English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders “Dio’s World, Part 3”

“Grind To A Halt!”

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

After a small-yet impressive change to the show’s opening Intro that I highly recommend sticking around for, Jotaro & Dio’s battle further intensifies, as Dio remains impressed by Jotaro’s Stand powers but decides to end the fight as he’s quite confident in his superiority over Jotaro’s Star Platinum. However, things start to get more interesting when Dio stops time and attempts to finish Jotaro with a killing blow, that is until Jotaro’s fingers begin to slightly move while time has frozen reminding Dio of the realization that Jotaro’s Star Platinum is the same type of Stand as Dio’s “The World”.

Jotaro much to Dio’s shock appears to be able to both perceive him and move parts of himself, albeit only slightly, while time is stopped. Dio initially assumes this to be trick Jotaro pulled involving Magnets, but this turns out to be a bluff by Jotaro, who uses Star Platinum to counter Dio while Time has stopped which is an epically impressive scene that feels like karmic punishment, especially after what Dio previously did to Kakyoin. Realizing that Jotaro can only move for a brief moment while time is stopped due to lack of practice with this power compared to Dio, Dio stays out of his attack range and attacks using time-stopped knives, managing to land some hits on Jotaro.

While Jotaro somehow manages to survive due to some quick thinking on his end, he’s forced to play dead until he recovers. Just when you think things would seem decidedly bleak for the rest of Team Joestar, Polnareff attempts to stop Dio from finishing Jotaro off in a brief yet epic scene but is knocked out by him. Drawing Dio’s attention away from Polnareff, Jotaro continues to play dead, going as far as to use Star Platinum to do something even I didn’t expect, until Dio gets close enough, leading to one of the most badass anime beatdowns in recent memory that’s a spectacle to behold. Of course, Dio being the clever & evil bastard that he is, The episode ends when he tricks Jotaro into punching him over to a specific direction where he is able to gain an advantage of sorts…

Our Take

Holy Fuck! I really wasn’t expecting Jotaro to have some degree of time stopping powers or the ability to fly like Dio, but they do have flashbacks of Dio testing the extent of this power to further emphasize how dangerous it can be with enough practice. So it kinda makes sense that Jotaro is slowly getting the hang of it in small doses compared to Dio who took six months to have some degree of mastery.

While the battle itself takes the entirety of the episode’s running time, it excels the most as the perfect balance of tension, suspense, and hard-hitting intensity you’d expect from this show as the stakes now are further raised. And with one more episode left next week, there’s no way in hell they can possibly leave anyone hanging after this!