JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean S05E30 Review: Uzumaki

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Stone Ocean [Season 6], Episode 30: Heavy Weather, Part 1

So this episode begins the 'Heavy Weather' arc, which is... a bit of a trippy one. There are a bunch of rather interesting things about this whole arc -- Weather Report's original identity (and the eventual flashback), the Heavy Weather ability, and everyone trying to survive the snailpocalypse. Again, as I mentioned in my review for the previous episode, a lot of the later hostile Stands in later-part Stone Ocean does end up feeling less like battles and more insane situations that our heroes have to survive in. And coming after Bohemian Rhapsody and preceding C-Moon, Heavy Weather is a pretty devastating Stand. 

Weather Report's original 'Heavy Weather' personality has been returned, and we see some immediate psychopathy from him. He ends up knocking over a random crippled patient in a hospital, and when a doctor tries to confront him, Weather shoves his Stand down his throat to overload him with water. Anasui, the actual convicted murderer among the cast, is genuinely surprised at this and tries to figure what's going on. 

Jolyne, Ermes, Pucci and Versus are still looking at the rainbows of Heavy Weather that manifested, and the two villains -- who know what's about to go down -- actually do freak out at this, which I do think foreshadows a bit at just how much Weather's existence and power freaks Pucci out so much. 

Kiss's fist passes through one of the Heavy Weather rainbows, which causes her arm to swell up and explode into snail eggs and adult snails. As Jolyne and Ermes freak out, Pucci just... disappears into the shadows, giving an ominous line about how humanity itself will perish if Weather isn't killed. Versus also tries to make his escape, with our heroes in hot pursuit... and they get stopped by a bunch of policemen... who get affected by the rainbow and very gruesomely turn into giant snail-men that explode into even more snails. Snails everywhere! I actually think they amped up the body horror of the snailification of the cops, and it truly does look pretty fucked up. 

Jolyne and Ermes kind of have to deal with the gigantic masses of snails (which understandably are rendered with CGI in many shots) and how so many people get transformed into snails. There's an interesting property that Stand users have a higher resistance to the snailification, which is why the important named characters manage to still run around for a fair bit. Jolyne and Ermes realize that even touching the snails also transfer the snailification, and there's a rather clever usage of Kiss to duplicate a door and use it as a giant skateboard to tear through the sea of snails. 

We do get a fair bit of fun dialogue as Ermes gives some random fun facts about snails and their reproductive abilities, and Jolyne is momentarily distracted by how 'jealous' she is that the snails can fuck whoever they want. 

And then we get probably the most Versus scenes after his original Under World fight. And... it's interesting, and I wonder if Araki had originally planned to do a bit more with Donatello Versus? He runs around, trying to figure out who Jolyne was trying to contact with her phone. And Under World is used in a much smaller scale this time around, just trying to excavate specific memories to look for information. Versus tries to hunt down 'Emporio', knowing that there's an ally unknown to Pucci and himself...

And there's a great scene where Emporio and Versus actually pass each other without realizing they just passed the enemy. Versus manages to trick Emporio into picking up the phone, and knocks the little boy out. However, due to Emporio's Stand powers, it took a fair bit of time for him to find Jotaro's Disc. Jolyne and Ermes catch up, but a car crash knocks our heroines into some snails, starting the snailification process on the two of them.

There is a rather ridiculous (in all the best ways) sequence as Versus uses Under World to summon a football player that just charges and runs, dragging Stone Free's string and preventing Jolyne from rescuing Emporio. But Jolyne, realizing that her body is starting to turn into a snail, makes use of her brand-new snail form to, uh, squeeze inside a pipe. Versus summons the 'memory of salt water', and it dehydrates poor Jolyne. However, Jolyne has manages to touch Emporio, which in turn touches Versus, and everyone turns into a snail. 

Special reference goes to Versus's transformation, where he looks particularly grotesque with his feet sprouting giant snail heads and looking more like goops compared to Jolyne and Ermes, who just have their limbs turn into goop. Oh, yeah, and Jolyne's breasts turn into snail shells. I thought that I should mention that. It, uh, sure is a look.  

With Versus basically disabled, our partially-snail heroes enter the car to try and hunt down Pucci or Weather... only to get assaulted by a horde of snail-eating beetles that have been drawn to the massive amounts of snails. 

The episode ends with Weather realizing that Pucci is nearby, and declares that killing the priest is his sole purpose in life. 

So... yeah. I think it might simply be that we're seeing all the characters reacting to the effects of Heavy Weather (whereas Bohemian Rhapsody is really only seen from Anasui and Weather's perspectives), or maybe because the body horror for the snail is much creepier than most of the stuff we saw in the arc previously. But I do like the little bit of information warfare as the various characters try to figure out and obtain plot devices that'll benefit them. Weather's new psychotic personality is also done relatively well, particularly in the anime which streamlines his violence a fair bit to make it fit with his 'vengeance is my sole purpose' mentality later on. 

Random Notes:

• Heavy Weather is based on a studio album created by the real-world band Weather Report.
• As I mentioned in the title of this review... very heavy Uzumaki vibes, yeah? I know that snails are just a small part of Uzumaki, a cosmic horror manga about spirals by Junji Ito, but it's easily one of the most disturbing and grossest part of that manga. Stone Ocean would be serialized well after the end of Uzumaki, and I wonder if the snail body horror in that manga might've inspired Araki. 
  
• So yeah, they didn't change any of the actual major events, but a lot of the Heavy Weather arc has actually been retooled beyond just the rearranging of scenes or merging together exposition scenes. I didn't want to really go into detail too much in the body of the review, but basically the specifics of when certain characters become snails and their behaviour as snails got cut out and changed. 
• Probably some of the bigger changes is to allow Ermes a couple more moments of competence with Kiss instead of just turning into a snail and growing eyestalks immediately.
• Also, instead of them stealing a car, a random car crash knocks Jolyne and Ermes into a pile of snails, which was the catalyst for their change. 
• Weather Report also kills two random ladies in his 'Heavy Weather' guise, but this was removed because ultimately we're supposed to root for 'Heavy Weather', and him killing the doctor could be chalked up to him just being dizzy after receiving his memories back. 
• It really is kinda sad that the manga basically drops Anasui's psychopathic tendencies basically after the Dragon's Dream arc. I guess his near-death experience with F.F. had changed his morality a fair bit, but I would really like to see the increasing degrees of socio/psychopathy from Anasui to Weather to Pucci.
• I know these situations are super freaky, but man, Ermes does get reduced to yelling NANIIIII a lot, doesn't she?
• Does anyone get a bit disturbed by Versus basically trying to strip the unconscious Emporio's clothes and groping around the poor little boy? I know he's just trying to look for where Emporio stores his items with his Stand, but man, that's some unintentionally disturbing imagery. 
• The snail-eating beetles are a real thing! My fellow Pokemon fans will know this as the inspiration behind the Generation V Pokemon Karrablast!