JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E12-13 Review: OOOO MAIII GODDDOOOO

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders, Episode 12: Empress; Episode 13: Wheel of Fortune

To say that I love Old Man Joseph would be an understatement. Joseph Joestar was already pretty hilarious, threading the lines between a cheeky motherfucker and a competent action hero during his time in the spotlight in Battle Tendency, but in Stardust Crusaders, his role as a kooky grandfather with non-combat abilities puts him in the sidelines. Of course, that particular status quo doesn't stay for too long, and the "Empress" story quickly elevates Joseph Joestar back to action hero status. It is also single-handedly responsible for giving us the most glorious catchphrase to ever garner the anime -- Joseph Joestar's OH MY GOD. It's gloriously hammy, and even fits with Joseph's background as an American. From here on out, Joseph will drop a gigantic OOO MAI GOOODDOO any time he's surprised, and voice actor Sugita Tomokazu clearly is having a lot of fun hamming it up. I certainly am.

That said, "Empress" isn't a super-notable episode other than giving Joseph the first real focus he's had other than being an exposition dump. We get a bit of a prologue with Enya, J. Geil's mom, ranting about curses and hatred and abuses a poor cat for no reason. Meanwhile, the Stardust Crusaders arrive in the city of Varanasi, India, where Polnareff keeps putting the moves on Nena, the Indian princess that was Hol Horse's girlfriend from the previous episode, and the blatantly-obvious user of the Stand that menaces Joseph throughout the episode.

And the Stand that menaces Joseph, Empress, manifests as a tumour that ends up growing into a face, and then into a weird stunted humanoid. And as Joseph goes to a doctor to get rid of it, the tumour kills the doctor and frames Joseph by way of ventriloquism. Oh, and it also cuts off one of Joseph's fingers, prompting a huge OHNOOOOO, the first of many. I find it weird in animated format, though, because Empress's voice actor sounds nothing like Joseph's, yet somehow the nurse does believe that it's Joseph that's behind the whole thing?

And as Joseph runs around the city, we get treated to a rare display of Joseph using Overdrive to try and drive out Empress from his body, but it doesn't work. We also see the first time that the vines of Purple Hermit used as whips, although it's still some way off before Old Man Joseph uses them as straight-up weapons. We get a lot of OH NOOOO's (episode 13 also gets a couple of Joseph's OH NO-ing as they battle Wheel of Fortune), a bit where Empress straight-up murders and eats a random chicken, and Joseph ends up making use of the scuffle to drop a lot of dust on the ground and use Purple Hermit's spirit photography to tell him where he can find some coal tar, and ends up dipping Empress in it.

We do get a glorious "Now you'll say X!" moment from Joseph, which is a very much-appreciated callback to his catchphrases from Part 2 and really solidifying that, yes, this is the same wily Joseph, he's just gone a bit old and didn't quite get his groove until now. Joseph then uses Purple Hermit's vines to garrote Empress apart, which in turn rips up Nena's real body while she's on a date with Polnareff. It's a bit weird why they have to go all the trouble to have Nena be a gonky ugly woman masquerading as a pretty Indian princess. I felt that really was a weirdly unnecessary detail beyond giving Polnareff a "haha, you made out with a horribly ugly woman" butt joke. That wasn't very nice.

I'll take this moment to also acknowledge the recent passing of Joseph Joestar's voice actor, Unsho Ishizuka, a very regrettable loss. Unsho Ishizuka is best known, in addition to voicing Joseph Joestar, as the voices of Professor Oak, Heihachi Mishima, Jet Black, Mr. Satan and Zabuza Momochi. I hadn't planned on this episode on coming out today, having written up the bulk of this review before I learned of Ishizuka's passing. May he rest in peace.
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Episode 13 is perhaps another one of the more blatantly filler episodes, and it ends up being one of the slower paced ones. Most egregiously, we get the tiresome return of Anne, the little stowaway girl, who proceeds to add nothing to the story beyond being a bit of an annoying tagalong that spends pointless screentime going "oh Jotaro's so kewl" and being a bit of a load. That said, though, we do get a fair amount of fun bits as the Stardust Crusaders have to contend with what's initially a weird muscle car that seems to disappear and reappear at will, nearly causing them to get into a car accident with a truck (thank god for Star Platinum's punch). There's also a neatly realistic bit where they see the Wheel of Fortune car at a random cafe, and the Crusaders immediately go interrogation mode on the shifty-looking Pakistani punks who are, of course, completely innocent.

Wheel of Fortune turns out to be a Transformer car, able to turn the car into some weird demon-bug-monster to adapt with the situation as needed. We do get a pretty badass moment with Kakyoin sending Hierophant Green with a wire winch to stop their truck from falling into a chasm, a 'do you like sumo' moment as Jotaro and Kakyoin manage to break Physics and vault their car up like a bungee jump. Jotaro ends up being the action hero in this episode, bravely facing down the murder-demon-car, trying to figure out how it's able to drill bullet holes in everyone (apparently Wheel of Fortune can shoot out pressurized gasoline?). There's a moment where it seemed like Jotaro got his ass burned to the ground, but thanks to some off-screen bullshittery, apparently Jotaro dug a hole in the ground too fast for anyone to see, and all that got burnt is his jacket.

Clearly it's not an arc that has a lot of thought put into it, as we get a random fourth-wall breaking moment as Wheel of Fortune's driver, ZZ, declares that "Part Three is over!" to which Jotaro responds "who's going to replace me, Kujo Jotaro?" We do get a fun little ORA ORA barrage, and a Bond one-liner from Jotaro as he defines a road as "where you will be sent flying". We then get a bit of an epilogue where ZZ, who apparently have beefy-ass arms and a skinny body, is tied onto a rock with the writing "I'm a priest of training, don't disturb me", and thus leaving a man to presumably die of heatstroke and/or salvation, the Crusaders steal ZZ's car. Oooo goddo indeed, Joseph.

Yeah, Wheel of Fortune's a pretty weak, if lighter-hearted, episode, and honestly could've been easily condensed into half of its length. As Enya notes at the end of this episode, though, all of her personal assassins (not Dio's, though! He's still got a season's worth of minions) are defeated, and she's going to have to deal with the Stardust Crusaders personally. Overall, these two aree mostly standalone villain-of-the-week stories meant to break up the heavily Hol Horse/J.Geil two-parter and the Enya one that's to come.

The JoJo Playlist:

• Nena is named after Nena (Gabriele Susanne Kerner), a German singer-songwriter that's part of a band also called Nena. One of her more famous songs is 99 Luftballons.
• ZZ is named after the American rock band ZZ Top. Selected discography include Sharp Dressed Man and Gimme All Your Lovin', both of which prominently feature a hot rod car -- not the same one that's featured in JJBA, though.