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Without a doubt, Stone Ocean's anime adaptation was something awaited by fans everywhere. After the conclusion of the Golden Wind anime, all sights turned to Part 6. For the most part, David production did well on Part 5.

The Stone Ocean anime, despite its strengths, doesn't really reach the same heights that Golden Wind did.

Story - 8/10
Hirohiko Araki's story is adapted faithfully. If you've read the original work, you're experiencing the same great story here. It could be argued that Stone Ocean's anime is faithful to a fault; the previous two anime adaptations did a lot of work in the pre-production phase to iron out ... any wrinkles (e.g. inconsistencies, small story/flow changes) in order to improve the viewing experience. Stone Ocean stays mostly untouched apart from a few welcome changes.

Sound - 7/10
Stone Ocean has good sound. The creative sound design of previous parts returns and fits well with the story. There are few creative choices having to do with sound effects that left me confused. In fact, the use of sound in Stone Ocean even improves upon scenes significantly in areas. The original tracks composed by Yugo Kanno (still yet to be released) are also nothing short of fantastic. There are some noticeable issues with the reuse of tracks from older seasons of the anime, which range in peculiarity from "Did I hear that right?' to completely baffling.

Visuals - 5/10
Here lies, debatably, Stone Ocean's greatest fault as an anime. A set of unfortunate and often uncontrollable circumstances led to the mess that was this anime's production timeline, including the COVID-19 virus and David pro.'s Urusei Yatsura, which had a majority of Golden Wind's production team jump ship. A lot of more inexperienced staff were left to work on SO. Couple that with a smaller staff, Stone Ocean's complicated designs being left mostly unmodified by character designer Masanori Shino, and other issues, and you leave Stone Ocean's full release to be a low note. This problem could even be fixed post-release through BD corrections, but this opportunity was also passed on as well. Behind all this, though, is the original work, which is by all intents and purposes a visually impressive feature in the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series. The anime does little to tarnish the original work but little to improve on it. There are very few impressive cuts for an action battle series, let alone one as fantastical as Stone Ocean. Color choices are bland and pretty much follow the JOJO-D scans as religious text. Characters frequently go off-model, which would be less of a problem if it had strong visual direction to rely on like Golden Wind did. Overall, the visuals are as unremarkable as possible and deserved much more attention.

Overall - 7/10

This happened to my buddy eric once.

All jokes aside, mild spoilers




School Days is at its worst a groan-worthy love triangle rom-com, and at its best, one of the greatest bait-and-switches in anime history. It is best watched stumbling across it randomly when looking for chill 2000's romances to watch, exactly as I did. About halfway through School Days, it becomes so hard to watch that you almost can't stop watching. Like seeing a train derail right in front of you from the comfort of a spectators eye.

So, neglecting to share any more, go in blind on this one. And if you don't, well...a lot of ... the experience of this show will be ruined for you.

I wasn't expecting much going into "Thus Spoke" but I'm happy to say my expectations were for the most part fulfilled. This is a very short OVA series so I'll try to summarize my thoughts in a short manner.

Story - 7
TSKR's story goes completely unaffecting the rest of the Jojo canon, so it's easy to see how many fans may have skipped out on it. However, the story is largely focused on local mysteries which surprisingly don't have much to do with stand powers.

Art - 10
The art style in each OVA is very reminiscent of Araki's current manga style - from my understanding, these ... OVAs are adapted from a standalone manga. Araki's current style is by far my favorite of his work, and seeing it in animated form is wonderful.

Sound - 7
Not much to talk about here. It's passing, nothing stood out to me but the music fit the vibe of mystery.

Character - 7
Aside from the stoic and brave personality of Rohan, not much is introduced here that we haven't already seen in other JoJo archetypes. The runner dude was kind of cool, though.

Enjoyment - 8
I had fun watching this bite size trip through the life of Kishibe Rohan. I'm a huge JoJo fan and it was gratifying to see these OVAs come to life.