It’s time for a d-d-d-d-duel! I’m sorry, I really couldn’t resist making that joke, but that’s the driving force of the episode. We get to interact with Tetsuo for the first time and boy does he have quite a bit of a standoffish attitude. I bet there’s some background there that we’re going to dig in. Perhaps a finally meet your fallen idol type story? Or perhaps there’s a family member that has beef with Jotaro. Either way, it doesn’t look like Tetsuo is going way or backing down any time soon. So, I’m excited to see how he will impact Jotaro’s career. But his attitude could improve a bit.
I don’t think there is too much to talk about for this episode because a majority of it was done through montages. That isn’t to say that I’m upset by it, we had a pretty good montage in the previous episode as well. Instead it really just hypes up the duel for the end of the episode by showing us exactly how much work they’ve put into the preparation. And I just like that Leo hangs out and trains with them because he’s fun to have around. He’s a secret source of motivation. There aren’t too many deep moments of interaction with Leo and Jotaro, but Leo really does come through and do what’s needed when needed. It does, however, look like we’ll get more in depth with Leo in the next episode since those government looking agents have made their reappearance.
I also like Leo because he’s an easy character to see the rest of the world in. He’s not the type of person to cause problems (well… at least not on purpose) so when he discovers things about the city it’s not necessarily in an interfering way. For instance, when he stumbled on Rei getting teased by the schoolboys, he didn’t actually do anything. For once he didn’t step in and instead just shows us what’s going on with her. I’m sure it’s going to be important much later on, but they’ve just planted the thought in our heads for now. On a completely different note though, I actually liked Big Bird’s role in this episode. I still don’t really know why he is there, but I genuinely laughed when served as the party popper noise and when he directly told Leo that he was a bird. I was definitely expecting Big Bird to play a similar role to Inko, the bird, in Toradora but it’s nice to see that I’m being proved wrong.
But then comes the time for the actual duel between the retirement fraud gymnast and the up and coming star. I know that Tetsuo technically won the match, but it was definitely more inspirational and nail-biting watch Jotaro perform his routine. He just had more at stake with this match even if he was completely unaware of Tetsuo’s victory request. This match was more of his rebirth into the gymnastics world than just a competition with a newbie. And I liked the positive spin that Jotaro took when he saw the Aragaki be performed by Tetsuo. Tetsuo did it to prove that Jotaro is no longer needed in the gymnastics world because others can now do his signature move, but Jotaro sees it as a “I don’t have to lose hope yet! I can do that move again soon!” and it makes me happy. Based off this episode, I’m not a fan of Tetsuo’s personality because… he’s just rude. But I can definitely see him becoming softer in the future once we figure out what’s going on with him. Or perhaps he’s just a Tsundere and we haven’t seen the dere part in him yet.
Overall, I think this was another enjoyable episode. Aside from Jotaro making his great come back as a gymnast, I’m not too sure what the rest of this anime has in store. We’ve only brushed the surface of these characters so I’m looking forward to seeing if they’ll give us a wild ride in these coming weeks.
