English Dub Review: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders “The Miasma of the Void, Cool Ice, Part 2 “

“Life’s a Bitch”

Overview (Possible Spoilers Below)

After the shocking Death of Avdol by Cool Ice’s grotesque Stand, Ice makes his presence known. Despite Polnareff thinking, he could still be alive, Ice explains that his powers have the ability to make people and objects disappear to the point of nothingness. But whenever Cool Ice shows up onscreen, the foreboding tone he gives off never loses that malevolence for even a second. Believing that Avdol’s will is urging him to keep on living, Polnareff decides not to run away and face Dio Head-on as his way of honoring his fallen comrade, However as him & Iggy flee from Ice in an attempt to head straight towards Dio’s temple, they’re intercepted by Ice, who heavily injures Polnareff limiting his movement.

Hiding in the confusion, Iggy attempts to use his “Fool” stand powers to make a sand clone of Dio to attack Ice from behind, but knowing that Dio isn’t the type to walk into sunlight for obvious reasons, Ice is quick to see through their plan, choosing to attack Iggy himself as punishment for what he views as insulting Dio. The scene itself is downright wince-worthy to watch for any animal lover and given Araki’s track record, he doesn’t shy away from animal cruelty caused by villains or despicable people within his Jojo storylines. The brutal violence itself is further emphasized when you realize it’s a small dog on the receiving end of multiple kicks from a Vampiric Stand-User with super strength.

Intercut with random scenes of Jotaro, Joseph and Kakyoin attempting to catch up after escaping Terrance’s trap, While Polnareff manages to make use of Iggy’s leftover sand to determine Ice’s next move, and goes as far as to land a strike through his mouth using his Silver Chariot, but Ice retaliates with heavy damage to Polnareff through various parts of Chariot’s body. Unable to dodge out of the way as Cool Ice’s attack closes in on him, The episode ends on an intense cliffhanger as an Injured Iggy watches while Polnareff is left with no choice but to accept the harsh reality that he most likely won’t make it, and we’re left to assume the worst has happened…

Our Take

Compared to the previous episode, the focus is solely on Polnareff & Iggy’s struggle to survive, as the suspense and moments of distress are cranked up to 11 in terms of danger and urgency. Upon research, Cool Ice’s Stand which is oddly named “Cream” has some extremely dangerous & strange powers as it doesn’t just swallow people to make them disappear, but anything it touches whenever it rolls up into a ball like some floating giant sphere of doom and disintegrates random objects, body parts or scenery in the process. As a vampire, Ice even wears his stand like a full body-suit which physically protects him from sunlight like a second skin.

Back when Capcom made a 2-D fighting game based on this particular Jojo Manga storyline many years ago, Ice had various physical attacks that mostly consisted of delivering multiple shin-kicks in rapid succession which at first, I didn’t know the context of. But after seeing this episode, It’s easy to put the pieces together and realize that it was infamously referencing the cruelty Ice dished out on Iggy while keeping true the Manga’s source material that both this Anime and the aforementioned Capcom game was based on.

With 4 episodes left, there’s no way Ice can be as powerful as Dio in terms of “Final Boss” status and there’s no telling if the rest of team Joestar will make it in time.

Score
9/10