So guys, this has been a long time coming, but, on Sunday, I finally finished all of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean, which was the sixth part of the franchise, which means I can finally make an anime review for the fourth, fifth and sixth parts. In December 2021, I did a review for the first three parts and they were the only parts that were brought here when it came to Blu-Ray releases, so, for Part 4 and 5, I got the Blu-Rays from America and was able to watch them and then, some time last year, Part 6 was released only on Netflix and the last of it was released recently and I just finished it. So, I'm really, really, really excited to talk about these considering these have some of the best moments in the whole franchise. So, if you recall, I mentioned how this franchise was started by Hirohiko Araki back in the 80's and I did reviews for Phantom Blood, Battle Tendency and Stardust Crusaders and I enjoyed the experience of watching them for the most part, but now, I can finally move onto my reviews for Diamond Is Unbreakable, Golden Wind and Stone Ocean. Also, like I always say, this will have spoilers for these parts, so go watch these if you want and then come back and read this. So, let's get started with Part 4, Diamond Is Unbreakable. So, for this part, this actually takes place in a fictional town called Morioh where the protagonist this time is a high school student named Josuke Higashikata, who's actually Joseph's son after he had an affair with a young woman, and now Jotaro is meeting him and explaining all this to him and trying to get him to understand what's going on. Not only that, but a lot of weird things are happening in this town and Jotaro wants Josuke's help with trying to fix it, especially since Josuke is a Stand user as well. So, yeah, it's pretty crazy that after we finish Stardust Crusaders, which was all about Jotaro, Joseph and the others trying to get to Egypt and stop Dio, we immediately get a story in a small town dealing with different situations. But, I'm not gonna lie, that definitely helped with this because this might actually be my favourite part in this whole franchise so far. If you remember, I mentioned in my Stardust Crusaders review that I really, really didn't like how a lot of the episodes felt like boring filler where not much happens and it was annoying having to get through each episode and not getting close to the ending for a long time until we eventually did. But, here, that's honestly what make this part so much fun. This part has so many episodes where not a lot is really happening in the grand scheme of things, but because of what exactly is happening, it's really entertaining and so much better than it was in the last part. Anyway, moving onto the characters, I absolutely love Josuke. He's my second favourite character in this whole franchise behind Jotaro for me and he's so much fun to watch. I like his quirk of hating when people make fun of his hair and making threats to anyone who might do it and he's just a really fun protagonist. I also love his interactions with everyone, especially Jotaro, I really, really love their dynamic and how they team up a lot of the time, but I also loved a lot of the side characters as well like Koichi, Okuyasu, Rohan, they were all really enjoyable, really fun, really likeable and really funny at times too. And it's kinda hard to explain this exactly but, even though a lot of these episodes do just kinda have a simple plot of just doing some weird thing in this town like trying to stop someone from doing something bad or doing any other thing with a Stand, it was all incredible captivating and I never once complained because it was so entertaining. I even like how some characters they fight become allies later on like Rohan and Mikitaka. I also thought the fights this time around were a lot more creative than the last part and made the whole experience pretty riveting. I will say though, I kinda wish they did more with Joseph because he comes to Morioh for a bit but I wish they did a bit more with him. He's there and Josuke is kinda uncomfortable about it and then there's a whole episode about an invisible baby that can make everything around invisible and Joseph even decides to adopt the baby. This might actually be the only thing that felt kinda wasted because it really doesn't amount to anything and it's not really explained so it's kinda confusing, but it's not terrible or anything. However, I still haven't mentioned one of the best parts yet, the main villain of this part, Yoshikage Kira. This guy is insane with how well he's written and he's tied with Part 3 Dio with being my favourite villain in the whole franchise. What I love is that his motivation is so simple, he just wants to live a quiet life without getting involved in anything that would attract a lot of attention, but he still does so many horrible things like killing women for their hands and other atrocities. And I love how we spend a lot of time on him doing very simple and mundane things, but the way it's done makes it all so interesting and compelling to