Man…I knew this one would be a tough one to watch but the anime did great adapting the scenes at the end. The scenes of Jotaro’s “death” and Jolyne’s realization to everything was already pretty emotional in the manga, but the anime made it even more so with the voice acting and the music. You could really feel Jolyne’s anger and desperation for Jotaro to wake up at the end. As sad as it was, they did well and this was a great episode.
Yes, the Johngalli A. fight is over and we’re ready to move on to the next fight. There wasn’t really much fighting in this one as the episode focused more on Jolyne and Jotaro’s relationship as they tried to make their escape from the prison, but there were A LOT of very important events related to the plot that happened. The biggest thing being this new Stand called White Snake. Here we thought we only had to worry about one enemy, when the whole time there were two enemies. And when we thought the target was Jolyne, or rather both her and Jotaro, the target was actually just Jotaro himself. They didn’t pay any attention to Jolyne…for now, especially when they were able to get what they wanted: Star Platinum. Via striking their foe, they’re able to extract discs from the person and retrieve them. Even though the characters mainly focused on the Star Platinum disc, there was also a second disc we saw that had Jotaro’s face on it so that means it wasn’t just Star Platinum that was taken away. From what Emporio said at the end, Jotaro’s soul is gone. The disc with his face on it was probably his soul since losing Star Platinum wouldn’t necessarily make him an empty husk. And if that’s the case, Jotaro being able to speak a long time after losing it is amazing but thankfully he was able to say some powerful last words.
Jotaro and Jolyne have been working together fine this whole time, but this episode continued to show how rocky their relationship still is obviously. Punching Jolyne in the face to escape the visitation room didn’t exactly help (though it was kinda funny), but all those years of abandonment and pent-up anger made Jolyne lash out and I can’t really blame her. We know for sure that Jotaro truly loves his daughter, and we know despite their relationship being strained, deep down Jolyne does love Jotaro too. I’m going to go into this more later on in the show when things get revealed, but my god Jotaro is just horrible at expressing his emotions and not creating misunderstandings. Such as the scene this episode when Jolyne tripped and he protected the charm rather than her, and only focused on the charm. And we understand WHY the charm was so important this whole time because of the tracking device he put in, so it all circles back to Jotaro thinking of his daughter’s safety in the end. Everything he does is to protect Jolyne, and again I will go more into that in a future review. The problem is that HE DOESN’T SAY IT. He just continues to come off as the cool and collected Jotaro that we all know where he lets his actions talk rather than his words, not really showing more emotion on the outside even though we all know that he’s a lot more compassionate on the inside. He’s just not the most outwardly affectionate person. Problem is, Jotaro not being in Jolyne’s life she doesn’t really know Jotaro all that well and doesn’t know that side of him. She was young when he left so she’s barely getting to know him now. Which is why her being hurt and lashing out at him for “not caring about her” was understandable, but then her realization of what the charm truly was and Jotaro’s last words just really hit hard. Being able to smile and tell his daughter he loves her and saying how proud he is that she has the same Joestar conviction…ugh. Fuck man, it really hurts. We don’t get that many heartwarming words from Jotaro so when he does actually say them, it’s a really big deal.
Seeing Jolyne come to terms with everything hurt to watch too. Honestly this girl really needs a good hug. Ever since that accident and stepping into the jail, her life has gotten so shitty. T_T She went from wanting to kick Jotaro’s ass to doing everything she could to save his life, which is going back to the prison and going on a mission to find the murderer. She easily could have escaped with Jotaro into the submarine, secure and safe, seen her mother, etc., but she chose to go back to the hellhole of a prison to seek out the murderer. It says a lot, and it’s a complete flip to how she was before and it does show that Jolyne does care for her father. It really is just a difficult relationship. It kind of brings me back to the beginning of Stardust Crusaders, where some people didn’t think that Jotaro cared all that much about his mother because of the crappy way he treated her…which, kinda fair to assume. But we did see that while Jotaro kept his cool after Holly collapsed, he still showed anger about the whole situation and even showed concern when Holly tried to get up after waking up. Again, Jotaro is not the most affectionate person but he does care about people and shows it in his own way. And if he really didn’t love his mother, would he have left the comfort of his home to go on an insane roadtrip to Egypt to kill a vampire? Don’t think so. Same with Jolyne choosing to return to the prison and risk her life to find the murderer, and just having to deal with all the crap in the prison again. I’m sorry, I just adore both Jotaro and Jolyne. The Kujos are the best Jojos fight me.
Anyway with all that, this brings us to who is White Snake and who is their Stand user? Just how much do they know about the Joestar family, and why does Jotaro seem to have this reputation of the “invincible Stand user”? So much so that this person was willing to steal Star Platinum? For what, and why? And we never got answers to Johngalli A’s motivations either and his hatred against the whole Joestar bloodline, so there’s still a lot that needs to be uncovered. The Joestars are only known by a few people, so hmm. We also have the formal introduction of Emporio, and learning that the bone he gave Jolyne was from his mother was really sad and unsettling. We’re only just beginning when it comes to the story, but we’ve finally reached part of the plot and Jolyne’s main goal.
These episodes were done really well, this episode especially, so I’m really excited to see how they’ll adapt the rest. This anime is definitely going to be a doozy, but exciting.
