JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders, Episodes 40-41: D'Arby the Gamer, Pars 1-2 (and a bit of episode 42)
This particular story arc is... I don't like it quite as much as the rest of the fandom. It's still entertaining, of course, but I've always felt like Terence D'Arby, younger brother to Daniel D'Arby, is a step down compared to his earlier-introduced brother. (Although, to be fair, the D'Arby the elder encounter is like, one of the best encounters in JoJo ever) Throw in the sheer inconsistency surrounding his initial introduction all in the name of making him mysterious, and I really get the feeling that the writer didn't really lock down what Atum's powers was until halfway through the story. Sure, it's all handwaved aside with the fact that there's a minor Stand user that's using illusions (which would explain the 'black hole' in the floor and Terencce floating mid-air), but things like Atum detaching his hand and attaching it to Jotaro really felt like it ended up leading nowhere. Throw in the fact that Atum's got two powers -- the same soul-stealing powers like D'Arby's Osiris, as well as the whole Yes/No question bit -- and I'm genuinely not as impressed as this story arc upon watching it in the anime.
Still, Terence is at least pretty hammy (he shares a voice actor with Bleach's Grimmjow, among others) and pretty entertaining. the fact that the battle takes place with two characters playing old-school not-NES video games feels pretty bizarre, though, and it's not even a "we have been transported into a video game world" bit. No, it's just... two dudes playing video games. And apparently video games that have such an insane set of sophisticated controls that they can keep up with Stand button-mashing and have some really strange and extremely advanced physics engines that would make modern-day games blush.
Terence does this huge spiel about talking about how he's far better than D'Arby the elder by simply being a better player at almost anything, and there's a reason that Daniel D'Arby never really challenged him in a gamble. That, and Terence beat Daniel half to death for making a move on his girlfriend. We also get a very, very creepy bit of Terence's own collection, which are these creepy, clattering soul-dolls.
Kakyoin shows off that he's apparently a huge geek when it comes to gaming, and he's even memorized parts of a game that requires you to race through a black screen (what shitty game developer thought up of this? No, really?) but his huge return from nearly half a season's worth of absence ended up with him losing and trapped in a doll. Whoops. The race game honestly doesn't feel as tense as it could've been, although Kakyoin, Terence and Joseph's voice actors try their damnadest.
After Kakyoin's defeat, Jotaro decides to play on a baseball game with the same sort of confidence that he had against D'Arby the elder. He picks baseball because it's the only one among the games that he at least has an inkling of knowing how to play, and to Joseph and Terence's utter befuddlement... Jotaro has never held a video game controller in his life, being utterly off in all things. Jotaro is calm despite everyone else's protests, noting that he's just going to have to learn as he goes, using Star Platinum's reflexes and vision in order to learn the game as he goes, something that ends up causing Terence to sneer at Jotaro... but when he begins getting home runs, Terence is absolutely befuddled.
Oh, and also, apparently the off-brand Famicom console is advanced enough that Terence and Jotaro are able to draw their respective Stand's faces to represent the entire baseball team in-game. It's 2018 now and I don't think we have any sort of video game that's even remotely close to doing what "OH! That's a Baseball!" does. Also, if this game technology exists in real life, it's probably just good for making dickbutts.
(OH! That's a Baseball is also the source of some actually pretty decent, if slightly malpronounced, English in this show.)
That said, though, as Jotaro begins to make home runs after home runs despite being an utter nincompoop earlier in the game, we get to see the actual power of Atum, and it's interesting to have the narrative reveal to us what the enemy Stand powers are before our heroes figure it out. Atum apparently allows Terence to ask his target's "soul" a yes or no question to allow him to read every next move that they're going to make, and it's how he has been reading Jotaro's punch during his debut, as well as the types of balls he's going to throw and stuff (presumably he's just that good with the car race game, which has nothing to do with bluffing each other, making Kakyoin's failure that much more sad).
And Jotaro's whole "yep, I've mastered this game" deadpan as he takes off his hat and keeps striking home runs despite Terene reading Jotaro's mind to determine the type of ball he's going to pitch is pretty damn hilarious. And the revelation on how they managed to elude Atum's yes/no question is pretty interesting, too -- both Jotaro and Joseph basically knows that Terence is cheating in some way, so they just apparently had a wordless agreement while arguing earlier about how to cheat... Joseph has been controlling the controller via Hermit Purple, so while Terence is reading Jotaro's mind, the one actually playing the game is Joseph.
It's a far, far better solution on how to evade a mind-reader compared to, say, Fairy Tail or One Piece's "empty your mind" bullcockery, huh?
It's a neat little aversion of where it's the villains trying to figure out how the hero's cheating, and having Terence suspect everything around Jotaro when it's a classic case of misdirection and Jotaro is indeed innocent -- he's cheating (YES YES YES! I AM I AM I AM!), but Atum's limitations in his questions ended up not figuring out just how until it's a bit too late.
Terence's takedown is similarly satisfying, with Jotaro demanding that Terence use his Stand to figure out which hand he's going to beat him up with, leading to an increasingly panicked screaming of "You're going to use both hands, aren't you??!?!?" and the memetic "You're going to ORA ORA me while doing so, aren't you??!?!?", with Jotaro's 'soul' shouting YES YES YES YES all the time, which, of course, leads to Joseph's hilarious and perfectly-delivered exasperated "Yes, yes, yes! Oh. My. God."
As a little side-note, the actual defeat of Terence bleeds a bit into episode 42, the Vanilla Ice debut episode, but I'm splitting this up based on the villain and we'll cover Ice's half of the episode in the next entry with the rest of the Vanilla Ice episodes.
The JoJo Playlist:
- Terence T. D'Arby (sometimes also translated as Telence) is a far more overt homage to the original musical inspiration for his brother, Terence Trent D'Arby.
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