watch, especially since there's one episode in particular that just has him doing that for the whole time, but I love how it's done. Plus, I really like his Stand too with Deadly Queen and the different abilities it has. And it was amazing how in the middle of the series, Josuke and the others find out about him and almost have him cornered until he takes the face of another person and takes over that person's life and this leads to us meeting Hayato, the son of the man Kira has taken the role of and he begins to suspect something's happening because he feels he's acting weird and this all leads to the climax where Kira tries to make it so that Hayato doesn't reveal who he is and uses his Stand to make it so until Hayato is able to beat him by making it so Josuke and the others will catch on to who he is and this leads to the real climax where Josuke and Okuyasu take Kira on with their Stands with Jotaro, Koichi and Rohan finding out a bit later and this leads to the end where Jotaro manages to use Star Platinum to stop time and defeat Kira which causes Kira to be killed when his head gets run over by an ambulance. Yeah, like I said in my review for the first three parts, this franchise can be incredibly gruesome with some of its deaths. But the way Kira actually dies with his soul being taken away to who knows where is really cool and satisfying. So, overall, I absolutely loved Diamond Is Unbreakable. It was so much fun, so well written, had an extremely enjoyable protagonist and had a very interesting villain and is my favourite part of this franchise so far. The dubbing in this was also fantastic. I mentioned before in my Josuke collectible review that Billy Kametz is the one who voiced Josuke and he did an incredible job. I mean, rest in peace, Billy because his performance made Josuke seem a lot more likeable than he already was. But the rest are great too like Zach Aguilar as Koichi, Jalen K. Cassell as Okuyasu, D.C. Douglas as Kira, they all do an amazing job. So, yeah, definitely check this part out if you're a fan of this franchise, I absolutely loved it and Araki did a fantastic job with this. Now, we're moving onto Part 5, Golden Wind. This was a really interesting part because, even though I heard so many people praise this part, some had some problems with this that seemed pretty hard to look over. Me however, I absolutely loved it. I do have some problems with it and some things are a little infuriating when I think about it, but I still loved so much about this and had an amazing time with it. This part follows a teenaged guy named Giorno Giovanna who's actually Dio's son from when he had Jonathan's body. Giorno lives in Italy and is trying to join a gang to hopefully make Italy a better place. He does manage to join a gang and meet it's members, especially its leader, Bucciarati, but, once he joins they're given a mission to escort the daughter of the boss of the organisation back to him, but, along the way, they encounter all sorts of strange things and battles and even learn that the boss himself is tricking them in different ways. Okay, so, first off, I just want to say that out of every single part in JoJo so far, this part is easily the best looking in terms of how everything is designed as well as the fantastic animation from David Production. They've done this whole franchise since the beginning and this is their best work yet in terms of the whole franchise. Something else that's really facinating is that this takes place in Italy and that's actually a place that Araki himself absolutely loves. If you've seen some behind the scenes stuff with him, you'll know that Italy is place he loves and you can tell with how well detailed everything is and the fact that this entire part takes place there. This part also does a lot of what Stardust Crusaders and Diamond Is Unbreakable did, in that there's so many instances where they're trying do some specific thing or trying to get somewhere and they end up fighting a bunch of Stand users, but it was mostly done well here. I like seeing how ever since the last part, the Stands have all sorts of abilities and so it makes the battles all the more interesting. I think maybe some of them do go on a bit too long, but it's never a bad thing. But now, let's move onto the characters, especially Giorno himself. I'm not gonna lie, before starting this part, I was really, really excited to see Giorno because his design looked unique and interesting and creative and everything was just pointing to him being like a really cool character. However, I really didn't like the writing for his character. I'd say he's probably my second least favourite JoJo next to Jonathan. It's kinda hard to explain, but, in a lot of anime, you usually see characters being incredibly smart and being able to figure out what's happening really, really quickly, and in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, that seems to happen a lot with the characters, but, that happens especially with Giorno and the fact that he figured out everything so perfectly did get kinda tedious after a while. But even outside of that, I