JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E09 Review: Take Me Out To The Ball Game

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episode 9: Marilyn Manson, the Debt Collector

This arc feels a bit more like a much-needed padding with a villain-of-the-week, and after the relatively rapid or progression-filled pacing that Stone Ocean has, I did feel like a lower-stakes fight like this is pretty needed at this stage before we get to what's essentially a three-parter season finale. 

Still, in a pretty neat case of Stone Ocean's more tight writing, Miraschon is involved a bit more with Father Pucci. I've always found it kind of interesting that Pucci was introduced to the audience without some huge revelation to the in-universe characters... although I suppose we've already had a huge 'the audience discovers the identity of the mystery Big Bad alongside the protagonist' with Diavolo last part. We get to see how Father Pucci essentially gets minions to fight Jolyne and company. It's kind of sinister, in a way, that Pucci basically preys on the prisoners that are looking to him for (admittedly selfish) aid, and shoves the Stand Discs into them to make them into his minions. 

(All the while, of course, Pucci does a typical "JoJo character does weird JoJo things" with cherry stems and pits.)

The actual fight against Miraschon and her stand Marilyn Manson is a pretty standard once-a-part thing we have in JoJo -- in Part IV, it's the super-deadly janken game. In Part III, we've got the d'Arby brothers and their own respective bets and games. In this case, Miraschon's Stand does work into the whole 'money is a very important resource' theme that we've been seeing throughout Green Dolphin Prison... and I've always found that the fact that Marilyn Manson can rip out people's organs based on their black market value as payment for their bet is pretty neat black comedy. 

The actual game itself is playing catch-ball for money, and Marilyn Manson essentially acts as a judge of knowing when someone cheats or not, which it displays when Ermes uses Kiss to cheat once and retrieve the ball. This little problem is also compounded by the fact that the time for them playing the game ends up running out, and both Jolyne and Miraschon ends up having to bribe guards and run around elevators in order to continue the game. Not something that we haven't seen before in JoJo, and the way that Jolyne wins via rules-lawyering (the guard counts as someone she can play catch with) isn't particularly mind-blowing, but it's ultimately pretty fun stuff.

We also get one of Jolyne's more badass ass-kicking lines, playing catch one thousand times with an ORA ORA ORA barrage with that ball and Miraschon's face. 

This arc also essentially serves to introduce Foo Fighters as a part of the primary cast of Stone Ocean, forming the weirdo in the dynamic between her, Jolyne and Ermes particularly with how they're still struggling to fit into human society and their obsession with drinking water from rather unconventional sources. We don't learn anything particularly groundbreaking about F.F., but it's neat to see them integrating bit by bit. Overall, a pretty well-done fight. 

Random Notes:

• Marilyn Manson is named after the heavy metal artist of the same name. Miraschon is named after the fashion band Mila Schön.
• The English Netflix subtitles turns Marilyn Manson into "Mary Lynn Manson" and that's kind of genius.
• The money within Ermes's breast implants also gets ripped out by Marilyn Manson, a neat little continuity callback. 
• The anime makes Jolyne's 1000-ball-fetch with Miraschon's face a lot more vengeful -- in the manga, Jolyne actually has to do the fetch with Mirashcon in order to satisfy Marilyn Manson's requirements and get it to disappear.