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

Based on the ongoing manga series by Hirohiko Araki, Season 5, but is technically the 2nd half of Part 6 picks things up from part one as conspiring forces frame Jolyne Cujo for a reckless crime she didn’t commit that landed her in the infamous Green Dolphin Street Prison. Much like her father Jotaro from Stardust Crusaders, Jolyne is brash, brave, and just she rails against her unfair sentence and quickly discovers the sinister circumstances that led to her incarceration. A gift from her absent father grants Jolyne the power of Stone Ocean, a supernatural ability known as a Stand. Jolyne uses Stone Ocean to battle her way through the prison, recruiting new allies in her investigation such as Ermes and F.F. These fearless women fight to uncover the menacing sinister Pale-Snake, an enemy Stand responsible for the increasingly dangerous prisoners who are after Jolyne’s life. Through Jolyne, the Joestar lineage confronts the legacy of its one true enemy. Jolyne and her friend race to stop a disastrous plot and put an end to a culminating evil…

 A lot of those positives from part one are thankfully carried over to part two. The English Dub remains superb with Kira Buckland voicing Joylene, Tiana Camacho as Ermes Costello, And Matthew Mercer as Jotaro. The music hasn’t changed much either as this is a continuation of the story with music composer Yugo Kanno returning from previous seasons. However the opening theme “Stone Ocean” was done by Ichigo from Kishida Kyoudan & The Akeboshi Rockets of “Highschool of the Dead” fame, while the ending theme is “Distant Dreamer” by Duffy.

It’s almost been a year since the first 12 episodes aired and now finally, Stone Ocean is back with another 12 episodes. (13-24) But what does this batch of episodes have in store? Greatness and trippy imagery are what seem to lie ahead within the prison walls of Green Dolphin Street. We kick off with a battle taking the franchise back to its horror roots, combined with a short but wonderful revenge story focused on Ermes. We then enter a series of back-to-back brawls where the unique creativity Araki goes into his most experimental. Along the way, the interactions between characters end up being every bit as “bizarre” as the title implies yet it still manages to raise the stakes on a narrative scale when necessary.

During this 2nd wave of episodes, we witness great thematic moments. Some of these will only be strengthened when certain backstories are revealed that may have paid off later. And in subtle ways, the show starts to become philosophical when it asks questions about existence, Identity, the definition of a soul, and even fate. In combination with those themes, we even get episodes that give other supporting characters their ass-kicking moments to shine and build a sense of mystery around every scene while giving off a consistent feeling of urgency. Towards the end of these episodes, Jolyne faces problems that test her mentally more than they do physically, which contributes greatly to her personal growth as a character.

To me, this is one of the major strong points that makes such a wonderful horror/action-fueled acid trip of a show like Jojo special. The fights have been great too and we see more cool stand abilities too. Thankfully the goriness wasn’t censored so it helped in bringing out the rawness and emotion in every death and battle. The only ones who might be lost are people who haven’t followed the previous seasons to connect the narrative dots as it mostly rewards those who have followed the series since the beginning.

Overall, this was another amazing adaptation of its source material, even if it left more to be desired. Netflix may call the shots on this Jojo storyline, but the way it’s releasing episodes for this and other anime they own has only caused problems for itself just to make their viewers/fans wait. Because normally when a Jojo series reaches a halfway point, it changes the status quo, as the Intro and End credits music would also change. And given that Part 2 only covers episodes 13-24 out of a reportedly 38-episode series, it’s estimated that Part 2 covers 51 chapters out of a 158-chapter manga while the first half only covered 50 chapters. And thanks to leaked information from a newly announced Japanese Blu-Ray release date, it’s confirmed that we have one more wave of episodes left before its proper conclusion somewhere down the line when Netflix releases it on a future date.