English Dub Series Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Stone Ocean Season One Part Three

Based on the ongoing manga series by Hirohiko Araki, Season 5, but is technically the 3rd and final wave of episodes of Part 6, picks things up immediately where Parts 1 and 2 left off with some mysteries revealed, along with protagonist Jolyne Cujoh still in prison but more determined than ever, as audiences witnessed the growth in power of Father Enrico Pucci as the primary antagonist. In Part 3, we finally see her breaking out of prison, with an even stronger resolve to disrupt Father Pucci’s evil plans after achieving her mission of retrieving her father Jotaro Kujo’s Star Platinum Disc and his Memory Disc, thus saving her father’s withering life.

But in standard JoJo fashion, the forces of good don’t simply stop once they reach their goals. Jolyne along with what’s left of her small circle of allies from Green Dolphin St. prison have all escaped along with her as their primary objective is now putting a stop to Father Enrico Pucci from perfecting his stand to complete a twisted ritual associated with an old foe tied to the Joestar bloodline hundreds of years ago…

On the technical side, with David Production still at the helm knew how to end things with a bang as a lot of the positives from Parts 1 and 2 of Stone Ocean are thankfully carried over, but with a stronger sense of finality than ever. The English Dub cast thankfully remains untouched with Kira Buckland voicing Joylene, Tiana Camacho as Ermes Costello, And Matthew Mercer as Jotaro. With the music now slightly changed despite this being a continuation with music composer Yugo Kanno returning from previous seasons. As this time around, the opening theme is now drastically different with the new song “Heaven’s Falling Down” by Sana from “Sajou No Hana”, while the ending theme from the previous two episode waves “Distant Dreamer” by Duffy remains the same. With Episode 38’s final song being an unexpected Callback that’s a surprise to longtime Jojo fans…

During this final wave of episodes, other obstacles Joylene and her team encounter, it doesn’t take long for the characters – and for the audience – to learn that these are someone’s Stands, so a fight ensues. Viewers will only learn who the User is towards the end of the episode, but the journey towards the reveal was fun, creepy, and death-defying with so many callbacks and references to past seasons being shown and even mentioned that reward longtime fans.

The enemy stands they encounter continue to impress and horrify in “bizarre”, trippy and imaginative ways. One enemy in particular that Joylene’s team later encounters has a Stand power called “Bohemian Ecstatic” (originally called “Bohemian Rhapsody” after the iconic Queen song) that has the ability to bring fictional characters into reality with chaotic consequences. Surprisingly a lot of liberties were taken and changed somewhat in the source material as certain anime, superhero, and fairytale characters were shown or referenced, but it’s mostly downplayed for copyright reasons. But I’m always surprised when an anime references stuff like Batman or Fist of the North Star, or even a Stand whose powers are so unstable, it’s capable of forcibly turning people into Snail creatures just by touching a rainbow…

And building up to all of this, we get to know the major villain Father Pucci who for quite some time was being depicted as a mysterious “Final Boss” of sorts who is now given an origin story filled with extreme psychological issues which are explored in a flashback regarding his fucked up upbringing, along with his mysterious ties to the Stand User known as “Weather Forecast”, and the events leading up to his past meeting with a longtime foe from the franchises past…

Overall, while this final batch of episodes covered the best arcs adapted from the Stone Ocean Manga, the proceedings of it ended on an extremely bitter-sweet note for a plethora of reasons. At the time of this review, the future of Jojo anime as a whole remains uncertain since the Manga somehow continues after this, yet no word if David Production will continue on with or without Netflix. Understandably, this compels me to question Netflix’s business practices of splitting the entire season into “waves” of episodes and releasing them periodically. The way they have done this, along with other anime within their digital library such as Bastard and Tiger & Bunny may have killed whatever hype they had for casual audiences. But at the very least, the franchise creator Hirohiko Araki went out with a Bang, and hopefully, in the future, we can get an announcement for more Jojo anime or a Stone Ocean Blu-Ray/DVD release at some point…