found it weird how everything he did was perfect and not much more. I have a weird feeling it's because he's part Joestar and part Dio so that might be it, but, regardless, I didn't like how he was essentially the flawless guy who did everything right and that got so boring after a while. Which is weird for me to say because I started this series really excited to see what he would be like and see what he would bring to the table, but I just found his actions pretty boring since there wasn't much to him in terms of development. I actually heard the same thing from a YouTuber before watching and I wanted to see for myself and I got the exact same feeling from Giorno as he described it. I wouldn't say Giorno's the worst character in this part because we'll get to that in a second, but, even though I complained about him a lot, I still did like Giorno, just not all that much and he just wasn't all that interesting. However, the rest of the gang were fantastically written, for the most part, especially Bucciarati himself. I found him to be extremely likeable and very fun to watch. I especially loved the voice actor they got for him in the dub, Ray Chase, he did an amazing job as Bucciarati and made him so likeable. I also liked all the other members of the gang, Mista, Narancia, Abbacchio, I loved them all. The only one from the group I really didn't like or care for was Fugo. He just seemed like the only one that was kinda wasted and pointless and just didn't seem to have a point being there. I'm not really sure why he was made to be on this team because he really doesn't do anything. But, anyway, I also liked Trish, the daughter of the boss they were having to escort. I thought she was just someone who was gonna be around but not really significant, especially since she starts off as like a brat, but I really liked her and thought she was fun to have on the team after she grew out of that persona. I also loved how a lot of what was happening in the first part got changed around the time of the halfway point in the series because we eventually learn that the boss himself is a guy named Diavolo who's the main villain of this part and wants to kill them all. I don't think Diavolo is particularly special in terms of a villain or a character, but he is still pretty cool. I like how after it's revealed what he's doing, the gang begins to try to escape and protect Trish since Diavolo wants her dead too. He then sends tons of Stand users to try to kill them but they keep defeating them and eventually, this all leads to the climax where Giorno and the others face off against him. Not only that, but Polnareff also returns, which was really awesome to see because he was a great character in Stardust Crusaders, so it was great to see him again and I like how he acts as almost like a small mentor for them. But with the actual ending of this part, it's really awesome, but kinda weird because we first get a part where a lot of the characters swap bodies and this leads to some deaths like Narancia. Not only him, but Bucciarati was killed earlier. Actually, with him, it's kinda weird and confusing because it's implied that Diavolo killed him near the middle of the series but then his soul kinda sticks around to help them. I dunno, that part was really confusing. But, anyway, Abbacchio is killed too so it's just up to Giorno, Mista and Trish to stop him because he's trying to get the arrow that gives a person a Stand but Giorno is able to stop him by taking the arrow and using it to evolve his own Stand from Golden Wind to Golden Wind Requiem, which is probably the most powerful Stand in this entire franchise due to all its abilities. And the actual final fight with Giorno vs. Diavolo is awesome, I loved it. I also like how it ends with Giorno making it so Diavolo is trapped in state of just dying over and over and over and over forever, which is pretty scary to think about. But then, the last two or three episodes were kinda weird because we get a flashback of the gang doing something before Giorno joined and I don't really get it. I get it was kinda supposed to explain the ending, but it was still kinda confusing to me. I did like the ending though where we see that Giorno is now the head of the organisation and he's trying to make Italy a better place. Even if I didn't like Giorno all that much, I still liked seeing where he ended up and thought him being able to do all this was a nice way to end his story. So, I probably was kinda harsh on this part a bit too much, but I want to make it clear that I still absolutely loved a lot about this part. I liked how we got so many amazing Stand battles with a great group of characters to follow along the way. I did have a few other problems with this like how Koichi was actually in this briefly at the start but then he never appears again. Jotaro had him go to Italy to inspect Giorno since he knew he was Dio's son and wanted to check on him until Koichi confirmed he wasn't a bad guy. So, I would have loved if Koichi was in this and be the same kinda mentor character that Jotaro was in Diamond Is Unbreakble so it was