JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E36 Review: Stairway to Heaven

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 6], Episode 36: Stairway to Heaven, Part 1

We are almost done with the final fight in Stone Ocean, and finally we get Stairway to Heaven. I'm really just trying to get this done before the end of the year. The C-Moon fight was exciting, Jotaro arriving is a huge make-fans-happy moment. But Pucci hops on the space shuttle and rises up into the sky. And... I still find his pose while the transformation causes light to shine and break through holes in his body to be rather hilarious! Anasui zips in and tries to attack Pucci with Diver Down, but Pucci's body cracks, and Made in Heaven appears!

...and what a weird-looking Stand Made in Heaven is. I remembered that the fandom used to call it the 'horse dong' Stand, and... well, yeah. If you see the horse legs as the humanoid figure's legs,  the horse head does sprout from Made in Heaven's crotch. Which is... kind of unfortunate! The idea, of course, is that a rider, his chariot and the horse are all fused at the waist. And... I dunno. It's not my favourite Stand design, I must say. 

After the flash from Pucci's true awakening knocks out our heroes, they stand up and find Pucci missing, with C-Moon's effects being gone. Jotaro identifies that they have been transported some 200 meters from their original location (no explanation is actually given for this; even if it's Pucci moving them wouldn't he just kill them while they were unconscious?). Jotaro is still bothered that Pucci can move in stopped time, while Jolyne tells them that she can sense that the priest is nearby. 

And then the weird shit from Made in Heaven's effects start to hit our heroes. And... I guess this is the epitome of how a lot of the fights in Stone Ocean have been gigantic reality-warping effects that strike entire large areas, except in this case Made in Heaven affects the whole universe. Ermes tries to escape the rain and seek shelter inside a nearby building, but suddenly the rain stops almost immediately, while Ermes gets her foot stuck inside the automatic sliding doors, which are ramming open and close too fast for Ermes to react. Poor, poor Ermes then gets a stone bashed on her head for her troubles. Man, Ermes. Gotta feel bad for her. 

We then cut away to see how weird things are happening all over the world. A news report is confused by the changes in schedule with advertisements and programs popping up right after the other. The sun sets too fast. A girl's ice cream melts before her tongue can even touch it. Baseballs accelerate and bash athletes' faces in. A girl wiping mucus from her nose finds the tissue and the snot hardened into a crusty mess. A butcher entering a meat locker gets frozen immediately. A woman and a dog crossing the street get caught up in traffic accidents. 

And I think the audience can figure out what's happening -- time is accelerating, but only for non-living things. Now there's probably the question as to how things like baseballs and automatic doors can have such impressive speeds, but I suppose it's some relativity thing?

Team Jolyne, meanwhile, realizes what's going on. The blood on their skin are dry, and the day gives way to the night. Jotaro finally remembers to look at his watch and sees time moving very quickly. We get a cool interaction as Made in Heaven is able to move within the sped-up time, zipping around like a goddamn lunatic. Jotaro uses Star Platinum to stop time and catch a glimpse of Made in Heaven, figuring out what he's doing. 

...and... I dunno. I've always felt like this fight could've really ended if Pucci acted a bit smarter on specifically this part of the fight. Even giving Pucci the same time that Team Jolyne had to figure out his powers, he really should've been able to take them out in the time that Team Jolyne ran up the building and got to the rooftop, right? If not with punches, then with ranged attacks? It's not like Pucci wasn't unwilling to use guns with both Whitesnake and C-Moon. Eh.

Anasui manages to save Jotaro and pull him to the roof in the nick of time, and... we interrupt this rather tense moment for a bit of levity as Anasui introduces himself to Jotaro and asks for his blessing to take Jolyne's hand in marriage. Jotaro is absoltuely bamboozled by this, but Jotaro just understandably acts like a good dad and grabs Jolyne closer. I'll just cover this here -- in the next episode, Jolyne reciprocates, however, and... for no real reason other than 'they traveled together throughout this journey' Jolyne decides that she'll marry Anasui after this. I know JoJo's never been big on developing romance (outside of JoJolion), but yeah. I really do think that Jolyne returning Anasui's affections really did come absolutely out of nowhere. It exists, we move on. 

