches the suspension of disbelief just how fast Joseph can set up his traps and all that nonsense. Even considering the fact that Wamuu just stands still a lot.

Thankfully, both Joseph and Wamuu's voice actors are insanely bombastic and hammy (Speedwagon gets a couple of similarly hammy lines, but he makes the best out of them). Joseph throws in a lot of fun English words, with "OH NO!" and his... "Cracker Volley", whatever the hell those bolas are supposed to be, and just why he's carrying those around.

Wamuu, for his part, ends up recognizing Hamon as an ability that is able to truly hurt him, and we get to see his powers -- where all three Pillar Men here seem to have Santana's wacky body-contortionist powers, Wamuu is able to create little whirlwinds with his hair bangles, and his arms can spin to create what the subtitles call the "Holy Sandstorm". The voice actor and line are a lot more bombastic about it.

There was a weird moment where the anime tries to be too faithful to the manga and has some random bloke read a narration about how "Joseph is still the hero of the story and he's not actually running away", which I thought was just weird. Definitely took me out of the episode. Maybe it would've worked better if it just showed up in actual writing, instead of some dude narrating it.

Anyway, the battle ends up with Caesar's face fucked up, and Joseph's silly mine cart trick accomplishing nothing. Joseph manages to bullshit an excuse about how he's going to get stronger and eggs Wamuu to fight him in a month and not kill him, and... and for some reason, these Pillar Men that thinks of humans as nothing but bugs decides to humour him.

And then he leaves a ring that he very coincidentally has on his person, a ring that has the very, very specific ability to eject a lethal poison in a month. How bizarrely convenient! Wamuu puts it in Joseph's aorta, making it the little insurance that Joseph will come back -- because he has the antidote in a different ring. ACDC, apparently not wanting to be left out, puts a second ring in Joseph's wind-pipe. While I do enjoy the setup for a typical shonen "fight me after a set amount of time" trope, it is kind of bullshit to have these magical timer-poison rings conveniently on their person.

And the Pillar Men leave, leaving Caesar cradling a wounded Joseph, and it's... ultimately the episode's still entertaining thanks to the voice acting and the competent animation, but I do think that it's nowhere as good as it could have been.