JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E10-11 Review: Vacuum Cleaner

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episodes 10-11: Operation Savage Garden (Head to the Courtyard)

This is technically a three-parter finale, but since episodes 10 and 11 are titled as a 'part 1' and 'part 2', and the Lang Rangler fight ends here, we'll cover episodes 10 and 11 together. And I do really appreciate that they decided to end the first 'season' of this Netflix release here, since this arc does give us a fair amount of things that do make it pretty suitable for an epic season finale -- the Lang Rangler fight is considerably more tense and brutal compared to the previous couple of fights; Pucci actually does something and becomes active in these episodes; and we build up the mystery around Weather Report a fair bit. 

Episode 10 starts off with more Pucci scenes, and I do really like that we're slowly peeling back the layers between our main antagonist's motivations. Sure, we can guess that he's aligned with Dio after Jotaro's whole speech before, but we get his pretty interesting motive rant where he talks about how humans are defined by their desire to go to heaven.

Meanwhile, in what's perhaps the biggest plot event since Jotaro's coma, Jolyne finally decides to call the Speedwagon Foundation from the phones in the prison, knowing full well that her unknown enemy would be tapping the conversation and this would cause a race against time to get the Star Platinum Stand disc to them. I do like that for a brief moment, the Speedwagon Foundation just denies any knowledge until someone who's clearly aware of all this Stand business shows up to pick up the phone. Speedwagon's spokesperson tell Jolyne that she needs to get to the courtyard with the disc within twenty minutes to meet someone called 'Savage Garden', which is the whole crux of the three-parter, giving us a time limit and a whole lot of tension. 

And I really do like how this scene plays out in the anime, with Emporio finally deciding to help out in a more concrete way. Emporio explains the specifics of his own Stand, which is essentially creating a 'ghost room'. Emporio is always an interesting character and part of the show to me, as essentially someone who can both deliver exposition and recapping as needed. Emporio also brings with him two allies -- Anasui leaves after this scene, but the amnesiac Weather Report and his weather-control powers ends up hanging out with Jolyne for the rest of the season finale. 

Jolyne and Weather have to run through the prison while being stalked by Lang Rangler, and it's a pretty fun, tense sequence. There's always a sense of 'what unnatural ability will this enemy have?' with most JoJo enemies, but Lang in particular feels particularly bizarre due to his design -- he has gecko fingers and would look far more at home as an X-Men enemy or something. Jolyne and Weather have to get to the courtyard, and in this regard the anime once more improves upon the manga by showing us shots of the prison interior and showing us the routes that Jolyne and Weather have to take. Another pretty neat sequence of showing the bribing-culture within the prison as well, which leads almost immediately to Jolyne discovering that Lang's ability, Jumpin' Jack Flash, has to do with creating zero-gravity fields. While Jolyne struggles, Lang manages to steal the Star Platinum Disc. 

Jolyne manages to contact Weather Report, who faces off against Lang and his Stand. I do also really like the design of Jumpin' Jack Flash and its spinning centrifugal-force wrist cannons that launch random debris. Weather Report shows off his own weird abilities, which is using clouds and atmospheric layers as shields... and using the friction to set Lang's arm on fire. Lang manages to escape by using his projectiles to push himself away, but then Weather helps to propel Jolyne by using his powers to create gusts of wind. Episode 10 ends at this point, as our two heroes arrive in the large laundry room -- what's essentially a boss fight arena. 

And a 'boss fight', I think, is a pretty apt description of episode 11. We start off with the guards and Father Pucci realizing that there's an alarm being activated somewhere in the prison. Again, it's such an interesting thing to have the audience know the identity of the main villain while the heroes in-universe are blissfully unaware. 

