JoJo's Bizarre Adventure S02E38-39 Review: The Most Evil Villain In All Of Anime

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Episodes 38-39: Pet Shop, The Gatekeeper of Hell, Pts. 1-2

So after his introduction at the first episode of this second half, we finally, finally got a mini-arc that makes Iggy relevant. I genuinely forgot just how utterly inconsequential Iggy was after his introduction until this story. Although considering neither Kakyoin nor Avdol really did much throughout this whole Egypt arc, I guess it's really hard to complain when the story clearly favours Jotaro, Polnareff and Joseph over the other members of the cast. Hell, the anime even adds a majority of Iggy's scenes, and in both the manga and anime, Iggy's design even morphs into having this more cartoonish, gremlin-like face, something that I've never really been a huge fan of. 

This episode ends up following Iggy almost exclusively, after a brief scene of the humans of the cast talking to a weird actually-super-rich beggar in their endless quest to hunt down Dio's mansion. I'm not quite sure just why it's so difficult for our heroes to find Dio's mansion, honestly -- I guess Cairo is just that big? It's really odd that the Speedwagon foundation doesn't just send its seemingly inexhaustible resources and at least help to pinpoint the location of the mansion. 

But eh. Iggy ends up finding the mansion on his own, and we suddenly get internal monologue from him, Garfield-style! (The anime makes it clear that while Iggy is clearly intelligent and sentient, all humans can hear from him are normal doggy barks). And I do love just how unabashedly an asshole Iggy is, noting that he has no real love for Joseph Joestar and his quest, and has no real obligations to help out. 

But Iggy encounters the mansion, and realizes that the mansion is protected by another intelligent Stand-wielding animal, a goddamn falcon called Pet Shop, who is insanely horrifying. And I do love that they managed to do this by utilizing nothing but the falcon's inherent look and not really embellish him too much (Stand ice powers aside). Pet Shop's pretty fucking terrifying, and that's before he straight-up murders two random bulldogs and rips their heads off and begins eating them messily in front of their kid owners. 

Also, god damn, Hirohiko Araki, what did dogs ever do to you? 

Iggy initially gets a chance to walk away from it all, noting that he doesn't give a shit about humans, or Dio, or anything... but then has a pretty neat reluctant-hero moment as he whacks Pet Shop in the face to protect the random human kid, and properly summons The Fool to do battle for the first time (his other usage in the past is honestly just to escape from N'Dour's Geb).

The animation team apparently sent someone to study the real movement of birds of prey to create this episode, which is a neat bit of going more than what is required for this, and it really shows. Pet Shop's movements is eerily predatory, and he's just a truly super-persistent, monstrous predator that hounds Iggy as he just tries to survive and escape. Pet Shop's stand allows him to manipulate ice, which genuinely looks cool in the anime with the icicle barrages and freezing water all animated rather well. The fight in the sewer is pretty damn well animated, too, leading to a neat ending for the first episode.

Also, can I just note how fucking weird Horus is? We saw Horus for exactly one scene in the sewer, because most of the time Pet Shop just manifests the icicles without summoning his stand, but what the hell is Horus? He's this weird, very gangly spine-like worm thing with multiple arms, seemingly metallic, and ends in a pterodactyl's head. Such an utterly bizarre and kickass looking Stand, and perhaps visually might be one of my favourites. 

And the second episode shows that Iggy doesn't walk out of this battle unscathed, losing one of his legs during the climax of the first episode. It's interesting just how much of Iggy's fighting style involves him just trying to hurt Pet Shop enough to escape, something that's been consistent with his cowardly mentality from what we've seen him have before. Apparently Pet Shop wasn't fooled by the fake decapitated Iggy head, and follows Iggy down underwater where he's hiding in a little bunker made out of the Fool's sand, and it's a battle of attrition as Pet Shop just pummels the dome with icicles, and then freezes the whole thing and tries to crush Iggy alive. 

In a final moment of despseration where he knows the only real way out is to stop being a pussy and fight back, Iggy's voice actor actually conveys it pretty well, and Iggy ends up using The Fool to push him forwards and allowing him to clamp down on Pet Shop's beak and cause his own ice attack to blow up in his face. Oh, and he gets rescued by the same human kid he rescued before, of course, because karma. 

The episode ends with a very, very furious Iggy walking back towards the other Crusaders, followed by a healed, sunglasses-wearing Kakyoin. It's basically the entire party arranged together, and we get a pretty unnecessarily long sequence of flashbacks to the fights of the whole Part... didn't we already have one of these when we arrived at Egypt? At least JoJo never stooped to making an entire episode be nothing but clip shows, and this scene at least ended with a (pretty generic) re-affirmation of everyone's motivations and resolve. It's not particularly well-done, what with characters like Kakyoin and Avdol being so out of the spotlight, but eh -- I've grown pretty attached to these characters to not really complain that much. And the final shot of the episode is the ominous opening of Dio's mansion, and as they enter, they are greeted by one of the final final minibosses before Dio finally makes a move. 

The JoJo Playlist:

• Pet Shop's name is based on the Pet Shop Boys, whose songs include Go West, Domino Dancing and West End Girls.