JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E03-4 Review: Stands and Airplane Hopping

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Episode 3: The Curse of DIO; Episode 4: Tower of Gray

Episode 3 of Stardust Crusaders starts off where episode 2 left off, and it is another string of exposition on the part of Old Joseph, where Dio apparently gains people to his side with his charisma (sorry, KHARISHUMAAAH!!, as Joseph puts it)... and also the aid of some really gross-looking brain tumour drone thing that is implanted in many of his minions. Avdol recounts his encounter with Dio in Egypt prior to the events of the series, where Dio tracks down Stand users and uses his hair tendrils to implant the little octopus-tumour thing into people's brains, and only Avdol's familiarity with Egyptian streets allowed him to escape. It is kind of weird, of course, how Joseph talks about how it's Dio's charisma that drags people around him (and you can't deny that Dio does have a fair amount of charisma) it basically amounts to mind control. While an interesting concept, though, after the Stardust Crusaders team have recruited a bunch of party members, for lack of a better term, this whole mind-control bit is sort of dropped off.

And, yes, Jotaro's Stand ends up being able to pull out the tumour from Kakyoin's brain with minimal fuss, although we do get a bit of a gross-out moment as the Dio tumour attempts to insert its tendrils into Jotaro's veins. Jotaro's Stand is all sorts of powerful compared to other stands. This episode's exposition dump tells us that Jotaro's special powers are "precise movements and superhuman strength", which is admittedly pretty generically powerful. Still, it does sort of fit Jotaro's personality in a way, which is also a pretty generic aloof-but-kindhearted action hero. One of the bigger complaints about Jotaro Kujo as a character is that he's pretty bland beyond being 'the good guy', but sometimes you got to have a simple character to root for.

Oh, we also get one of the rare cases where Hamon is seen post-Part-2, with Joseph using Overdrive to destroy the Dio tumour. It's all a way to get the author to introduce new characters as antagonists first and then as a cast member later on similar to how he did to Kakyoin, which... eh. We're also quickly introduced to the "conflict hook" for Jotaro, because Holly, who also has Joestar blood but no fighting spirit, manifests some rose-thorn stands from her back and due to her lack of fighting spirit (and you could take her being such a pushover to Jotaro's rudeness as this, I guess) she's dying and consumed by her own out-of-control stand. Joseph goes into a breakdown, while Jotaro is resolute in tracking down Dio and saving his mom, who will die in 50 days, apparently.

Jotaro's Stand shows off even more awesomeness because it apparently has super-accurate eyes and the ability to perfectly sketch a fly in the background of a photograph in enough detail that Avdol can identify it from a taxonomy book. As I mentioned before, in these early parts of Stardust Crusaders, Jotaro's Stand pretty much has the power to do absolutely anything the plot demands. After establishing that Dio is in Egypt (which Avdol already knows, considering that, y'know, he met Dio there in the past) the Stardust Crusaders set off to Egypt while Speedwagon Corporation doctors look after the dying Holly.

The ending part of episode three is just Avdol giving Jotaro's Stand a name -- Star Platinum (or SUCHA PURACHINAAA, as it is bombastically announced by Avdol) -- and we get a recap of the four main characters' Stands and their specialties.

The fourth episode, "Tower of Gray", starts off with us finally seeing Dio, where a witch-like elderly woman (Enya, although we don't learn her name until much later). It's a speech about fear and how people who gather around Dio find joy despite feeling afraid of his immense strength. But the rest of the episode is the start of the first of many, many episodic standalone episodes that involves the Stardust Crusaders facing off against a series of Dio's minions.

And this entire episode is set on top of an airplane, where the Stand they are facing is a monstrous stag beetle with some weird-ass Xenomorph alien-tongue-fangs that moves even faster than Star Platinum, and starts ripping apart random passengers. While everyone is horrified by the pretty graphic deaths caused by the beetle, Avdol recognizes the stand as the Tower of Gray, who is already a serial murderer/terrorist even without Dio's influence, who likes to frame accidents to cover up his murder. Tower of Gray is one of the few of Dio's minions that actually have some sort of a background instead of just being "one of Dio's minions"... but he doesn't have much of a personality beyond being evil.

We also get a bit of a speech about how the Tower symbolizes "destruction, calamity and the interruption of journeys". Some of these Tarot-card stands get these speeches earlier on, but honestly it's never really explored that deeply. Jotaro's ORA ORA barrage ends up not really being fast enough, Joseph is a non-combatant, Avdol can't use flame on board a plane, so this time around it's Kakyoin who gets to defeat Tower of Gray, using Hierophant Green's tendrils to unleash an Emerald Splash that guarantees a hit from multiple directions and crushes the Tower of Gray Stand. Of course Tower of Gray's wielder is the only passenger that has any sort of focus, the old man that seemed to be killed.

Tower of Gray's last action is to kill the pilots, causing the plane to crash, and for Joseph, in attempting to crash-land the plane, to lampshade how every single goddamn vehicle he's been in since Battle Tendency has crashed and leading to one of the more hilarious deadpan comebacks from Jotaro. It does mean that planes are out of the question for our heroes, and they wander around in Hong Kong for a bit while Joseph continues to act like an ignorant Westerner towards some facets of Hong Kong culture (hot Cola, it seems?). Since Tower of Gray isn't a super-long arc, we get the beginnings of the next arc as a lunch gets interrupted by a Frenchman with glorious, glorious hair, Jean-Pierre Polnareff, who demands a fight outside and unleashes his knight-like Stand, Silver Chariot, and brags that he can defeat Avdol in under five minutes. We'll cover this in the next episode, then.

Overall, a pretty solid set of episodes. Episode 3 is still in full setup/introduction mode, while episode 4 is another 'beginner' villain with a pretty basic Stand... but the direction of the fight and the setting of it being on a plane does make it somewhat more memorable than it should. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• While not named in the actual episode (or the manga), Tower of Gray's wielder is called Gray Fly, given in guidebooks and in the commercial break segment of this episode. It's apparently a reference to Glenn Frey, lead singer of the band Eagles. Most iconic among Eagles' discography is perhaps Hotel California. 
• I think this is the first episode that features Stardust Crusaders' opening, "Stand Proud", performed by Jin Hashimoto. It also features its ending theme, the 1986 Beagles song "Walk Like An Egyptian".