JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Season 1, Episode 19: Race to the Brink
"DOUBLE SHOCK!" Joseph shouts at the beginning of the episode as he sees Kars fighting with Stroheim, with Stroheim being upgraded into a Nazi-Terminator body. Kars also makes it clear that he really, really wants to kill Joseph for what he did to ACDC, although the illusion is definitely ruined by Stroheim and Joseph having a full conversation while Kars apparently is patient to stand there holding his sword-blade out and not moving.
Stroheim and Kars's fight is disappointingly short, though what we get is hilariously amazing. We get a brief random introdump of Stroheim's Greatest German Engineering body's capabilities, which includes double-jointed arms, a death-grip that can rip Kars's flesh out, a laser eye, and a super-machinegun installed in his belly that Stroheim has to pose, crotch out, before firing.
Stroheim quickly drops any pretense of being calm and collected and starts shouting stuff like SEKAI ICHIIIIIIII and BAKAMONOOOOHHHH and god, the times that Stroheim is allowed to let loose and just ham it up is amazing. But he's quickly taken down by ACDC, whose power is revealed to be controlling light, manifesting in some kind of microscopic chainsaw-esque deal going on over the extendable sickles that pop out of his lower arms. Kars makes it clear that he's the top dog, with Santana (who Stroheim based his new body out of) being a mere 'guard dog', and curb-stomping Stroheim and Joseph.
(Meanwhile, Lisa Lisa and Caeasar and whichever of Loggins and Messani survived just hang around in the ruins of the building and give a running commentary)
It's a shame that the bulk of the episode's action scene is devoted to Joseph and Kars falling through the snowbank into the valley, and god, that bit was actually quite boring as hell. So, yeah, Joseph isn't quite ready to take on Kars yet, but the writer wants to avoid the 'Dio on his throne' inactive main villain trope, and have Kars be actively seeking Joseph out. But is the best way to avoid a conclusive confrontation this early in the story to have Kars fall down a cliff and just decide to walk away because of some flowers? The scene of them falling down and Joseph using icicles as rope is pretty clunky and honestly pretty bland.
After all that, we then have a bit of a setup where Team Joseph discover Kars's base. Caesar is all for Leeroy Jenkins-ing through the base, but Joseph notes that the Pillar Men survived so long despite their weakness to sunlight, so they're probably not that dumb to have it exploited so easily against them. And then the two kind of fight because Joseph refuses to fight for dead family members he doesn't even know, which is a sore topic for Caesar's "secret past"? Overall a bit of a clunky episode, especially in regards to pacing -- something that's a bit of the fault of the original manga. As much as I adore Battle Tendency's weirdness and over-hamminess, the pacing problems that plague these past few episodes in-between fighting Pillar Men scenes is just kind of a pockmark in JJBA's book. Still, you get to see Rudol von Stroheim scream loudly about SEKAI ICHIII while fighting an immortal superior human being with an organic light-chainsaw thing. There's entertainment to be had in that, at least.
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