JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Egypt Arc

Episode 8

He may be a foppish playboy now, but Polnareff was once an extremely ugly baby. I now know this courtesy of a less-than-stellar episode of Stardust Crusaders with a less-than-stellar Egyptian god stand and his less-than-stellar user, a ridiculous thug with a passion for picking on the weak.

To satisfy his sadistic urges, Alessi the Eagle-Haired (like this, but five times bigger and with bells on it,) uses the Egyptian God Set's powers to fountain-of-youth-icize his victims before attacking them. Kakyoin is still in the hospital, Joseph and Avdol have just been through a comedy episode, and Jotaro's too stone-cold badass to be made a fool of, so it's Polnareff's turn once again to take up the butt of the Jojokes.

I have a few problems with this episode that kept me from enjoying it as much as I do the average crazy romp with the Part III crew. For one thing, Set's internal logic as a stand is head-scratching. I'm not talking about real-world logic of any kind, just the bizarre and nonsensical internal rules that define the JJBA world as we know it. I'm just used to Stands with a little more pizzazz and cohesion than Set gives us. It's supposedly the Egyptian god of storms and disasters, but that has little to do with its bland sentient-shadow nature, and neither aspect has much to do with turning its victims into children. Its master could be more fun to make up for Set's absence of style or personality, but Alessi's behavior isn't nearly as funny as his appearance. He's a monologuing wuss with a speech tic ("erai ne~?") and that's about it. Between him and his stand, the episode feels like several surprisingly cliché ideas that don't really match each other, all slapped together into a comedy episode that just isn't very funny.

You see, once Polnareff becomes a child, his mind reverts to childhood as well, so he can't call Jotaro for help (not having known him as a kid,) and doesn't remember how to use Silver Chariot either, (who has also became a baby version of itself.) For the most part, this allows Alessi to take his sweet time taunting Polnareff, dragging out the episode, and ridding Polnareff of his ability to quip back or freak out in a humorous way. He's instead reduced to sort of a "goo goo ga ga I'm just so confused" version of himself, which leads into the most awkwardly lame part of the "comedy episode." A buxom young lass sees the injured child Polnareff in the street and takes him home with her to give him a good scrubdown, (while wearing her laciest lingerie for some reason.) Polnareff still hasn't completely lost touch with his adult brain, so he gets the distinct impression that he should be extremely happy about the sexy experience he's having, but isn't entirely sure why. The joke is that he's in heaven and doesn't really get to appreciate it, complete with sad trombone stabs at his tiny baby penis. Alessi watches all of this with both jealousy and cowardice while he plots his next move, and the whole thing goes on for almost five minutes straight. Yawn.

This isn't a bad episode of Jojo's. It's not boring and it doesn't really do anything wrong, it's just filled with mismatched old comedy bits that seem tepid by Stardust Crusaders' more insane standards, especially when the Oingo Boingo brothers and Mariah episodes are still fresh on our minds. I expect better from the show, and hopefully there's better on the way.

Rating: C

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Egypt Arc is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Hope has been an anime fan since childhood, and likes to chat about cartoons, pop culture, and visual novel dev on Twitter.