JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E25 Review: Is This The Real Life, Is This Just Fantasy?

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 6], Episode 25: Bohemian Rhapsody, Part 1

It's only been a couple of days for you readers, and even sooner for me when I was watching these episodes, but for the people who were watching Stone Ocean as it was released, I believe there was a half-year gap between cour 2 and cour 3? As with all of these part-seasons, we do get a bit of an extended scene in the beginning that also functions as a recap. Jolyne, Ermes and Emporio hang out for a bit, with Emporio being a bit excited about the outside world while the two ex-convict ladies talk about how Green Dolphin Street Prison... was the absolute worst. There's a neat little discussion about the mode of transportation that they are going to take, shooting down Emporio's excitement to ride the bus, and we get a nice shot of Jolyne's prison jacket flying into the sky. 

Anasui and Weather Report also decide to escape, being rather hilariously left behind by Jolyne's little team. During their discussion of escaping, Weather talks about how he's interested in figuring out more about his amnesia, memories and identity... while Anasui realizes that Weather has the same star birthmark that Jolyne and the Green Baby have. It's interesting that this was moved to this part of the episode (the manga's equivalent of this scene happens when the two guys go to a bathroom) but I guess it's to put the foreshadowing that's not involved with the Bohemian Rhapsody storyline out of the way, and to make it clear that Weather's star isn't involved in any of the Bohemian Rhapsody madness. 

We cut to see Pucci in his fused-with-the-Green-Baby form just wandering through Orlando, listening about the outbreaks in Green Dolphin Street Prison on the radio. Pucci began to notice a lot more strange signs around him, like the taxi carrying him running out of gas with $33.33 on its fare meter, or weird metallic objects rolling towards him. There are also a lot of people being delivered to the hospital, with the implication that there has been more accidents than is normal.

One of the men on the stretchers, a drug addict, attacks Pucci with a pair of scissors and Ungalo's design is so generic that you'd be forgiven to think that he's just going to get absolutely murdered by Pucci's near-godlike powers. Pucci, however, is pretty high on the whole 'coincidences' thing, talks about the three shooting stars he just saw... and stabs himself on the scissors. The scissors miss Pucci's nerves by millimeters, and Pucci heralds this as proof of Ungalo's true heritage and destiny. Ungalo freaks out and gets shot by the police, but then gets dragged into the bushes by something (it's the stick figure from a bathroom stall), and the audience gets to see the Joestar star on Ungalo's shoulder. 

And yeah, Ungalo is our first 'Children of Dio'. It's a very logical progression from the revelation of Higashikata Josuke and Giorno Giovanna's existences. We have most members of the Joestar family accounted for, but it doesn't preclude illegitimate children being born in other parts of the world. And, well, Dio is far less likely to send child support than Joseph Joestar is, let's put it that way. 

Whatever the case, we cut away to Anasui and Weather, having escaped from prison themselves. They have a bit of a discussion in a public restroom, not realizing that the little man on the restroom stall is missing. After getting a bit of a discussion about transportation, Weather Report helps an old man from falling, and that man offers them a ride on the truck. We also get a rather sweet moment of Weather using his weather-control powers to part the clouds around the man to prevent his joints from aching. 

While on the back of the truck, Anasui notices a theme park guide book (they are in Orlando, after all) but gets irritated when he sees that the guidebook only has empty space where pictures of the characters are missing. The two of them suddenly realize that they are not alone on the truck, and they attack the crates in the truck only to discover the fictional character Pinocchio. 

Who, uh... looks fucking grotesque. It's more Gollum than Pinocchio, and I'm pretty sure the actual myth doesn't have that disturbing crotch-bulge.

Anasui instantly surmises that Pinocchio is the result of an enemy Stand and began to interrogate him, getting whacked in the face due to Pinocchio's nose extending thanks to his lies. They also discover the Seven Dwarves, of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves fame, scuttling around the truck. I actually like how JoJo really exaggerates the definition of dwarves, making them tiny little gremlin-things the size of a thumb. Oh, and they look absolutely disfigured and disgusting. We get a couple of jokes about their relationship to Snow White, and Anasui is absolutely freaked out. I like that Weather Report's unique status as an amnesiac means that he has no fucking idea what's going on because he has no context for any of these fictional characters... and as such just sits there eating his apple as he's not affected by the 'what character are you a fan of' that Pinocchio and the dwarves keep asking Anasui. 

Anasui then hears the radio of the truck, which talks about how famous characters have disappeared from posters, comic books, picture books, TV, and other forms of media all over the world. Including BATMAN! I would really love to imagine the mental image that somewhere while this is going on, other JoJo characters like Josuke or Mista or Rohan or whoever are meeting Batman. 

