JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E28-29 Review: The Fight For the Main Character Spot

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stardust Crusaders, Episode 28-29: Anubis, Pts 1-2

I remembered reading the pretty long Anubis storyline in the manga, and went "oh, another Polnareff-centric fight", and, well, it's true that Polnareff gets as much and probably even more scenes than Jotaro at times. This time around, though, it's an interesting one where he ends up being the star of the first part of this arc, and then gets possessed and becomes the antagonist for the second part, where Jotaro ends up being the one to truly defeat Anubis. 

The Death God Anubis is unique among the Stands in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure that it ends up gaining sentience and became independent, which is a relatively rare occurence. Anubis also boasts that he is a 100-year old stand, which is a slight bit of head-scratcher considering all the origin story of the Stands we find in Part IV and V. But hey, maybe he's unique that way?

Anyway, episode 28 starts off with some random meek kid Chaka finding a sword, and being the only one to draw it out of his sheath. His father and his father's friends get killed immediately by the blade, and then possesses Chaka as he heads off to hunt the Crusaders. We get a bunch of scenes of Polnareff and Iggy (whose character model is steadily growing cuter and cuter compared to the more realistic-looking dog that he was in his first appearance) sort of dicking around...

And then we get easily one of my favourite battles in this Part of JJBA, which is Polnareff against Anubis in this Egyptian ruins with pillars. Anubis is basically a pretty simple Stand. He's a sword that an pass through anything, but cuts flesh. Oh, and he passes on his accumulated knowledge and skill to those who wield him. This leads to a pretty badass battle as Chaka/Anubis zips around and cuts through walls, leading to a pretty awesome sequence when Polnareff, facing a collapsing pillar, shoots out Silver Chariot's blade, bouncing it off part of the terrain, and then embedding it straight into Chaka's neck to kill him. Pretty badass and amazingly animated scene. 

The first 'part' ends with Jotaro and Polnareff at a barber shop, with the barber this time around getting possessed by Anubis and threatening to cut up Polnareff's neck, and Anubis basically has this rant about how he's memorized Polnareff's techniques, including his hidden 'launch the blade' technique.

The fight between Khan and Polnareff ends up being interrupted with Jotaro summoning Star Platinum to blindside Khan and snap Anubis's blade in half. And I remembered when reading the manga that I thought that, well, that's it for Anubis -- because I don't have the luxury of knowing that the episode still has half of its length to go. But thanks to an interfering policeman, Polnareff accidentally draws Anubis from its sheath, causing him to be possessed and we get a pretty badass fight with Polnareff's Silver Chariot dual-wielding his own sword and the broken Anubis, which is pretty badass. 

The anime actually expands on this scene a fair bit, including adding a scene with Jotaro using Star Finger (hah!) and Polnareff-Anubis breaking parts of his armour to become faster. Jotaro ends up doing the manga cliche of grabbing a weapon within himself to limit the bad guy's maneuverability, before completely ORA ORA ing and snapping Anubis to pieces.

It's a pretty intense battle story, and we are rewarded with a pretty extended scene of Anubis's blade possessing a kid, who throws the blade at Jotaro and Polnareff... only for the shot to go wide and we go through several "OH GOD I AM SAVED/OH NO I AM FUCKED" mental rants from Anubis before he finally lands at the bottom of the Nile River. 

Overall, a pretty neat set of episode that focuses more on the action scenes, but definitely ends up being one of the most memorable fight episodes in Stardust Crusaders. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• Anubis's first user is named Chaka, and the second is named Khan, which, of course, is a reference to the Queen of Funk, Chaka Khan. She's made a lot of hit records, but her biggest one has to be I Feel For You.