JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E15 Review: The Scuttling Bone

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 5], Episode 15: Ultra Security House Unit

It is kind of interesting that we're getting a lot of the Pucci flashbacks to tell his side of the story. I feel like while it's not quite to the degree of Yoshikage Kira in Part 4, the insights we have to Pucci's mind and goals really do help to elevate him into a more interesting antagonist than the nebulous force we had in the earlier parts of Stone Ocean. 

In particular, this episode starts off with a conversation between Pucci (or, well, Whitesnake) and Sports Maxx, prior to the events of the previous arc. Pucci waxes lyrical about the number of souls, even when the amount of living things decline... and how possessing thousands of souls might lead to heaven. I do like that Sports Maxx really doesn't give a shit about the crazy stuff Pucci is talking about, and just wants to do whatever his benefactor asks him to do. Pucci has a single bone from Dio, and asks Sports Maxx to resurrect it with Limp Bizkit... which Maxx is clearly uncomfortable in doing because there's only a single bone and he's not sure what will happen to it. Pucci threatens Maxx with taking away his power, but when Maxx uses his power on the bone, it moves on its own, damaging Whitesnake and Pucci and somehow scuttling away on its own. Maxx's power does allow him to detect that the bone has moved to the Ultra Security House Unit. Pucci decides to take this as a sign from Dio, that the bone is moving on its own. 

This is all revealed to be the memories contained in the Discs ejected from Sports Maxx at the end of the previous episode, and Jolyne watching that Disc was what led her to be voluntarily be arrested into the punishment ward. F.F. showed it to Emporio, who gives us the lowdown on the geography of Green Dolphin Prison and how utterly isolated the Ultra Security House Unit is. Both of them agree that they need to help Jolyne, but have no idea how to do so. And with Weather Report and Ermes both still recovering from their injuries, the only ally left to them is Narciso Anasui, the enigmatic silent prisoner in the room. 

F.F.'s attempts to communicate with Anasui is met with silence, and even F.F.'s initial attempt at trying to intimidate Anasui with her finger gun leads her to be utterly terrified and confused at this guy who she can't visualize winning against. Emporio gives this whole backstory about how Anasui is obsessed with 'taking apart' everything from toys to cars... and eventually his girlfriend and the guy she's cheating with, which landed him in prison. Anasui, however, agrees to help and rushes out of the ghost room and begins attacking guards, with the honestly rather ridiculous motivation of having fallen in love with Jolyne and wanting F.F.'s blessing to marry her. Um, okay. 

Anasui then shows off the powers of Diver Down, which is shown here as inserting Anasui's kick and later on causing it to emerge out as a delayed attack, sort of 'storing' attacks and unleashing it later on. 

And I do like that this showcase of Anasui's Stand powers immediately cuts to another Pucci flashback, where he discusses Stand abilities with Dio. Pucci asks Dio about which Stand is the most powerful, even name-dropping "Stallone and Van Damme" as an example of comparing powers. It's such a fun little nod to how fandoms eternally debate about which character or which power is stronger than the other. Both Dio and Pucci agree that Stand powers are extremely situational, but then Dio notes that the Stand that he would consider to be the weakest one is one he called Survivor. 

And then we get the backstory of Survivor, where a group of hikers who went into the mountains ended up killing each other in ridiculous ways that shouldn't be possible for their strength -- including rather graphic showcases of teeth being knocked out so hard that they split rocks. Survivor is noted to emit weak electric signals through the ground and into people's legs through the water, and it causes little impulses of anger in people's minds, causing them to go berserk. Dio deemed the ability to be useless since you can't direct it against a specific enemy, but Pucci got interested and ended up storing the ability in a Disc. 

And the second half of the episode is just, of course, Pucci unleashing Survivor on the Ultra Security room. There's a rather yucky sequence of Jolyne eating the mushrooms that are growing in her dank cell, before the two abusive guards Westwood and Likir show up and blast her with a hose to let her 'take a bath'. Jolyne takes it in stride, since she's using Stone Free to search the entire cell block for Dio's bone, but the guards continue to blather at each other about betting about sports and prisoners...

And, as Dio described in the flashback, they accidentally begin to hurt each other, each push causing an escalation of paybacks as Likir spraying Westwood accidentally causes them to get physical, punching each other harder and harder, so hard that their flesh begin to get torn apart by the sheer strength of their blows. There's a rather... odd moment when Westwood and Likir's physiques actually bulk up and the two look at each other's bodies and admire each other's muscles (while also looking at each other's weak points). Jolyne watches the fight in confusion until Westwood ultimately takes Likir down, then unleashes everyone in the punishment ward. We ominously hear Pucci note that he sent four Stand-users to kill Jolyne since she's discovered his plans, and we get to see several uniquely-designed characters.

Random Notes:

• Diver Down is the name of a 1982 album released by the American rock band Van Halen, containing some classic songs like "Where Have All The Good Times Gone", "Oh Pretty Woman" and "Dancing in the Street". 
• Narciso Anasui's name is based on fashion designers (and fashion brands named after said designers) Narciso Rodriguez and Anna Sui.
• Survivor is another 80's American rock band, known for their songs "Burning Heart", "The Search is Over" and "Is This Love", among others. 
• The guard Viviano Westwood is named after fashion designer Vivienne Westwood. His Giorno-haired buddy is called Sonny Likir, after fashion designer Sonia Rykiel.
• It really is weird that Dio apparently goes around during the time of Stardust Crusaders looking for Stands and explicitly noted to have 'named' Survivor. Considering all the Stands in Stardust Crusaders were rather thematically named after Tarot cards and Egyptian gods, I guess at some point Dio decided to go 'fuck it' with the naming scheme? It would explain Vanilla Ice's "Cream". 
• The anime removes the line where F.F. is surprised to learn that Anasui is male, which kind of fits with Araki's own "gender is irrelevant for a character" mindset... though considering that Anasui in his first appearance in the manga was drawn as a woman, Araki has also noted that Anasui 'transcends gender'.
• I really do like Survivor's design. What a weird-looking design, a head surrounded by bulbous nerves in a ring with a second smaller ring made up of only nerves.