There are a lot of unique things in anime that we find ourselves clamoring for.
Things that anime does differently than other media from other cultures.
But sometimes, you don’t really want or need to watch an anime that focuses on the
meaning of friendship, one that dives into the inner workings of someone’s soul, or
teaches you things about yourself that you would have never learned otherwise.
Or rather, you want to have that, but disguise it as a series full of mindless fun and senseless
violence and what you get is JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders.
I’d say that before starting this video that you should make sure you’ve watched
the previous Parts of JoJo, but I’m not gonna say that, because as I iterated in my review of them:
Phantom Blood was shite and honestly there’s not enough callback to Battle Tendency in Stardusto
to make you really feel like you are missing out if you started here.
That’s not me saying to start here though because Battle Tendency is freaking amazing
and you are doing yourself a disservice by skipping it. But I will admit it’s
not necessary for the enjoyment of the show we are going to be talking about today.
So without any further ado, Ladies, Gentlemen, and others my name is Arkada and welcome to
Glass Reflection were today we are looking at a series that is actually, legitimately good, the third
part of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders.
Let's Jam.
SO just incase you guys forgot or don’t
know the story of JoJo up until this point….
...though honestly the story of stardust is extremely straightforward.
IT’S THE PART WHERE SHIT GETS REAL.
DIO is back, surprise surprise, because that fu**er can never seem to stay dead in the ground.
Some new spiritual chicanery is happening as well, and a bunch of people in the word
can now summon personas or “Stands” to fight one another to the death.
These new Stands nullify the role previously held by Hamon and its sunny D like superpowers.
We also have a new JoJo, and this JoJo Jotaro has his mother fall Ill due to the existence
of Stands and the only cure is to fly halfway across the world to Egypt and punch DIO is
his smarmy smug face.
Which Jotaro kindly obliges.
So alongside his Grandfather Joseph and their newly acquired pals ABDUL, Kakyoin, and Polnareff
the group have an adventure that none of them is likely to forget.
And neither are you unless you decide to not pay attention and fall asleep in some
of the more repetitive bits of the story.
Because Stardust would made for a very short series if they just hopped on a plane, got
to Egypt in 12 hours and make it back in time for some Jasmine Tea the next day.
So continually our heroes are bombarded by enemy combatants, turning their quick hop
to Egypt into a slog like long haul.
It takes over 20 episodes for the gang to actually make it into Egypt and then another
14-15 or so until they make it to DIO’s front door.
Thankfully this journey from Japan to Egypt is where the bulk of entertainment with the
series actually lies.
Because we know how this journey is going to end.
We know that down the line the series is just going to finish off with 3 or so episodes
of two guys trying to punch each other to death so why bother rushing to get there when
the unknown and entertainment is in the actual adventure itself.
Now on the surface there’s a bunch to criticize, every new episode is formatted identical to
the last.
So let’s look over the anatomy of a Stardust episode shall we?
“Hey Something Bizarre is happening!”
“Whatever could be happening?”
“Ah! this is the work of an enemy stand!”
“Kill the enemy stand”
“Roll Credits”
Most everything else is identical to how JoJo played out its format previously with some
minor changeups.
There’s no random enemy names based on popular English rock stars anymore, at least not until
the very end.
Instead the names are biased on Egyptian gods, and even before that, tarot cards making the
Persona comparison even more accurate.
There isn’t much variety in the format of the story either, but instead the entertainment
comes from the variety of content.
Every unfortunate thing that occurs on this trip is always, ALWAYS, because of an enemy
Stand and the powers of these stands very wildly and actually tell why the hell
Bizarre is a word used in the show’s title.
Each new enemy stand has an interesting and unique design and superpower that must be
overcome if our heroes want a chance of continuing their adventure.
At the start the powers of the enemy stands are rather simple and mundane but as the series
progresses they start to become more complex and creative.
This continues the tradition from previous JoJo arcs where the enemies need to be faced
in a smart and proactive manner instead of just punching things hard enough until they
die.
They all have magical powers that make them unique but as soon as you figure out their
trick they can be taken down rather easily.
Watching our heroes do the analyzing and figuring out how to combat their enemies that’s the
fun part.
So it’s great that Stardust continues this…..until Jotaro gets involved in the fight.
Jotaro is actually one of the problems I have with Stardust.
He doesn’t have much of a personality like his predecessors.
He’s a one trick pony whose only role is to be a silent badass.
Which to be far, he does that extremely well, but it doesn’t really make his character
any less one dimensional.
Because of the boy band nature of the main cast Jotaro doesn’t get as much focus that
Joseph did in Battle Tendency, or John did during Phantom, which leaves him to be excluded
from a lot of the action.
But the times when he’s not excluded are when he mostly stands there glaring at enemies
before closing range and punching them 10,000 times till they fall over dead, and it’s
rare to see Jotaro lose a fight.
In the past one of the things that defined the role of a JoJo was to be able to analyze
when they were outmatched and re-position themselves to get a better advantage, this
was Joseph’s whole shtick, but Jotaro doesn’t run away, he’s a cold ass motherf***er
who will wreck your sh**.
