JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E32-33 Review: Don't Step On The Fetus

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Episodes 32-33: Alessi's Divine Set, Pts. 1-2

An interesting episode, and one that the anime adds some extra scenes in to show that Jotaro and Polnareff are undergoing this crisis concurrent to the climax of the previous episode's fight between Joseph and Avdol against Mariah.

The actual concept of this episode is something that's been done to death in basically all comic-books, cartoons and anime. A grown-up protagonist gets reduced to a kid, and has to use their wiles to fight against a villain. And it's... it's done pretty competently. Alessi isn't the most novel of villains, being a dude with questionable fashion sense and even more questionable hairdo, but his Stand's design is pretty cool. A literal vaguely-humanoid shadow with randomly realistic and strange-shaped eyes popping out of them? I've seen a lot of shadow monsters in my time, but I've always thought that the way that Set was used ends up playing the minimalist route particularly well.

Anyway, during an encounter with Alesssi, Polnareff ends up being reduced as a kid, and poor Polnareff starts to slowly have his mind decay alongside with the reverse-aging effect, an actually awesome facet of the 'de-aging' process that I think makes this episode a bit more novel, even if the episode doesn't delve into it as much as I would've probably liked it to. We also have the revelation that apparently Polnareff has had Silver Chariot since he was a kid, and we get to see Chibi Silver Chariot, which I thought was as adorable as he was ineffective.

Unfortunately, the first part of this story sort of stagnates a lot. In between the pointless scenes of Iggy stealing a falafel (Iggy doesn't do a lot after his introduction, huh?), we get a long, long scene of Polnareff befriending a sexy lady and gets a bath scene, being happy for some reason but not equipped with the perverted hormones to make full usage of it. It takes way too long, although the payoff -- Alessi turning the lady into a fetus -- is pretty horrifying to show just how utterly horrific Set would've been if the Stand had been given to someone more potent than Alessi.

A proper professional killer would've just used it on Polnareff while he's distracted in the bath instead of trying to kill the lady, but Alessi's just a jackass bully.

The second episode is framed more like a horror survival episode (we even have a sequence that's a straight-up homage from The Shining) where kiddy Polnareff doesn't even consider fighting as an option, and just tries to run around and prevent the fetus onee-san from dying. It's an all right sequence, but, again, one that I felt ran on for way too long, with the 'put a mirror in the aquarium' bit being a particularly ridiculous piece of solution to the way for Polnareff to get out of the locked room. Throw in some unnecessary poop jokes  with Baby Polnareff kicking poop to Alessi's face, and it makes for some rather eye-rolling moments.

It's pretty fascinating just how wildly we jump from crass comedy like the poop flinging to the sheer horror of having someone reduced to a fetus you can step on. It's a neat balance, but it's an episode that I really wished was tightened up a little in order to flow better.

Of course, for a Polnareff-centric episode, it's Jotaro  that gets the win this time around, ORA-ORA ing Alessi to unconsciousness as a boy without a Stand because Jotaro's just that badass. It's hilarious, if nothing else, even if you feel like Jotaro 'stole' the victory from Polnareff. Polnareff does have a whole lot of screentime, so maybe it's neat that he gets a win taken from him once in a while? Eh. It's not my favourite two-parter episode, but one I enjoyed nonetheless.

The JoJo Playlist: 

• Alessi is named after the musical duo, the Alessi Brothers, a pop-rock band that was pretty famous in the 70's. Their most well-known song is the single "Oh Lori".
• Let's put in a bit more trivia, yeah? Alessi's Stand's name has been romanized as "Set" or "Sethan" depending on the translation. The actual kana used is セト or Seto, and both names of the Egyptian god is valid, so I'm going with Set.