JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders

Episode 22

"HAIL 2 U!" Poor Jean-Pierre Polnareff had to learn the old saying "be careful what you wish for" the hard way when he crossed paths with Cameo, the Stand of Judgment, disguised as a benevolent genie. Now he's got undead versions of his sister Sherry and comrade Avdol eating him alive and he has no one to blame but himself.

Of course, he was already blaming himself anyway, which makes this episode of Jojo's by far the most emotional, tugging at the heartstrings in a way most of JJBA avoids. Polnareff is regularly picked on for being flighty, amorous, and childish (or "French" in irreverent Jojo's shorthand,) but after his foolhardy antics got his friend Avdol killed several episodes ago, it stopped being a quirk of his personality and began to rankle as an emotional burden for the team. There's nothing that Joseph, Kakyoin, or even Jotaro can tell Polnareff to convince him that Avdol's death was not his fault. Rather than growing from his mistakes, Polnareff has begun to regress and regret the instant he gets a quiet moment to remember. "If only, if only, if only Avdol was alive. Would he blame me? Would Sherry blame me?" The zombies created by Polnareff's wishes to alter the past only give him the answer that was always in his heart: yes, their deaths are all his fault, and now he can't even bring them back to life right. They hate him, and for betraying them even in death, he too deservies to die. Polnareff surrenders to his fate and curses his stupidity as they gradually feast on him in a somber and heavily censored scene more reminiscent of Tokyo Ghoul than the lighthearted Stardust Crusaders.

It's in this too-perfect moment that the story throws us its biggest twist yet: is Polnareff's surprise savior really who he appears to be? His token catchphrase gives us the answer, and results in one of the greatest fist-pump moments of the series. It's hard not to be moved as manly tears stream down Polnareff's face and he cries, "The third wish! Just the third wish! It's real! It came true!"

The episode seems to be aware that it's reached its peak at this point, so the resulting fight against Cameo is fairly anticlimactic. Once a battle of Stands becomes two-against-one, it's pretty easy to tell which side is going to win. Polnareff makes peace with Sherry's death, everyone laughs off the tension with some shameless potty humor, and the whole fiasco ends by returning Polnareff to his rightful place as the group laughingstock in a savage twist on the episode's prior soppiness. It's funny, crude, cruel, and more than a little stupid as a conclusion to such serious events, but that's not a bad thing. It's just how Jojo's works and the fact is, it works extremely well. It's taken us from the heavy tears and fears of these past two episodes back to where Jojo's belongs: that bizarre little valley between self-serious and hopelessly silly. (The twist at the heart of this episode was an infamous retcon-by-popular-demand, and it shows to such a degree that author Hirohiko Araki seems happy to stick a giant lampshade on it.)

Like so many aspects of JJBA, the swing between weepy fist-pumping and side-splitting laughter at absolutely terrible jokes shouldn't work, but it does, and even though it peaks in the center, episode 22 easily ranks as one of the strongest episodes in a wildly entertaining show. More please!

Rating: A

JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Stardust Crusaders 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.