There's also the hilarious gag of Pinocchio and the Seven Dwarves being pissed off when a group of Japanese robots including Astro Boy fly through the sky, deriding the Japanese characters' designs. 

It's a bit hard to follow initially, but Anasui is a 'fan' of Pinocchio, because he knows the story of the wooden puppet, but he gets his soul separated from his body. Meanwhile, the old man driving the truck gets also separated. The confused Weather Report manages to save all the passengers with his weather manipulation abilities. 

Anasui (or rather, his soul) attacks Pinocchio, who identifies the ability that's summoning them as Bohemian Rhapsody. Anasui summons Diver Down to tear Pinocchio apart, before going off to try and pursue his body. He then gets assaulted by the soul of the driver, who goes through the "all the better to maul you with" phrases from Little Red Riding Hood, before transforming to the Big Bad Wolf from that story. Anasui summons Diver Down and tears the Big Bad Wolf's head off, while he gives behind an ominous message that events are proceeding as the story is supposed to go. 

It is interesting how they changed a bunch of things around in this initial Anasui encounter with Bohemian Rhapsody, by the way. We get the nice little foreshadowing from the Big Bad Wolf about how it is going 'as the story is supposed to', but we streamline a lot of the conflict and confusion that Anasui had about his body and soul being separated -- notably, the grisly scene of Anasui using Diver Down to rescue his own body being ground up by the truck is cut, and Anasui's soul is the one that encounters the Big Bad Wolf and is able to just summon Diver Down instantly. Also, instead of a conversation between Anasui (whose body/soul thing is still confusing at the time) and Weather, Weather monologues and internally arrives at the same conclusion as he did in the manga. 

Anyway, Bohemian Rhapsody is... kind of an insane little fight. Again, the concept is rather interesting and while obviously we don't go to the 'most ambitious crossover ever' route, I do like what the story manages to do with the public domain characters it has access to. 

Random Notes: 

• New opening! In the second half of Stone Ocean, we get "Heaven's Falling Down" performed by Hana. It's a more conventional shonen battle opening theme, I think, whereas "Stone Ocean" (the song) was a bit too peppy for this anime, I think. 
  
• Bohemian Rhapsody is a reference to Queen's song, Bohemian Rhapsody, otherwise known as the greatest song of all time.
• The basic premise of the Bohemian Rhapsody arc is basically tied to the first few lines of the song -- is this the real life / is this just fantasy? / caught in a landslide / no escape from reality; with the 'no escape from reality' bit being particularly notable to how Ungalo's personality ends up being revealed to be.
• The reason why Anasui can kill Pinocchio is, I guess, because he hasn't been 'associated' with a role in the story as the other people that fell victim to Bohemian Rhapsody would be in the next episode?
• Ungalo's name is named after French fashion designer Emanuel Ungaro.
• I don't think I mentioned this in my review of the earlier Stone Ocean episodes, but Green Dolphin Street Prison is a reference to the song On Green Dolphin Street by Miles Davis.
• Weather Report has a Joestar symbol on his shoulder, which I was confused about because it's not fully explained, but Pucci merged with the Green Baby, which caused him to get the Joestar star (it's from Jonathan's body merged with Dio), and because of the psychic-bloodline-sharing-scars thing, similar to Jotaro and Jolyne sharing the Jolyne scar, the birthmark and its strange Force-sense abilities got transferred to Weather. 
• They're not particularly relevant in this episode and were silhouetted in the original source material, but Riskiel (Sky High's user) is basically shown with his full design on the stretcher. 
• The Seven Dwarves insist that their relationship with Snow White is platonic, despite so many people speculating that they are involved. Okay! I also absolutely agree that Snow White is a fool for eating random fruits given to her by an old granny. 
• In addition to the characters shown visually, audio mentions of Chewbacca, the T-1000 from Terminator, the Elephant Man and Batman. We get a brief showcase of Astro Boy, Mazinger Z and Testujin 28-go, all classic sci-fi robots from Japanese media, flying in the skies. 
• Cut from the episode but present in the manga are mentions of the MGM lion, E.T. (from a Universal Studios attraction) and Mickey Mouse's tail have been removed. 
• Some of the lines of Anasui talking about the mascot of a theme park being super famous is still there, but the memetic "fuck this shit, if there ain't Mickey, it ain't Disney" is cut. 
• Mickey Mouse's reference is changed to Batman, while interestingly, the anime references the T-1000 (an actual character from the Terminator movies) whereas the manga equivalent references the T-2000, something that doesn't exist in the Terminator franchise.
• Presumably, the lack of Miu Miu and the sheer amount of chaos happening thanks to the mess in the Ultra Security House Unit made Anasui and Weather's escape particularly easy. 
• What is the reason that the toilet stick figure protects Ungalo from the policemen? There isn't really a 'story' associated with it. I guess it could be an exception because it's interacting with the Stand user itself?