JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E18 Review: The Plankton's Green Mile

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 6], Episode 18: Enter the Foo Fighters

The second part of the Dragon's Dream arc, and... I'm not the biggest fan of how this fight ends, although it's mostly due to how I feel about F.F. and Anasui. Anasui gets a bit more likable later on, but considering the arc that immediately follows this, I'm kinda sad that F.F. doesn't get the "full" win. 

The cliffhanger from the previous episode ends up being kinda deconstructed thanks to F.F.'s unique biology. Jolyne notes that F.F., being a colony of plankton puppeteering a zombie body, is very much able to survive having the top half of her skull sliced like a fruit... but the fact that she's barely bleeding means that she's dehydrated and needs water to power up. As she recovers, F.F. also goes through the same thought process, although she specifically wants to use water to create a mirror and distract Kenzo by reflecting Dragon's Dream onto a different direction. 

Kenzo himself rants about how he's about to use his powers and his mastery over assassination feng shui will allow him to rebuild his cult and be a true saviour... and the fight continues. The fight basically ends up being a cat-and-mouse game where F.F. tries to get towards a fire-extinguishing hose. Dragon's Dream appears within the hose, noting that it's not a good direction for F.F.... but she instead just uses Dragon's Dream to tear off both her hands, then wiggling into the hose like a worm and causing water to drip everywhere. Dragon's Dream warping away F.F.'s hands causes them to rematerialize and strike F.F., though, knocking her down a staircase into an execution room. Again, not the biggest fan of the whole limb-warping secondary ability of Dragon's Dream, and I really wished that it was just the feng shui luck and fortune manipulation. 

Anasui gives some exposition about the execution room, and F.F. keeps trying to get out of the execution room while the effects of Dragon's Dream constantly causes her to fall back, get trapped, get snagged and keep falling back onto a sitting position on the execution chair while the countdown goes to zero. 

And... I don't know if it's the constant zoom-ins to F.F. screaming and yelling in panic, but I just can't take this scene quite as seriously as the ones before. I guess falling into a chair isn't anywhere as bizarrely grotesque like the "it's not the ventilator, it's the boomerang!" scene from the previous episode? 

Whatever the case, the electric chair activates, frying F.F. and she screams. Dragon's Dream then talks to Kenzo, noting that F.F. has managed to collect some water from Kenzo's own sweat when the two of them came onto contact earlier. Exactly a 1/3rds of a cup! And F.F. manages to create a mirror of water to misdirect Kenzo into walking onto an unsafe spot. Thus F.F. is able to grab onto Kenzo and the electrocution goes through both of them. 

And it seems like a mutual kill, but Jolyne, heavily concerned for her friend, literally drops down the stairwell. It would've been comical if it didn't look like it hurt so much. Anasui gets a bit of his character development when he wonders why Jolyne would give up so much and sacrifice so much for an ally that's so obviously done for. It'll take a while, but he's slowly growing out of his sociopathic, single-minded mentality. 

Jolyne has a bit of a practical-mindedness in her falling down, though. She points out that Dragon's Dream is still active, which means that Kenzo is still alive. While wounded, Jolyne still unleashes Stone Free upon Kenzo. The wounded Kenzo rushes at Jolyne, but Jolyne's plan wasn't exactly to kill Kenzo but rather to look for a spot of water where the direction would note is safe -- which is where a small colony of Foo Fighters still remains. Jolyne manages to recover Foo Fighters, but a bit of Stone Free's string gets 'warped' by Dragon's Dream...

At which point, Anasui's Diver Down activates. Having hidden his Stand within Jolyne's body, Diver Down attacks Kenzo and we get a rather protracted and honestly rather long scene of Kenzo jumping up and down, while he and Dragon's Dream gets confused at why he's not moving in a safe direction. We get to see a rather mortifying X-ray of Kenzo's bones snapped and arranged into a spring, while Kenzo just bounces around comically. 

And... I don't know. We've had some brutal beatdowns for some villains over the years, but I did feel like this is one moment where Kenzo really felt like he should be suffering a bit more while Anasui explicitly notes that he doesn't feel pain after Diver Down modified his legs. Kenzo falls into a trash can and presumably dies, while F.F. recovers and Jolyne is baffled at Anasui's casual brutality. 

Yeah. I dunno. I like that we get to see a bit more from Anasui after we never really saw Diver Down in combat before, but it did really feel like a bit of 'kill-stealing' on his part. Since this is F.F.'s biggest solo fight in the Part, I've always felt like this fight could've ended with F.F. having the last blow instead of Jolyne and Anasui sneaking in. We're done with the Kenzo/Dragon's Dream fight and... while it's interesting, it's hardly the most exciting thing to watch. The first episode was a bit more clear with the whole 'directions' thing, but I felt like the anime should've really improved this fight a bit better since we can see Dragon's Dream and the lucky directions move, but it does admittedly feel a fair bit muddled. 

Random Notes:

• Kenzo is pissed off that "even the pedophiles" in the prison doesn't respect him.
• Rereading through the manga really does highlight just how grotesque Kenzo looks in the manga, yeah? The anime version isn't a looker, but at least he's drawn relatively consistently like a Yoda gremlin. 
• In a hilarious bit of acknowledgement of how people talking is treated differently between the anime and manga, in the manga the countdown on the execution chair is 15 seconds. The anime, for the sake of believability (and to not have Namek jokes), made it a minute and a half. 
• Yeah, there's a reason I always think of F.F. or even Anasui as the main 'Jo-bro' of this part. Ermes skips out on such a huge chunk of Stone Ocean that I can't really think of him in the same amount of prominence as Koichi, Bruno, Caesar or Gyro. 
• Yeah, the lack of Crazy Diamond or Gold Experience's instant wound-rewinding abilities does make Jolyne's injuries look so much harder to watch. I know Part 6 does have Foo Fighters and her ability to plug up wounds with plankton, but it's still a lot more painful to see Jolyne and F.F. get hurt.