Story: Part 3 is essentially a road movie with numerous delays before the destination. Jotaro and co. are required to defeat Dio in Egypt so that the curse placed on his mother is lifted. In the past I had qualms with the story taking second place to the desire for a phoned in endless battles. I mean come on...ENEMIES BASED ON THE TAROT CARDS... Ok we've defeated them... EGYPTIAN GODS... it felt kind of aimless. I was wrong though. How stupid of me. The battles are the best part. Araki wrote various styles of different battles (some quite clever) so that each time audiences interact with part 3 they get to enjoy some nice variety. Which when it comes to entertainment is greatly important I think, don't you?
Art: All of David Production is very faithful to the manga, perhaps more so than the majority of anime adaptations to be released in the market. The issues I had with season 1 (part 1 and 2 of the story) when compared to their manga counterparts is that I found the art to be lacking (which would be always tough considering what an amazing illustrator Araki is) and whilst DP employs interesting techniques such as switching up colour schemes and visible Japanese sound effects on screen, their poor application of character skin shading was often too much of a distraction as it rendered the characters ugly. Case in point - look at Smokey Brown. This was a black character who often had white skin patches all over his face depending on what scene he was in. Thankfully these transgressions don't come on board for season 2 as I am pleased to say that it is the best looking entry in the series until this point and the animation quality is top notch. Bright, vibrant and coordinated well.
Sound: While not necessarily indicative of Araki's crazed playlists that he concocts when naming his characters after musicians, songs or albums, the soundtrack to this thing is amazing. At times it feels pretty damn avant garde switching between glitchcore, dubstep, drum solos and horror film like ambience.
Character: So here it is. The main reason I love part 3. The fault is probably on me but originally when engaging with the manga I found each character in Jotaro's party to be a generic muscley guy, lacking in personality. I didn't feel anything for them when I read the manga as I didn't necessarily notice any strong characterisation. With the advent of this animation I believe that the voice acting has done wonders for the characters; in particular I enjoyed the performances of Komatsu as Polnareff and Ishizuka as Joseph. Of course it goes without saying that Ono was perfect as Jotaro and was exactly how I imagined Jotaro (whom I felt to be the strongest character in the manga) to be. Catchphrases such as "Yare yare daze" and "OH MY GOD!" stick with you. As I mentioned earlier, the animation is a very faithful adaptation of the manga so any failure to engage with the characters probably requires my speedreading self to take some accountability. I do believe however that the anime expanded on the characters through the voice actor's performances. These characters felt like friends and you know what? They will be sorely missed.
Enjoyment: For any disparaging remarks I ever made about part 3 in the past, I'm truly sorry. It's amazing and I enjoyed the hell out of it. I hope more and more people do as well.
