English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders “Hol Horse and Mondatta, Part 2”

Last Jojo for the month!

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

As Hol Horse continues to follow this strange & unusual prediction to the letter, he proceeds to hold Polnareff at gunpoint in order to hide from the rest of Team Joestar around a corner. It’s moments like this during the proceedings where the episode shines the most as it manages to bring a lot of balanced comedic moments with tense scenes such as Polnareff being held at gunpoint from behind in the corner of a dark alley while he attempts to point secretly signal Team Joestar with his tongue which is easily one of the funniest scenes that must be seen to be believed. Just as Team Joestar begins to figure out what’s really going on, Polnareff manages to get out of the situation thanks to a lucky sneeze.

However, the sneeze itself consequently triggers a series of events where Two jerks Hol Horse had a run-in with last episode attempt to run him over, but instead, the Truck ends up hitting Team Joestar before they can even activate their stands as the Tohth sort-of predicted despite its vagueness earlier that they’d be all knocked out after Hol Horses prediction with Polnareff earlier. After witnessing the devastating power of Modatta’s Tohth Stand, Hol Horse decides to go along with the next prediction which states they have to kill Jotaro first as he’s the only one somehow not dead or unconscious by the crash while realistically being hit by a truck could fuck anyone up yet everyone else is simply knocked out.

As Tohth’s prediction states that what Hol Horse must do next is to shoot his Emperor bullets through a specific pipe system at noon to ensure victory. With only a few minutes until noon, a bulk of the running time is spent on Hol Horse attempting another elaborate series of events in an effort to follow this other prediction by the letter. However, another one of Polnareff’s lucky sneezes helps Jotaro to dodge the barrage of bullets, and at first, I thought the prediction was slightly wrong, but it turns out that Hol Horse performed these events a little too early due to his watch being a little off. But as the clock strikes noon, let’s just say, Good Karma doesn’t come their way. The episode ends on a comedic note when Team Joestar decides to leave after everyone’s recovered, while Mondatta gets his equal comeuppance which also puts him in the hospital with Hol Horse, complete with the goofy & surreal end credits being the same as the last.

Our Take

Much like the first half of this entertaining filler episode, the 2nd half manages to excel the most by balancing tension, suspense and laughs without making Team Joestar the primary focus. But I think Hol Horse’s biggest mistake was relying on his wristwatch more and not bothering to figure out the time’s accuracy. But as Mondatta previously stated, any tiny mistake made will come back in a bad way. Granted, the predictions can be vague, like the poisoned tea at the cafe during Mondatta’s first attempt to kill team Joestar several episodes ago, but for the most part, they’re pretty spot on. The majority of Thoth’s failures come from Mondatta’s partners often hesitating or underestimating Mondatta’s Stand powers until they see actual results presented before them.

With only three Assassins left named after the Egyptian Gods, and with Hol Horse & Mondatta officially out of commission, there is very little left opposing Team Joestar from reaching Dio himself. But whether or not these next three will pose a challenge before they get to Dio remains to be seen as anything can happen in the next episodes and that’s both exciting and scary!