Back to the fight, however. Jotaro does some calculations by comparing the amount of time it takes relative to the amount of time it has to be, and calculates that Pucci's moving at the speed of a bullet train. Insanely fast, but still visible to the naked eye. 

...and then we get the hilarious image of Jotaro using Star Platinum to stop time and look for where Pucci is moving... and he and his Stand are using a palm tree to catapult themselves to the roof! That's... okay, I'm not even going to disguise how much I love this sequence. It's such a completely absurd usage of Made in Heaven's powers. I absolutely love this. 

Jotaro unleashes a barrage of punches, but gets slashed in the neck. However, Anasui has used Diver Down to submerge itself into Jotaro's body and take the damage in his place (which is basically what Diver Down's abilities has kind of changed into, narratively, in the back-end of Stone Ocean). Jotaro uses Star Platinum: The World to stop time, and realizes that five seconds isn't enough to move everybody out of harm. He moves closer to unleash an ORA ORA ORA, but misses. 

Pucci then finally deigns to interact with the team, announcing that his target is now Anasui. He declares that his power isn't there for fighting, or for gaining strength, but to guide humanity to happiness... hence, Made in Heaven. 

...and, yeah. I'm... I'm going to say it outright, since I got through talking about this episode much faster than I thought I would. There are aspects of the Made in Heaven fight that I liked. The global effects, the aforementioned palm tree sequence, and the anime does a great job showcasing Pucci's fast speed with sound effects. But I've always thought that there were too many things that were distracting about this fight that made it fall short of the other seven Parts' climaxes, which, again, is really unfortunate.  I do appreciate Stone Ocean for what it is, but I've felt like the personal enmity between Jolyne and Pucci have kind of fizzled out. And it's a shame, because after Foo Fighters and Weather Report's respective deaths, as well as Jotaro's Discs being stolen, we really do get a sense of burning hatred boiling within Jolyne. But at this point it's just more of them having to fight and take down a big threat. 

And take into account that so much of this episode is actually told from Jotaro's point of view. And I do like Jotaro! Who doesn't? I love that Star Platinum's evolved abilities are being showed to us again, I love that Star Platinum is being used as the team's big guns to ORA ORA. But as I mentioned in the previous episode... Jolyne really doesn't get a big chance to shine in the climax of her own part. Again, I'm comparing this a bit to the climax of Stardust Crusaders and Vento Aureo, where the secondary characters are handled and juggled a lot better. I don't know. It really isn't the 'worst thing in the world', but I am really not the most impressed by this climax. Fortunately, we only have two more episodes left.

Random Notes:

• I've always thought that the coolest way to end the finale for Stone Ocean, which caps off the original continuity, is to have all the surviving JoJos show up -- there's already a very easy vehicle to get them in! Josuke is already associated with Jotaro and he could've sent a flight to get him in. And we already had the Children of Dio being drawn to Pucci, giving Giorno a reason to arrive. 
  
• Now admittedly this might just mean that from a power-level perspective, Gold Experience Requiem would just solve everything, but still...
• Made in Heaven is based on a Queen song with the same name. 
• Made in Heaven was originally called 'Stairway to Heaven', by Led Zeppelin, in the original release before it was changed to 'Made in Heaven'. Which makes a bit more sense, considering that the Stand literally 'makes' things... but I actually really like the song Stairway to Heaven and feel like it's pretty appropriate for Pucci!
• Honestly, I know they all have chalky-white skin, but I really do wish that there was more continuity between Made in Heaven with its preceding forms. Not just Whitesnake/C-Moon, but also the Green Baby and even the World. 
• The anime understandably cuts out some of the scenes of the random civilians that react to the changes done by Made in Heaven, including the couple that won't stop fucking.
• Man, I really feel bad for Ermes, our little miss 'naniiii?!'. It's not enough that she barely contributes to any of these final fights other than helping to bring Jotaro here with the harpoon, but she really just gets fucked by reality itself, huh?
• It is appropriate that in the final fight in JoJo, one of the casualties is a dog. Or, well, the dog's owner, at least -- we don't see the dog dying, not like all the poor animals from Part I and III, but it's definitely not making its way out of that multi-car pileup. 
• I know Anasui is a bit of a loon, but man, introducing yourself as 'I am a murderer' to your prospective father-in-law is not the best thing to do.