JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E01-02 Review: Stone Free

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episodes 1-2:

It's been a while since the anime adaptation of Vento Aureo, huh? I looked in my blog and the last JoJo-related review I did was in 2019. Time flies, doesn't it? Part 6, Stone Ocean, finally got its own anime adaptation and it's released in batches of episodes. I didn't feel like binge-watching, so I took things relatively slow and watched the episodes bit by bit. And now I get to talk about them! I actually watched the anime throughout December and January, but didn't really have the energy to write about them. I've also been re-reading some of my older JoJo reviews and... and the urge to go back and rewrite all of them is very strong, except then I'll never be done. I wrote a lot of things in the past. One thing that I'll hopefully do with Stone Ocean is to not just describe every single thing that happens in the episode and actually just review it.

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Episode 1: Stone Ocean

I don't have much to actually say about the anime beyond 'it's competently done', though I'll also be the first to admit that I'm not the most well-qualified to commentate on that either. It feels about on par with Vento Aureo, although it's also been a couple of years since I last saw it. It's actually kind of interesting just how slowly Stone Ocean's first events occur, spending most of its first episode setting up Jolyne Cujoh as our new protagonist, explaining her backstory and the setting of Green Dolphin Street Prison. We don't even really get a proper Stand fight until the second episode!

And I do really like this. The first time Stands showed up, it took our first then-protagonist Jotaro a while to come to terms with it. So it's neat that Jolyne, who doesn't have anyone to explain what Stands are to her -- unlike Jotaro, Josuke and Giorno in their respective 'first episodes'. Again, not that she activates Stone Free in its full glory in this first episode anyway. 

I do find it interesting how... wacky our literal first impression to Jolyne was. Sure, there's that wordless showcase of her tragic origin story, but then we get to the joke about her confiding to Ermes how a guard saw her masturbating after she gets turned on by moonlight. Every time I question the title of this manga, this sort of thing reminds me why 'bizarre' is in the title. 

The primary antagonist of this first episode is basically Jolyne's unnamed Riddler-tie-wearing, elf-eared lawyer. The story itself is pretty fun and I feel to be enough content to carry the 20+ minutes of the first episode -- Jolyne and her boyfriend Romeo accidentally ran over some dude and killed him, and the lawyer ends up manipulating Jolyne into a situation where her plea deal causes her to be locked up in prison for 16 years. The twist, of course, is that the lawyer's actually working for Romeo -- it's a plotline straight out of Yakuza, I like it. 

While doing this, Jolyne meets her future buddy Ermes Costello, and also gets pricked by a piece of the Stand Arrow that her father Jotaro snuck into a golden pendant. Jolyne doesn't have the best relationship to her distant dad. She starts getting some kind of enhanced senses after being pricked, and while she's initially confident that her name would be cleared, she still spends some time talking to Ermes. Some pretty fun, if gloriously vulgar, conversation about hiding money in a woman's 'secret compartments' and how Ermes is smuggling money through silicone implants. The guards with Ermes in the prison truck is beating the shit out of Ermes and trying to get her to cough up the money... and Jolyne ends up having a blue thread trail off from her fingers and slices off the ear of one of the evil guards. 

The episode's third act goes back to the evil lawyer story, while also showing the car accident in its full glory. Jolyne gets tricked and tossed in jail by the lawyer... and Jolyne Cujoh is now Prisoner FE40536. We get the memed-to-hell-by-the-internet strip search, and then as Jolyne sees the lawyer that fucked her over drive away, she sends out a thread that strangles the lawyer when it's exposed to cold air, causing him to get into a very karma-appropriate car crash. Again, not too much really happened in this episode other than setup, but it's a pretty neat first episode. 

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Episode 2: Stone Free

Episode 2 gives us the first actual Stand fight in the series and... and Gwess and her Stand, Goo Goo Dolls, is very tame, isn't it? This whole episode feels like pretty much just more set-up for Jolyne to understand the setting of not only Green Dolphin Prison, but also the nature of the strange new ability that her dad's weird pendant has given her.

