JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken Part 3: Stardust Crusaders 2nd Season

Stardust Crusaders baby! Probably the most quintessential part of JOJO, as it contains everything that makes this series legendary distilled in its purest form - Stands, crazy battles, epic action, adventure, high stakes, great characters and a pinch of humor to boot. The anime adaptation is almost flawless - faithful to the manga, the animation and art style are fantastic and iconic, and the voice acting and music have achieved legendary status for a reason. I just think he was a little overextended, he didn't need so many episodes. Granted, it makes sense to spit for two seasons after arriving in Egypt, but at some ... moments it sounds a little tense. It's not a big deal, though, and the viewing experience is consistently enjoyable. Do yourself a favor and check it out. And also, no skipping episodes, you understand!

It worked well as an "introduction" to the bizarre in JoJo, to the more crazy stands and fights. The "badass" protagonist was a cool attempt that divided opinions, mainly because people think he has no personality, although it is more likely that most people like it, it is worth noting that he may be not as interesting as the previous protagonist. The characters of the "crusaders", as the main group is called, are all unique and their dynamic is great, the only one that can leave something to be desired is Avdol, who had few episodes focused on him, with no fight or arc of ... his own , while others like Polnareff had at least one.

It is interesting the return of Joseph, the last protagonist, as part of the main group but not the main protagonist, in addition the characters and their abilities and personalities are what can keep the viewer watching even the boring parts, after all the anime adopted an episodic style, naturally there will be more bland and "purposeless" episodes. But about this episodic format of "each episode has a new enemy", this format was maintained in the following parts. Another negative point was the way the final villain was defeated, extremely forced and sudden. the fact that the final villain is DIO already makes the villain of part 3 badass, DIO is charismatic, fun to watch and pleasant to see on screen. In short, good characters and interesting fights, but things were missing, this part is full of fights but not all of them save.

Part three is perhaps the most iconic season of JoJo which despite leaving an undeniable impact on anime as a whole, fails to live up to modern anime standards and suffers from poor pacing and an inconsistent tone.

For what it’s worth, part three starts out fine. The premise is interesting enough and stands are a unique power system that bring a good level of tension and excitement to the fights.

The main issue this series suffers from is the pacing. The series starts out with Jotaro's mom, Holly, being afflicted with a serious, time sensitive, and life-threatening Stand which sets the plot in motion. You ... feel a sense of urgency, Jotaro and Joseph have to save Holly before time runs out. The show even makes a big point to say that she doesn’t have much time. So what does the rest of the show spend its time doing?? If you guessed dilly-dallying in every city between Japan and Egypt without giving hardly a thought to Holly’s problem, you’d be right. It’s really tough to believe that the characters actually care about Holly and her condition with how slow they move and the lack of urgency they have. It seems like they forget about her immediately after starting their journey despite her being the whole reason they set out in the first place. The series turns into a villain of the week style show, which isn’t in itself a bad thing, but it definitely isn’t suited for the central conflict. Most of part three drags on and outside of small amounts of character development here and there - and I mean small, you really don’t get a lot from the middle 40 episodes or so.

Now there are some highlights to this part. Of course, the fight with Dio at the end is very entertaining, and the clear STANDout of the series. Plus the beginning is interesting enough and does a good job of establishing the world, the characters, plus a new power system.

Quite frankly, the Stardust Crusaders would hugely benefit from cutting out most of its episodes. Keep some of the heavier character development episodes in the middle and pick the best villain fights sandwiched between the beginning and the end and you have a pretty solid anime.

However, that is not the show we got. Jojo‘s part three suffers from incredibly sluggish pacing and largely boring villain of the week episodes that betrays the sense of urgency established at the beginning of the series making for a true slog of a show. Trim the fat and you have a good anime. But the peaks are not worth the valleys in the case of JoJos. I recommend watching the first handful of episodes and the last handful of episodes (from the gambler episode on) - do that, and you’ve seen everything you need to from part 3.

First few episodes - 6/10
Middle Chunk of episodes - 2/10
Last several episodes - 7-8/10

Overall - 4/10