For this episode, we don’t get to see Jolyne at all. Instead, we have an episode completely devoted to another character. We know that Jolyne is out of commission since her escape attempt, staying in the punishment ward for a couple weeks. On top of that, 5 years were added to her sentence. So while Jolyne is busy, we focus on Hermes.
We briefly met her in the beginning when Jolyne was being transported to the prison. Amazingly Hermes has been in the infirmary ward this entire time ever since she found Jolyne’s charm and sold it to Gwess. I’m actually not sure how long it’s been in real time since the first episode so I really do have to wonder how long Hermes has been sleeping. The effects from the arrow gave her a fever and made her weak and she’s been sleeping this whole time. And of course after waking up, things start to get bizarre for her. Hermes’ stand ability is pretty cool and can be pretty useful when used right. Using these stickers to make copies of an object or even a person can prove to be handy and she did a great job showing how useful it can be. It is a pretty strange ability that might have limited use but I like these types of abilities that require more than just brute strength. Hermes accepted her newfound abilities pretty quickly and is sort of getting used to them, and thankfully so because her encounter with McQueen would have been the end of her.
The enemy this time is a janitor from the infirmary ward who enjoys stealing money from the inmates. Hermes comes across him as she uses her stand on him for payback and finds discs sticking out from his head, just like Jotaro. Hermes ends up taking one of his discs which ended up being his memory disc.
We only learn a little bit more about the discs from Emporio, which is just that both discs make up the soul. We see that even though McQueen lost just one of his discs he was still able to move and function normally, he just forgot certain things like where the money he stole was and the fact that he made a pact with White Snake, the stand responsible for the discs. Though interestingly McQueen was still able to remember shooting the woman that tried to kill herself so I wonder how much of the memory the disc takes. Jotaro lost his memory, and the other disc ended up having Star Platinum specifically. I’m guessing the other disc is his “heart” that completes the soul. I wonder what would have happened to McQueen if the other disc was taken instead. Jolyne believes Jotaro isn’t dead, but we still don’t know his state.
But back to Hermes, she dealt with a terrifying stand user. This dude was totally unhinged and possibly dying the same way the user dies is scary. Seeing McQueen tied up with his hand on the light switch even made me nervous the whole time Hermes tried to convince him not to die. Of course that wasn’t going to happen. Instead of a physical fight, it ended up being more mental and used Hermes’ ingenuity with her stand. We were also able to see her entire stand at the end.
I will say, at this point the stand designs are starting to look same-y. Yeah you can make the argument that Star Platinum, The World, and Crazy Diamond are more or less the same (though that could be because of the Joestar blood or whatever). But at least we had other fun designs. The stands at least from the main cast are starting to look the same-ish, but this was starting with Golden Wind. Stone Free, White Snake, Gold Experience, and Kiss have the same face and the same body type so it is kind of boring. They still look striking but at least with the main character stands, there’s less variety. The enemy stands are still plenty unique, and thankfully the abilities with all the stands are unique as well. This isn’t a major complaint and this isn’t something that bothers me too much, but I never noticed this before but I’m noticing now and it’s even more obvious now.
Anyway this episode was fun. Hermes is pretty similar to Jolyne personality wise and she’s funny too, so it was an entertaining episode. I can’t wait for the main Jojo group to form. It is taking awhile but I’m excited for them all to come together soon.