After the bizarre introduction to Green Dolphin by the warden Loccobarocco and his pink crocodile puppet Charlotte, the prison initially looks like a relatively all right location for a correctional facility... until, of course, Ermes's warnings from the first episode ends up becoming a bit true. Money is kind of a premium currency in the prison, while even basic stuff like food ends up running out if you're not ready to deal with the 'you can sleep in...' hints. 

Jolyne's cell-mate Gwess ends up being the initial antagonist, and... she's kind of a lunatic and not the most interesting character. She initially is hostile at everything Jolyne does, and has the golden locket from the first episode that Jolyne's desperate to get back in order to get some answers. But then she feigns being a nice ally to Jolyne, before it's obvious to Jolyne that Gwess is trying to screw her up. Toss in the fact that there are some creepy things that happen -- with the pretty effective imagery of Gwess's pet parrot detaching its head while tiny human hands pop out from within it. 

Gwess's Goo Goo Dolls power turns out to be able to cause her to shrink down people, which is... okay, it's a pretty decently simple power so early in the series. The real bizarre thing here is Gwess herself, who insists on dressing Jolyne and her previous victim up in... the hollowed-out bodies of dead tiny animals, and forcing them to behave like cute little animals. The voice actress had a lot of fun recording Gwess's overacting, for sure. 

Turns out that Gwess doesn't really have a good grasp on how her powers work, and the further Jolyne moves away from Gwess, the more her power wanes -- which ends up being nearly fatal for Jolyne because Gwess sends her off to sneak into the guards' room and cause a mass breakout. When Jolyne tries to run back into her cell, she gets pursued by Goo Goo Dolls, who automatically does so because it thinks Jolyne is running away. And a bit later, Gwess seems to ally with Jolyne only to betray her again.

Again, Goo Goo Dolls isn't the most interesting thing, and it's just there to be a target for Stone Free, who coalescences from strings and we get a very satisfying ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA moment from Jolyne as she gives a badass series of lines -- talking about her Stand name being Stone Free, how she's going to be free of the ocean of stones, and how she's in charge now. Any Ora Ora beatdown is always satisfying to watch, and this one is a pretty neat one. 

Overall, a pretty fun first two episodes! I don't have too much to say because by itself the Goo Goo Dolls story isn't the most exciting thing in JoJo, but these two episodes are pretty neat at setting up the main character and the prison setting. Looking forward to re-experiencing Stone Ocean in animated format for sure! 

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Random Notes:

• 
  I actually finished JoJolion around a month or two after the serialization ended. It's a part that's most certainly reads a lot better when you don't have to wait a month every chapter, although I do still think that it doesn't rank particularly highly if I were to rank all the JoJo parts. Admittedly, though, the high energy of the earlier parts is why I got into the series in the first place, so...
• Depending on my mood, I might do double-episodes in a single review. We'll see. 
• Most of the character names in Part VI are all based on fashion brands: Ermes Costello takes her name from Hermes and the fashion designer Paul Costelloe; Gwess is taken from Guess; Loccobarocco is taken from fashion designer Rocco Barocco.
• Jolyne Cujoh's name is based on the Dolly Parton song Jolene.
• Stone Free is taken from the Jimi Hendrix song Stone Free.
• Goo Goo Dolls is taken from the band of the same name. 
• The anime adaptation, as far as I understand it, still keeps a lot of the Stand names -- but some references to other real-world stuff are cut out. Among them is Jolyne's mention about how the guard that saw her masturbating looks like Tom Cruise. 
• Ermes gets a Joseph-style "oh my god", I appreciate that.
• Stone Ocean isn't a part that I actually really remember all that well. I remembered that I really enjoyed Jolyne and Foo Fighters, but it's interesting to re-experience this all over again. 
• Stone Ocean is infamous for having some rather... bizarre character designs. From the elf-lawyer to the... the whatever the fuck Loccobarocco is supposed to be, there are some characters that the fandom joked are aliens from Mikitaka's race.
• The opening title, simply called 'Stone Ocean', is... it's a neat song! It'll take a while for it to grow on me, but the return of the 3D visuals is most definitely a welcome surprise.