JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E09 Review: A Memetic Episode

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders, Episode 9: Yellow Temperance

Today we're just going to cover a single episode of JoJo because the next one's going to be the first part of a two-parter. Besides, this is probably one of the more popular episodes -- or, well, one of the more memetic ones, anyway. So after the previous episode ended with the ominous premonition that Kakyoin is a traitor (and Kakyoin genuinely has been in the background for practically the entirety of the series after his introduction), we get to see Jotaro, Kakyoin and Anne walking in the park, and we see Kakyoin brutally beating up a random pickpocket, kneeing him in the face and talking very, very rudely with some truly vulgar language. Kakyoin brushes this off as being merely in a bad mood, but later on we see him creepily chomping down on a beetle, and attempting to push Jotaro off a cable car. Oh, and he keeps repeating the English word "bitch" (or BEEET-CHIH!) throughout the episode.

And then he eats a cherry and goes through several seconds of just rolling the cherry with his tongue with the most disturbing expression on his face and just going RERORERORERO. It's disturbing enough in the manga, but to see it animated and voiced? It's, well, bizarre!

Of course, Jotaro quickly figures out that this Kakyoin isn't the real Kakyoin at all, which makes the whole "he's a traitor" bit just a silly bit of poor fake-foreshadowing (apparently the real Kakyoin is sunbathing). Jotaro punches Fakekyoin and his mouth splits apart, and apparently the entirety of the fake Kakyoin is actually a Stand -- one that manifests as a yellow goop that covers the user's body, in this case a douchebag called Rubber Soul. Rubber Soul's Stand is Yellow Temperance, and it manifests in slime that can spread and corrode other substances, assimilate other substances and also allow him to assume the appearance of other people.

There's a neat bit where Jotaro tries his best to figure out how to get rid of the chunk of Yellow Temperance that's stuck to his finger, and his attempts to use fire and later ice, only to find that neither of it works, is some neat thinking on Jotaro's part. We've also got a bit of action hero Jotaro as he jumps around into cable cars... and a very, very disturbing scene when Rubber Soul masquerades as an old woman in a carriage with a father-son pair... and then Yellow Temperance very, very graphically kills a dog by eating it and leaving only the head for the freaked-out father to pull. My god man what the fuck? Why the dog hate, JJBA?

And then, in perhaps one of the more glorious moments that Jotaro's ever done, he deadpans in his super-intense-serious-cool-guy demeanour that he's going to unleash the Joestar family's special skill... of running away. It comes so out of nowhere yet it's such a hilarious callback to Battle Tendency era Joseph, and really clashes gloriously with Jotaro's intensity that no wonder Rubber Soul is bamboozled. Part of what elevates Jotaro over other generic protagonists, I think, is that he tends to be able to pull off some genuinely funny moments without reverting to a complete goof in the way that Joseph or Josuke do.

The battle then continues on the river, where Jotaro basically forces Rubber Soul to let the Stand's guard down in order to breathe underwater, forcing Rubber Soul to rescind his Stand. Oh, and it's around this point that Rubber Soul delivers the glorious "DU YU ANDA-STANNNNNNN?" It's not nice to mock other people's delivery of English, but man, this is just such a glorious delivery, I can't not love it. Jotaro ends up interrogating Rubber Soul, asking about the other Stand users. Rubber Soul claims to be a mercenary and doesn't know anything about the others, although he does divulge the identity of the two-right-handed man, J. Geil, and that his stand involves mirrors. It's just to buy time for Rubber Soul to eat some crayfishes, but Jotaro ends up sending Star Platinum to blast the water pressure via a drain to whack Rubber Soul in the face with a manhole. And then we get Jotaro delivering a pretty badass "do you understand?" mockery, and then deliver a pretty glorious ORAORAORA barrage sequence.

And, of course, as Jotaro regroups with the rest of the party, the real Kakyoin apparently does the 'rerorero' thing with real cherries, further disturbing Jotaro. (Oh, and Anne follows them, but I don't particularly care). Overall, it's a glorious, hammy fight with a Stand that actually has some weird, unique properties beyond being "it can swim" or "it's a doll". I wouldn't say any of the previous fights are bad per se, but it's around this point that the Stand fights really get weirder and weirder. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• Rubber Soul is named after the Beatles album of the same name, released in 1965.