JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E16-17 Review: Parasites

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Episode 16-17: Lovers, Parts 1-2

Okay, I guess I kind of have to do these reviews a bit shorter for the sake of my own sanity. What is it about reviewing JoJo's Bizarre Adventure leaves me somewhat tired? Anyway, we get another two-parter episode that I honestly really thought is one of those Stardust Crusaders stories that could've easily been reduced to a single episode in the anime. Maybe that's  what makes me so tired every time I do one of these -- I keep treating these two-parters as two episodes, when they really are just a single story, really. This, I guess, is why I never got into watching the anime adaptations of Naruto, Dragon Ball Z or One Piece. Sure, the moving pictures and the voices are neat, but anime adaptations tend to just make any sort of padding feel so unbearably slow.

Anyway, we're in Pakistan now, and poor Enya gets almost quickly murdered by the new villain of the week. Oh no! How ruthless! She gets torn apart by tentacles that get burned by the sun, setting up a pretty neat little "what sort of horrible power are we dealing with today?" mystery, and we get a nice little bit of characterization with Enya even in her last breaths. Dio did order new villain Steely Dan to kill her, but instead of blabbing about Dio's secret or some crucial information near her death, she refuses to betray Dio to her death, leading to a huge OH GAAAADDHH from Joseph.

I will never, ever get tired of Joseph Joestar's glorious, glorious English words.

And Steely Dan joins in with the English, calling Joseph "Mistuhh Johstahh" throughout their initial interaction, and shows  off his power... which seems to basically reflect any damage done to his person several times greater to Joseph, because while everyone's dealing with Enya's death, Dan's Stand has already infected Joseph.

That's a great setup,  but the actual  body of the episode is a bit underwhelming and honestly dragged on for way too long. The group basically leaves Jotaro with Dan, where Dan proceeds to humiliate Jotaro in increasingly silly and douchebaggy ways which... yeah, we get it. Dan's arrogant and could've just killed Jotaro right then and there, but he's a sadistic fuck.  Meanwhile, Joseph uses Hermit Purple on a random television to see inside his body... and realize that Steely Dan's Stand is actually a microscopic little golden bug-robot thing that has infiltrated Joseph's head. And it's going to kill Joseph either via the damage reflection powers, or by eating Joseph's brain.

Kakyoin and Polnareff shrink their Stands into microscopic size because why not, in one of the Stand properties that this series will forget and throw into the side just like Star Platinum's extending fingers. And while Joseph tries to be entertaining by going OH! MY! GOOOOOD! and OH NOOOO, while Dan's sadism reaches absurdly juvenile levels, the second episode really  drags the whole storylines with Steely Dan being a douchebag and the weird battle of the shrinking stands in Joseph's mind.

We did get a cool bit of Overdrive on Joseph's part, a rare case of Hamon being used post-Part-2 to rip the flesh bud apart (didn't those control minds before?) and we do get a neat bit of Hierophant Green actually using his ability to unspool into tapeworm-esque tendrils to have Kakyoin do something after quite literally being part of the background for the past couple of episodes. And it  does lead to the cathartic final scene where Jotaro realizes Dan has no more power over Joseph, with Hierophant Green's tentacle tying up even Lovers in place as it tries to zip into Jotaro's ear...

And then as Jotaro gives a one-liner about writing a check, he ORA ORA ORA's Steely Dan to death throughout the course of like fifteen seconds... a lot less impressive when the original manga actually had three or four splash pages of ORA ORA's dedicated to Steely Dan to illustrate the absurdly long beatdown Jotaro's  giving Dan. I think it loses some of the impact when it's barely noticeably longer than the usual ORA ORA moments.

And I guess Lovers is neat and all, but honestly they don't do enough with either the microscopic part or the damage-reflection part, with how he's beaten being pretty simple. Overall, definitely not my favourite parts of Stardust Crusaders, and perhaps it's around this point when a lot of these villains sort of begin to blur together.

The JoJo Playlist:

• Steely Dan borrows his name from the American band Steely Dan. Selected discography include Do It Again and Deacon Blues.