kinda annoying he was only in this briefly and then just vanished. The dub is also great here too like Philip Reich as Giorno does a great job and I already mentioned how I loved Ray Chase as Bucciarati and everyone else does a great job too. Anyway, as for this part as a whole, I still really loved the ride of watching this and would place it really high in terms of ranking the six parts I've seen so far. And, with that out of the way, let's move onto the sixth part of the series and the most recently animated part, Stone Ocean. This is the most recently animated part and is the conclusion to the first universe in this franchise. I'll explain what I mean later. Anyway, this part is probably the most controversial one because some really like this part and some really don't. I sorta went in with slightly lowered expectations just because of that and just wanted to see what was gonna happen. And so, in the end, it kinda hard to explain exactly how I feel about this because there were some things I absolutely loved and it had some of the best stuff in the whole franchise, but it also had stuff that I also wasn't a fan of and some of this stuff felt kinda boring and like filler at points. Still though, not a bad part by any means, plus, it's easily the craziest part in the franchise so far because what ends up happening is absolutely insane, but I'll get to that later. For now, let's just talk about the part itself. So, this part's protagonist is a girl named Jolyne Cujoh, who's actually Jotaro's daughter, who's in jail and she's absolutely furious because she says she didn't do anything wrong and is angry at Jotaro himself because she feels like he was a terrible dad to her with never being there for her. But, after she gets her own Stand after Jotaro gives her a piece of the arrow that gives people Stands, Jotaro meets her and he's almost killed which Jolyne is scared by and now she's trying to save him while also trying to figure out what exactly is happening with all the weird things happening around her. So, in the early episodes, I found a lot of what was going on to be kinda boring. A lot of it is just different hijinx in the prison and not much is happening for the most part and even some of the reveals that happen didn't really make me care all that much, aside from when Jolyne found out about what happened and that she was set up to be put in prison and all that. I don't think it's until a bit later things start getting more interesting. I do think the setting is cool though, I think most of the series taking place in a prison is cool and I think Araki did a cool job with depicting it. But when the story picks up, it really picks up because we're introduced to new characters like Ermes and F.F who Jolyne befriends and they try to find out the identity of a Stand user they only know as Pale Snake and you start to learn more and more about that. I do still think there's some parts here that kinda go on a bit too long too, like, I think there might have been a bit too many episodes, which obviously is because I feel there might have been too many chapters in this, so that made going through the series feel pretty tedious at points. However, with all that said, there are a lot of things here that I really liked. For one, I really, really like Jolyne. She's probably the most underrated character in this franchise for me. I really liked her super tough personality but knowing how to be kind and friendly and gentle as well. I also loved the rest of the supporting cast as well like Ermes, F.F, Emporio, Anastaia, I really liked all of them, and I really liked the different dynamic they all have. And, like I said, I was just finiding the first few episodes kinda tidious because they felt like a bit of a drag to get through, that is until the point where we meet the main villain of this part, Enrico Pucci. He's bascially a priest who keeps talking about wanting to reach heaven or something and for a while, we don't know what he means, but we do keep getting flashbacks with him and that he was actually in league with Dio and wants to fulfil his wish and he's also the one who set up everything to get Jolyne arrested all so he could lead both her and Jotaro there. And this is actually where a lot of stuff gets revealed to us and we learn a ton of interesting things too. I like finding out more about the characters and their backstories, as well as just following Jolyne through this adventure as she's learning more and more about what's happening and discovering Pucci's identity, like when F.F dies as she's able to tell her, which was pretty tragic. Again, like I said, I think some of it did go on a little bit too long and kinda overstayed its welcome, but the way all the reveals were being discovered made it really interesting to watch. And it's also revealed that Pucci wanted Jotaro's memories because he apparently knew what Dio's plan was and his Stand is able to take discs in and out of people which records their memories and life in general, which is what Jolyne is after to try to save him. Pucci is able to use them though and realises what to do