Now this could be trying to differentiate him from Joseph who ran away constantly, but
it almost makes me wonder why, from a practical perspective, Jotaro didn’t just do the journey
himself as he obviously is powerful enough to do the entire thing solo with energy to spare.
But that’s kind of the thing.
Because Jotaro was designed this way as a character, the rest of the cast was brilliantly
designed around him to compensate.
Jotaro is not in every fight, or even the majority of fights I feel like, leaving like
Kakyoin and Polnareff to pick up the slack.
In actuality I felt like Polnareff felt far more like the main character of this arc,
if for no other reason than the fact that almost every single enemy stand user got to
shout his name angularly like it was their favourite word in za wardo
One of the criticisms you could lay upon the previous arcs of JoJo is that they focused
far too much on JoJo himself to the detriment of the supporting cast, and honestly I think
that Stardust attempted to counter that but went a little bit too far.
Hell no one even really calls Jotaro JoJo in the series which is odd, and the complete
removal of all interesting characteristics from Joseph so he doesn’t steal the spotlight
was a bit of a disappointment for me.
I’ve said before I believe Joseph to be best JoJo.
Maybe not the strongest JoJo, as I think Jotaro could beat him in a straight up fight, but
the style and class that used to ooze from every pore in his body has been surgically
removed from his older self.
I can count on one hand the amount of times he tries to use Hamon or anything resembling
his abilities that allowed him to previously defeat literal gods.
Yes I know that only stands can defeat other stands, and Joseph’s stand is conveniently
garbage in combat, but to see him not even use his trademark opponent prediction trick
more than what, I think only once in almost 50 episodes?
That’s a travesty.
“AND NEXT YOU’LL SAY: “But there was a status quo to uphold in the JoJo canon and
the empty space left behind by Old Man Speedwagon had to be filled by someone!”
But there was a status quo to uphold in JoJo cannon and the empty space left behind by
Old Man Speedwagon had to be filled by someone, so Joseph got demoted from fu**ing Boss to
the guy who sprouts random Engrish for comedic effect.
The later inclusion of the comedic effect dog Iggy didn’t do it for me either.
I have no doubt that Iggy has some diehard fans especially watching his character do
an almost 180 in personality near the end, but his jumping into people’s faces just
to make a loud and audible fart was more cringe worthy than humorous to me.
Also this is the part where I lament the loss of Roundabout by Yes as the shows ending theme.
I do understand that Roundabout wouldn’t have worked as well this time around as there
were far less cliff-hangers and the episodic nature didn’t lend itself to the kind of
endings that made the roundabout great, but still it’s sad to see it go.
Ultimately as harsh as I am sounding Stardust is really more of the same great JoJo just
with a different coat of paint.
Some of its major flaws like with the other parts can just be chalked up to the fact that
this story is over 25 years old and many of the elements that seem cliché now were made
popular by JoJo in the first place.
If you want to watch an anime with a group of Bros bonding over life or death
then there is no better option.
Hell if you just want an entertaining romp for almost 50 episodes there’s very few
that can match it.
I did feel like Stardust was a step back in scale but it was a necessary one.
While the threat posed by DIO was one that really was far less world ending than that
of the Pillar Men from the previous arc, the continual power creep of JoJo villains could not
continue exponentially like it was going without... stalling and this back step was one that could
have been handled far worse.
On top of which it improved on previous iterations by giving us a full cast of characters to
get attached to and love, which is one of the seasons shining achievements, even if
Jotaro suffered a bit as a character to account for that.
Still though it’s not like he’s going anywhere and maybe my thoughts about him will
change when I finally get around to watching all of Diamond but that’s for another time.
So overall I present Stardust Crusaders with the Glass Reflection recommendation to Buy it.
Not that you can, because the license is in this wierd place where Warner Brothers got it
but haven’t released it on DVD or anything despite having dubbed the whole thing.
There was a Toonami showing of the arc but it still seems kind of a waste to dub the
it but not give it a wider release.
But even without the dub you can watch it on crunchyroll and the like without too much
issue.
For alternate anime recommendations, because I haven’t referenced the franchise enough
already I’m going to bring up Persona 4 the Animation.
While technically not as good as it’s video game counterpart I found P4 the Animation
to be a reasonably faithful adaptation of the original story, which has enough similarities
with the common JoJo tropes to be enjoyable if JoJo is your thing.
Second recommendation goes to the 2011 adaptation of Hunter x Hunter.
I know I recommended it back when I reviewed Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency but it’s
a long series that is worth the watch and I still honestly feel like enough people haven’t
watched it yet so I’m going to keep hawking it until then.
Between those two you should find something to your liking.
Finally I’d like to thank patrons all of my patrons including, Siri Yamiko, Bing Thio,
Viktor Ekmark, Yunru Dovaqueen, Jacob Parkin, Joshua Garcia, Calhoonboy, and Robert Chumsae
without whom I would not be able to produce these videos to the same extent that I would like.
And that’s it from me, thank you for watching.
Until next time, ladies, gentlemen, and others: Stay Frosty.