JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E12 Review: Deus Ex Froggo

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episode 12: Torrential Downpour Warning

So this is the final episode of the first 'season' of Stone Ocean, and... I guess they picked a pretty good spot for us to leave off. The whole episode essentially just has our main protagonist meet up with the main antagonist for the first time, and... and the dynamic between Jolyne and Pucci is always interesting to me. Parts 4 and 5 of JoJo has both revolved around our protagonist having to look out and figure out who the identity of a mysterious main villain is, but Stone Ocean puts an interesting twist to the formula by having Pucci actually meet Jolyne relatively early in the series... but Jolyne has no idea that Pucci is the mysterious user of Whitesnake that she's been looking for.

Which is why their first encounter ends up with Jolyne making up a story and begging the nice priest to let them pass, while Pucci is smart enough to realize that Jolyne has an ally around and decides to play along so as not to give himself away. Of course, with victory so close to Jolyne's grasp but the episode having just started, it's not going to be that simple. Jolyne gets shot by a guard controlled by Whitesnake once she gets to the courtyard. 

We do get the first of the many flashbacks to Part-3-era Pucci and Dio, which is interesting. It's mostly just exposition about who Pucci is, but the backstory has always been fun to me since Pucci's background is intrinsically tied to the events of Stardust Crusaders. A former lover of Dio who discussed a lot about their discussions about 'souls' and 'heaven', Pucci is kind of obsessed with the ideal that Dio promised him about reaching heaven. Admittedly this could be seen in two ways -- a retcon to Dio's motivations (who, as much as I enjoy him, is pretty much just a generic anime villain overlord) or a way to peel back and reveal his 'true' goals. In any case, Jotaro ends up being the only one privy to Dio's notes back in the era of Part 3, and Pucci wants to get them from Jotaro's disc-minds. 

After the flashback, we get the continuation of the present-day fight and... and just as the brain-controlled guard is about to kill Jolyne, we get FROGS! FROGS FROGS FROGS FROGS! In one of the hilariously most bizarre Stand abilities in JoJo yet, we get the sudden rain of not just frogs, but poison arrow frogs specifically. It's Weather Report's ability, while the narration explains about the phenomenon of unusual rains of animals -- like fishes, frogs or snakes -- but this is obviously to a far larger scale than what 'a tornado happens to pick up a swarm of frogs from a swamp and dump it in someone's garden'. 

Still, it's typical JoJo's Bizarre Adventure exaggerating a weird-but-ultimately-natural phenomenon in the real life, because all the frogs falling down on the courtyard also causes instant blistering and the burning of flesh of the brainwashed guards. This ends up being a huge phenomenon that attacks not just the guard, but also Jolyne and Pucci. Both of them are main characters and obviously survive the ordeal, but it is actually interesting to see how they get out of it. Jolyne uses her strings to make a web-dome, while Pucci -- rather hilariously -- almost got himself killed by the rain of frogs and trapped in a security checkpoint. I do think that this sequence, while also showing the main villain in danger (it's a vulnerability in a main JoJo villain we haven't seen since Kira), also shows Pucci's sadism when he ends up leaving the guard that hesitated to help him blind and writhing in pain. 

Pucci sends out Whitesnake to retrieve the Disc, but gets blindsided by Jolyne faking her death. This allows Jolyne to snatch the Star Platinum Disc and pass it over to Savage Garden -- who turns out to be a trained pigeon from the Speedwagon Foundation. We get the rather surreal scene of Whitesnake picking up a gun and trying to shoot the pigeon, which... which is a mental image that's just pretty damn hilarious. Ultimately, though, Jolyne succeeds in sending away the Disc, leaving Whitesnake to retreat and swear vengeance. 

And that's where 'season one' of Stone Ocean ends, with our heroes getting a token victory, the mysteries about the amnesiac Weather Report deepening a bit more, but our heroes being no closer to figuring out Whitesnake's true identity. It's a pretty nice way to end the season, and..... well, I'm admittedly a bit more lower in energy while writing up the review for this final episode, but I have been really enjoying this season. Still ultimately not sure about releasing it in a batch, but I guess the fact that they're not releasing the entire part all at once is a nice way to help spread out the JoJo content over a year or so. 

Random Notes:

• One of the things Pucci does is to punt a frog with a Disc within it that orders the animal to explode after 10 meters. That's some Heaven's Door-specific style of not just putting orders, but also warping reality itself. I don't really remember if Whitesnake's Disc abilities are ever that specific again. 
• The revelation that 'Savage Garden' is a pigeon was always cooler to me than it actually is. I'm not sure why. 
• WHITESNAKE WITH A HANDGUN!