JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders Egypt Arc

Episode 17

You really don't deserve three whole episodes, Terence T. D'Arby.

Following hot on the heels (or maybe hot on the hot-wheels) of the previous episode's cliffhanger, Kakyoin's battle with D'Arby the Younger comes to an end, and his soul is stuffed into an ugly little wooden puppet. That means it's time for Jotaro to save the day once again, but once again, D'Arby Junior's demeanor just isn't threatening enough to carry the episode like so many combatants before him, even when he has the perfect home field advantage. Jotaro, who has never touched a video game console in his life, must defeat D'Arby in a game of "Oh! That's Baseball!" for the SNES+ ("plus" meaning that stands can literally become the players somehow, among other odd little features).

While it's not as lame and hacky as the battle with Alessi, and does feel much truer to form for Stardust Crusaders, these episodes are making me pine for the madness of Set vs. Chibi-Chariot. At least that wasn't boring. "Boring" is a word that should never come anywhere near JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, and yet here we are. This battle is undeniably the most protracted that any part of Jojo's III has ever felt, combining a visually uninteresting conflict of virtual baseball with a blandly bloviating baddie who keeps foolishly comparing himself to a more entertaining villain. Apparently, this series of video game duels took up an obscene number of chapters in the original manga as well, but a two-episode compression of this battle would have been welcome. After all, this duel has supposedly taken less than ten real-world minutes so far. That's some Dragon Ball Z nonsense right there, not the Jojo's I signed on for.

Anyway, the battlefield-as-video-game thing isn't necessarily the problem here. (Once again, it was probably a more novel and comical idea for a shonen battle in the early 90s than it is today.) If you squint and tilt your head a little, it's easy to pretend that this is a real game of Stand Baseball between Star Platinum and Atum, and that's pretty delightful, at least in concept. No, the root of the problem is D'Arby and his big fat mouth. Our lady doth protest too much about how perfect he is, without successfully conveying either a rock-solid overconfidence we want to see destroyed or a goofy buffoonery that we're happy to indulge. His outer monologue is pure steel-balled arrogance, but his inner monologue and near-constant nervous twitches betray his self-conscious inferiority complex. We know that Jotaro is going to defeat him eventually, but we don't need it to be so obvious all the time. The stakes are never really felt, because D'Arby Junior isn't ever truly confident in himself; he just wastes a lot of words and screentime trying to convince the audience that he's totally got this. It's intentional, of course. D'Arby Junior is meant to be the overcompensatory, self-aware beta nerd to his brother's alpha playboy brick-brain, but it just doesn't make him a convincing threat.

All this really adds up to is twenty minutes of heavily-narrated virtual baseball, where Jotaro slowly learns the controls before mastering the game in an instant, and D'Arby counters his wunderkind achievement by (seemingly) reading his mind to guess all his pitches. Something tells Jotaro that mind-reading is not one of Atum's many ill-defined powers though, so he tries taking off his hat and placing it on top of his monitor. Will this odd tactic succeed in blocking D'Arby's mysterious leet abilities? Guess we'll find out next week.

Let's just get this over with so we can reunite with the other Stardust Crusaders and battle some baddies with either a little more fun or a little more threat in their arsenal.

Rating: B-

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.