Also, in typical bizarre JoJo fashion, we get an intermezzo to the zero-gravity Stand fight by having Jolyne want to pee (zero-gravity apparently does that to you) and Weather Report just insensitively offers a cloud for her to piss in. Of course, this leads to the two of them realizing about the dangers of depressurization, which further adds another sense of urgency to the fight. None of these really stand up towards actual rules of physics if you really dissect it, but I do like the idea that the writer of the manga decided to choreograph the whole fight after maybe watching a documentary of zero-gravity and astronauts in space or something. 

I do really like the setup of the fight, though, with our heroes being mostly helpless while Lang Rangler keeps shooting projectiles at them from somewhere in the room. Weather Report eventually gets the idea to cover himself and Jolyne with cloud-astronaut suits in order to keep the air around them from getting sucked out by Jumpin' Jack Flash. Jolyne also figures out that the zero gravity has a radius around her body. Again, the tension of them having a finite amount of air to work with while Lang Rangler just snipes at them from afar is pretty well-done. 

Lang also abuses the bizarre pressures created by the zero gravity field, like causing a barrel to explode, and later a bunch of rats. The exploding rats do end up being an interesting 'preview' of what would happen to living things in complete vacuum, in addition to having their blood cover Jolyne's 'astronaut suit' visor.. Jolyne gets to be heroic as well, sacrificing her own air in order to propel herself around and save Weather. Again, most of the episode is just either exposition about Jumpin' Jack Flash's ability or actual action scenes, but it's all paced very well.

Lang Rangler ends up getting so hyped-up about his own ability that he resolves to hunt down Whitesnake and kill him too... before, of course, the revelation that Jolyne has used her strings and tied them onto Lang's nuts-and-bolts ammunition. With an anchor to Lang, Jolyne pulls him inside the zero-gravity sphere, trying to force Lang to cancel his vacuum. Lang tries to use a makeshift bomb (specifically, manganese dioxide in a bottle of peroxide solution, creating an explosive oxygen reaction in a vacuum... the author really did his research) and rips Jolyne's suit apart... but then it's Weather Report's turn for sacrifice because he moves his own clouds to protect Jolyne. With Jolyne conscious and holding Lang in place, the villain's forced to cancel his vacuum... and gets pummeled to shit by Jolyne. 

The episode ends with a bit of a setup for the final episode. Weather Report talks about the layout of the courtyard, and Jolyne sets up a plan to get past the guards... but, shockingly, it's Father Pucci that's on the other side of the door waiting for them.  

Overall, it's a pretty tense pair of episodes! I've never really thought all that much about the Lang Rangler fight before, but it looks so much cooler in animated fashion. There's a neat theme of all the good guys being willing to sacrifice themselves for their allies, which is nice, and I do like the buildup to the eventual meeting with Pucci. Again, I wasn't super sure about the Netflix format when I first saw the announcement, but having it build up to this season finale and end here is a pretty good move by the showrunners. 

Random Notes:

• Weather Report's name and Stand draws from the jazz band Weather Report; Lang Rangler is named after the fashion designer Helmut Land and the clothing brand Wrangler; Jumpin' Jack Flash is named after the Rolling Stones song of the same name. Savage Garden is named after on the Australian band of the same name. Emporio's Stand, Burning Down the House, is named after a song by Talking Heads. 
• Does Lang Rangler having gecko fingers something that Jumpin' Jack Flash grants him? Or is he just part of the bizarre mutant-humanity people that so many random minor characters in Stone Ocean come from?
• The anime adds a lot of shots of the map of the prison to show us how Jolyne plans to go through the prison, and I appreciate that. 
• Unlike the manga's first appearance for Anasui (where he's depicted as a woman), we get his 'proper' series design for his first appearance. 
• I've always thought that Jolyne bribing the random fat prisoner to get to the phone felt like filler, but I guess it's to show that she's growing to learn how to survive in the society of the prison. 
• I genuinely wonder at what point in Araki's writing that he decided to go from 'zero gravity powers' to 'gecko-man that can jump from wall to wall'...
• Jolyne using the string to make a string telephone is probably one of the more ridiculous things that Stone Free does. Is it anywhere as out-of-nowhere as Star Finger, though?