and where to go. Jolyne and the others manage to get out of jail and try to catch him but run into some more Stand users. And, not just any Stand users, but, they're actually Dio's other sons aside from Giorno, which is pretty cool. And, like I said, we learn more about the other characters too, especially Pucci, like how one of the other supporting characters, Weather Forecast, yeah, that's actually his name, is actually his brother and he gets his memories back and tries to kill Pucci for something that happened to them in the past until Pucci manages to kill him and Jolyne and the others keep going after him and this where we reach the climax, which is absolutely bonkers. Like, seriously, this franchise has had some incredibly insane things happen in it, but nothing can top what happens here because they're going to Cape Canaveral to stop Pucci but he's beginning to get a new Stand and its power is starting to affect the gravity and so they're having trouble getting to him, but they eventually do and not only do they manage to get to him, but Jotaro returns after Joylne was able to get his discs back and they keep fighting Pucci until he's able to complete his plan and acquire his new Stand, Maiden Heaven, which is easily one of the most powerful Stands of all time because its ability is to speed up time incredibly fast and this is where everything goes absolutely bonkers because his plan is to actually make time go all the way to end of time until the universe is completely gone and a new universe is born with everyone dying and being reborn. I am not kidding, that literally happens. Literally everyone is the universe is killed and the universe starts anew. The only one who actually gets brought over from the original universe is Emporio after everyone else is dead and now Pucci is trying to kill him to make sure he doesn't stop him but Emporio does manage to beat him and stop him, but he's now in this new universe and the series ends with him meeting the new versions of Jolyne, Anastasia and Ermes. So, yeah, that is some incredibly insane and kinda terrifying stuff. Litterally everything we knew about the first JoJo universe is officially gone and now this new universe has taken its place. That's really insane, but also really terrifying and depressing because all the characters we knew are now gone forever and reborn into new characters. It's really hard to find the words to describe how all that feels to me. But, yeah, it's hard to really know what to say after something like that happens. And I finally get what everyone was talking about when they were talking about how the next few JoJo parts take place in another universe. I heard something like this from people but I didn't fully understand what they meant when they were talking about it, now I do. But, in terms of this part overall, I did still like it, I don't know if I can say I loved it, but I did still really enjoy a lot of this, and, again, the main thing I liked about it were the characters, especially Jolyne who I really did love as a character. Not only that, but the dubbing was incredible in this part. Kira Buckland did an amazing job as Jolyne herself and helped make Jolyne really, really likeable, Tiana Camacho, Brittany Lauda, Casey Mongillo and Howard Wang also did an amazing job as Ermes, F.F, Emporio and Anastasia and Yong Yea was fantastic as Pucci. Pucci himself is also a really intimidating villain and kinda scary too, especially since he does manage to kinda win at the end since he does manage to do what he wanted to, kind of, and, again, the fact that every character we once knew are now gone forever, it makes me look back on this franchise and really miss a lot of what's now gone. And the fact that we actually saw so many of the characters just die makes me feel that even more. So, I am still really happy I saw this and was able to finish it to finally make this review and I do think this part is slightly underrated. I do have probelms with it, but I still liked it a lot for the most part. As for the series going forward, I know Parts 7 and 8 take place in this new universe and I'm really excited to see them finally get animated. Not only that, but I heard Araki is probably gonna start part 9 really soon which will supposedly finish this franchise entirely, so I'm really, really excited but, yeah, it's gonna be a long time before we see that happen as well as seeing any bit of it animated. But I'm really excited to see the rest of the franchise in this new universe. Some people have said that the next part, Steel Ball Run, is the best part out of all of them, so I'm excited to get started when it's eventually animated. So, as for these parts here, I'm so glad they're all part of this massive franchise, and I'm just glad I finally did reviews for these and you should definitely check these out if you haven't yet and if you already like the rest of previous parts. And so everyone, those are my thoughts on Diamond Is Unbreakable, Golden Wind and Stone Ocean. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.
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