Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean Episode 3

Episode 3 starts off with Jolyne slowly understanding her Stand, Stone Free. It seems she’s been testing it out quite a bit, such as how long the thread can go and how strong it is. When the threads coil together it becomes the figure we saw last time, and just like Star Platinum, has a range of two meters when it’s in that form. But not like Star Platinum, sadly it’s not that physically strong. Still, Jolyne is learning more and more about Stone Free and its abilities and hopes to use it to escape Green Dolphin, but not any time soon.

We see a bit more of the prison, mainly of how things are run there. Jolyne tries to use a pay phone to speak with her mother, but learns that there’s a certain system in place for the prisoners. There’s lots of systems running rampant in the prison, such as the business with lending money and not landing yourself as the target in the prison. Gwess is still around, but at least this time she’s not here to screw Jolyne over anymore. She gives her some pretty good advice about her lending the dollar to the girl on the phone. Not being able to extort the money back makes you a target to the other inmates as a pushover, leading to daily bullying in a place that already feels like a living hell. And Jolyne makes her presence known among the other inmates as she was able to get $10 from the girl she borrowed the money to, though having a Stand certainly helps. But what I love, other than the fact that Jolyne won’t stand for people treating her like crap, she won’t let others treat others like crap either. I loved that Jolyne also messed with the other inmates so the bullied girl could her get chance to get her money back. It says a lot about Jolyne that she would give her the opportunity to do this, while also giving her the advice that it’s only up to you to survive in a place like this, so find that strength. Just like Gwess giving her some advice, Jolyne imparts some advice of her own.

But after that, some strangely mysterious things begin to happen and things are starting to move. Jolyne hears a voice behind the bars outside of the reading room and first notices a baseball, and then a little boy in a baseball outfit. It happens quickly, but all he says is that someone will come to meet her tomorrow at noon. He warns her not to go see them as their lives will all be in danger, and just like that he vanishes. It’s a really strange occurrence obviously. How would a child be in a prison, and in full baseball gear? And even more unsettling, what he said to Jolyne ended up being true as she got a visitor. And right before she meets with her visitor, this same child appears again before the visitor’s room while hiding in a trash can. He gives the same warning with even more panic in his voice, but Jolyne thinking it’s her mother waiting to see her ignores this. Before she heads inside the room, the boy gives her an item and somehow vanishes again. Jolyne looks and sees it’s human bones? That is incredibly terrifying and it only makes the weird phenomenon even creepier, so what the heck could this all mean? Without being given the time to even think about it, Jolyne heads inside to meet her visitor…

And to really show us how broken this family is, we get a very quick flashback of Jolyne getting into trouble and Jotaro not being there. Thanks for making it painful already. And Jolyne is NOT happy to see him at all, in fact she gets so mad that she knocks out the guard, ruining her chances of being able to leave. It’s not the warmest of welcomes after…I’m not sure how long they haven’t seen each other, as Jotaro immediately goes straight into business. We learn that Jolyne was completely framed from the very start by a man named Johngalli who happens to be follower of Dio’s. And since Jolyne is a descendant of the Joestar family, she’s automatically a target of Dio’s grudge, even if she has nothing to do with anything that happened back in Egypt. But how and why does Dio have followers after all this time? There’s still so much to unravel, and at least that gives an explanation for some things. But it also comes into question how Jotaro was able to find all of this out in the first place to give Jolyne such a detailed explanation of this Johngalli A guy. There’s a lot going on here that will be revealed soon. And before they could even come up with a plan of getting Jolyne out of prison, they’re already under attack by Johngalli’s Stand.

It’s great seeing Jotaro back again, even if it’s not in the best of circumstances. His relationship with Jolyne is obviously really strained and awkward, and hostile on Jolyne’s side. And knowing that Jotaro wasn’t really in her life, it’s understandable that she feels that way. Their dynamic and Jotaro’s explanations of events kind of parallels the beginning of Stardust Crusaders when Joseph explained the Joestar and Dio grudge and Jotaro just not having any of it. Jotaro and Jolyne’s similarities just continue to shine, even through their strained relationship. And while Jotaro may not have been in Jolyne’s life, he’s here for a reason and it’s to save her. And there’s still a lot to unpack here.

The episode ends with Jotaro’s protecting Jolyne and getting a shot from Johngalli’s Stand, so we’ll see the father-daughter duo fare next time. And trust me, things are only going to get weirder and weirder.