JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E01-2 Review: Stardust Crusaders

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders, Episode 1: A Man Possessed By An Evil Spirit; Episode 2: Who Will Be The Judge

Welcome to my coverage of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, the second season of the JJBA anime, adapting Part 3 of the manga. If that sounds like a mouthful... well, that's because it is. JJBA is a manga series split into different 'Parts' (basically mega-arcs) that feature different protagonists, and is well-known for its overblown manliness, haminess and intensely ridiculous-yet-played-straight superpowers. Stardust Crusaders is the part where a lot of the tropes that will define the rest of the long series is established, and is probably the most well-known among fans, particularly international fans. I tried (and overextended myself) trying to review the first season episode-by-episode, so this time around I'll be more concise and talk about two episodes at once.

The first episode, "A Man Possessed By An Evil Spirit", is a pretty neat reintroduction to the world of JJBA. We get the return of Part 1's main villain, Dio Brando, as his coffin is uncovered by a bunch of unfortunate trawlers in the episode's cold open, before quickly introducing our main protagonist -- Joseph Joestar's half-Japanese grandson, Kujo Jotaro (the two 'jo' sounds earning him the JoJo nickname), a heavily-built delinquent who starts off as this punk in a prison, after apparently brutalizing a bunch of actual gangsters and refusing to get out of the prison due to being 'possessed by an evil spirit'.

It's a bit of a slow burn as we actually spend a good chunk of the first episode establishing the concept of Stands, the new superpower of Stardust Crusaders that replaces Hamon, but considering the sheer importance and omnipresence of Stands in the rest of the series moving forwards, it's pretty necessary, I suppose. Jotaro's mother Holly calls in her father, the protagonist of the previous Part, Joseph Joestar, now a lot older with a fancy beard and a fedora, but no less hammy. I must say that Old Man Joseph is probably the most successful an anime has been by featuring a character at two points of his life with distinctive personalities, but feeling like they are both the same person.

The audience gets to see Jotaro's evil spirit/Stand briefly in action as it is able to manifest Jotaro's will and steal things from outside the cell, and even stop a bullet mid-air... and it's mysteriously invisible to any of the policemen, while Jotaro and Holly are able to see at least a phantom purple arm extending from within Jotaro's body.

Joseph ends up showing up and giving a whole chunk of exposition, bringing in his sidekick Mohammad Avdol (sometimes romanized as Muhammad Abdul, which is definitely an acceptable reading of the katakana), who manifests his own Stand, a shirtless, heavily-muscled (of course) bird-headed spirit that is able to summon flames. We establish a lot of the rules that Stands have to follow as Joseph gives exposition -- Stands can and will affect the environment, but only Stand users are able to see them. Whatever damage is taken by the Stands are reflected to the owner, as seen by Jotaro choking Avdol's Stand. The actual fight between Jotaro and Avdol is clearly meant to be informative to the audience, with some rather odd bits like fire somehow holding Jotaro in place like bindings, and the brief attempt in early Part 3 to try and tie in Stands with Hamon (Jotaro's stand weakens when his breathing weakens, and in these first two episodes Jotaro keeps talking about his Stand "getting more violent", neither of which are ever seen for the rest of the series). Avdol calls off the fight when Jotaro steps out of the cell, and the cast goes off to a cafe to continue exposition.


This time, it's exposition about Dio and the events of Part 1 and 2. Joseph displays his own Stand, Hermit Purple (Unsho Ishizuka's delivery of HAMITTO PAPARU is glorious as hell), which manifests as a bunch of purple thorny vines that allows Joseph to see spirit photos, provided he strikes a 30,000 yen camera (JJBA's dialogue is always weirdly specific about things like these) to develop a photograph of his visions. Joseph tells Holly and Jotaro about the whole backstory with Dio and how he's taken over Jonathan Joestar's body, and how that same blood has caused their Stands to manifest. Avdol apparently has his since birth.

And that's mostly it for the first episode. It's clunky in places as it tries its best to get a lot of exposition and mission statement out of the way, doing the unenviable task of recapping Battle Tendency, introducing a new protagonist, a new supporting character and a whole new concept of superpowers. With that out of the way, though, episode 2 can finally have some focus.

Stardust Crusader's curse and blessing is how episodic it is while simultaneously still being serialized. There are a lot more villain-of-the-week chapters and episodes as our heroes work their way to Dio, who's just chilling in his base at the end of the journey. But considering Jotaro is mostly just a contemptuous punk when we meet him in the first episode, it's a good thing that the second episode focuses almost wholly on him. Joseph, Avdol and Holly spends nearly the entire episode in the Kujo estate, with Joseph making some cracks about instant coffee and generally being a dick regarding Japanese culture.

Jotaro is clearly super-popular among the girls, and continuing his characterization from the first episode, is indifferent to an almost tsundere degree to his smothering mother. He ends up facing this mysterious skinny pink-haired youth, Kakyoin Noriaki, who is introduced to us as a painter that slashes Jotaro in the leg. We get a neat bit of Jotaro in his high school, trying to be a normal student, when suddenly the school nurse goes completely batshit crazy and we get a grotesquely brutal scene of stabbing a random student in the eye.

Kakyoin shows up and introduces himself as a minion of Dio, and that his Stand, Hierophant Green, has taken over and is puppeteering the nurse (which the anime helpfully shows off by having Kakyoin dick around with a puppet throughout the fight). Daisuke Hirakawa gives Kakyoin a very distinctive voice and he clearly has a lot of fun playing evil!Kakyoin in this episode, truly managing to make Kakyoin sound sinister. And to be honest, Hierophant Green's a pretty scary Stand. As the first real malevolent enemy Jotaro has faced, Hierophant Green is this skinny, alien humanoid who is able to parasitize people's bodies, and has his lower body trail off like a tapeworm. Even for someone who knows what's coming, the reveal of how Kakyoin's Stand is a parasite within the nurse's body is pretty chilling.

Halfway through the fight, Jotaro gives Kakyoin this speech about how he's a punk (among his mild misdeeds is the hilarious anecdote "if a restaurant serves crappy food, I will walk away without paying") but he's not so evil as to brutalize a woman that has nothing to do with a fight, before going through a badass pre-asskicking line of how "I will be the judge of you". The action scenes between Jotaro and Kakyoin's fight isn't particularly impressive, though, and I've always been put off by the JJBA anime's strange stylistic choice to suddenly invert colours halfway through a fight.

Of course, Jotaro ends up ripping Hierophant Green out of the nurse with his Stand, unleashes his very first ORA ORA ORA barrage (another glorious thing to see animated and voiced) and his very first "yare yare daze", before ditching school to bring the unconscious Kakyoin to Joseph. The episode ends with an ominous pulsating tumour on Kakyoin's head. Overall, though, it's a neat little first outing for Jotaro and to display just how different Stands can be. Stardust Crusaders does start off a bit rough and introdump-heavy, but there's a reason it's the definitive JoJo part for many people. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• While Jotaro, Holly and Kakyoin's names aren't based on any real music, apparently some people think Mohammad Avdol's name is based on singer Paula Abdul? Or it could just take a very common Middle-Eastern name. Subsequent characters will  have a lot more musical influences, though. 
• If you can't already tell, a lot of the early Stands are working down the different Tarot cards, with us having the Hermit, the Magician and the Hierophant. I won't mention this for the rest of the Tarot-card Stands.