English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders “Strength”
“Don’t you know you gotta, Punch the Monkey. Hey! Hey!”
Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)
The episode begins when Dio contemplates about the tense foreboding he feels toward the Joestars, as he recognizes that they can’t be underestimated. But his advisor, Enyaba the short-hag, assures him they still have stand-using assassins on standby in an attempt to hinder their journey. Elsewhere, Team Joestar along with the surviving boat crew boards the freighter they encountered from the previous episode, but are unable to find a single soul on board except for a caged Orangutan, yet everything within the freighter appears to be in working order.
A lot of this episode slowly plays out like a by-the-numbers Ghost Ship/slasher-flick as the nameless surviving crew members get picked off one by one, But the actual terror starts to pick up when the young girl from the previous episode takes a shower and the scene begins to emulate the iconic shower scene from Psycho while revealing who the Killer predictably is along with the freighter itself being a Stand that functions as a living environment to trap its victims.
When Jotaro confronts the killer, he’s at first at a disadvantage until he eventually outsmarts & defeats him. Team Joestar and the young girl manage to evacuate in a life-boat as the freighter quickly disappears, but they all end up drifting to their desired destination in Singapore in the span of four days. The episode ends with another cliffhanger when Team Joestar decides to stay in a Hotel handpicked by Joseph and it cuts to a random hotel room with the closeup of a creepy doll in the scenery.
Our Take
The rules about stands were greatly expanded upon this episode as we learned two new things about stands within the Rules of the Jojo Universe: 1. stand users can also be Animals and 2. If a stand user is giving off an enormous amount of energy, their stand can be visibly seen by normal people which explains how the ship was also visible to everyone else. And finally, aside from some random & creepy moments with the Ape interacting with people, I’m pretty sure Orangutan’s don’t exactly envoke the same level of terror as a pissed off Silverback.
Let’s hope Episode 8 makes up for this.
SCORE
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